tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55379584772229133462024-03-05T05:42:33.561-08:00American Political And Economic ChautauquaExamining politics and economics with clear eyes.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.comBlogger485125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-25536768690412290572016-02-16T14:59:00.000-08:002016-02-17T09:17:08.164-08:00I''m Back. After nearly three years in California, it's time to crank up the blog.Since September 2012, we've been in California. Currently were on a lovely 10 acre plot. We can see no homes around us (though they're there). It seems like we're completely on our own in this beautiful countryside. We've had enough to do so that I came to ignore this unfortunately named blog. That's going to change. This is the warning. More to come soonAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-25117239220057467122011-10-30T21:41:00.000-07:002011-10-30T21:41:58.897-07:00Americans: Awash In Spin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_l6B3wMu93HiUWTSt65jM_GHf2H_J3cHEVSB5oeYAnaVldbjpr4BLmO-zellSxEQD-VVvLPGCyjBDiTEM6Y5ICZwsvYz_9iG_sXO-isC-aZ951Zmy7hYV6dTUBmeY5so_o7mzViRE-mg/s1600/Paul_craig_roberts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_l6B3wMu93HiUWTSt65jM_GHf2H_J3cHEVSB5oeYAnaVldbjpr4BLmO-zellSxEQD-VVvLPGCyjBDiTEM6Y5ICZwsvYz_9iG_sXO-isC-aZ951Zmy7hYV6dTUBmeY5so_o7mzViRE-mg/s1600/Paul_craig_roberts.jpg" /></a></div><div align="left"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>Americans: Awash In Spin</b></span><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
<b>By Paul Craig Roberts<br />
</b><br />
October 28, 2011 "</span><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"><span style="font-size: medium;">Information Clearing House</span></a><span style="font-size: medium;">" - I have come to the conclusion that Big Brother’s subjects in George Orwell’s 1984 are better informed than Americans.<br />
<br />
Americans have no idea why they have been at war in the Middle East, Asia and Africa for a decade. They don’t realize that their liberties have been supplanted by a Gestapo Police State. Few understand that hard economic times are here to stay.<br />
<br />
On October 27, 2011, the US government announced some routine economic statistics, and the president of the European Council announced a new approach to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. The result of these funny numbers and mere words sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its largest monthly rally since 1974, erasing its 2011 yearly loss. The euro rose, putting the European currency again 40% above its initial parity with the US dollar when the euro was introduced.<br />
<br />
On National Public Radio a half-wit analyst declared, emphatically, that the latest US government statistics proved that the recovery was in place and that there was no danger whatsoever of a double-dip recession. And half-brain economists predicted a better tomorrow.<br />
<br />
Europe is happy because the European private banks, the creditors of the European governments, have agreed to eat 50% of Greece’s sovereign debt and to be recapitalized by public money handed to them by the European Financial Stability Facility rescue fund. The President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, thinks that Greece’s debt is the only sovereign debt to be written down and that the debt of Italy, Spain, and Portugal will somehow be bailed out through other means, including a Chinese contribution to the EFSF rescue fund. Obviously, if all EU sovereign debt has to be cut by 50% as well, the rescue fund would not be up to the job.<br />
<br />
For our corrupt financial markets, any news that can be spun as good news can send stocks up. But what are the facts?<br />
<br />
For facts one has to turn to serious people, not to the presstitute media. Among those who give us real facts is John Williams of shadowstats.com. In his October 27 report, Williams exposes the happy second quarter 2011 economic growth figure of 2.5% as nonsense. Every other economic indicator contradicts the spin. <br />
<br />
For example, personal consumption is reported to have increased 1.7%, but this surge in consumption took place despite a 1.7% collapse in consumer disposable income! In other words, if there was an increase in personal consumption, it come from drawing down savings or from incurring higher consumer debt. <br />
<br />
A country’s consumers cannot forever draw down savings or go deeper into debt. For an economy to recover, there must be growth in consumer income. That growth is nowhere to be seen in the US. A large percentage of the goods and services sold to Americans by American corporations are now produced abroad by foreign labor. Thus, Americans no longer received incomes from the production of the goods and services that they consume. The American consumer market is on its way out.<br />
<br />
The Dow Jones rose 339.51 points on the phony good news, but consumer sentiment is in the basement. John Williams reports that “consumer confidence hit the lowest levels ever recorded in 2008 and 2009” and that consumer confidence has now “fallen back to that 2008 level.” But the stock market boomed. Somehow a population 23% unemployed with debt up to its eyeballs is going to spark an economic recovery.<br />
<br />
Recovery can only happen in the delusional world created for us by the concentrated media. No longer permitted to utter one world of truth, the presstitutes proclaim non-existent recoveries and weapons of mass destruction and demonize Washington’s chosen opponents.<br />
<br />
The sovereign debt crisis in Europe has distracted Americans from the much worst crisis in their country. After two decades of exporting US manufacturing and middle class jobs, and after a decade of consumer debt growth that has resulted in millions of foreclosed homeowners and massive credit card and student loan debt that cannot be paid, consumers have no income growth or borrowing capacity with which to fuel an economy based on consumer demand. <br />
<br />
European banks, already ruined by purchases of Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s AAA ratings of junk derivatives, now find themselves threatened by sovereign debt. Greece’s debt crisis, caused with Goldman Sachs’ help in hiding the true debt of the country as was done for Enron, has brought to light that Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, in addition to Greece, have more debt than the governments can service. <br />
<br />
In the EU, unlike the US and UK which have their own central banks that can create new money to bail out the over-indebted governments, the EU central bank is prohibited by treaty from printing money in order to purchase bonds from member states that cannot be redeemed. <br />
<br />
Regardless of the treaty prohibition, the EU central bank has been lending Greece the money to pay its bond holders. The imposed austerity that is part of the deal created political instability in Greece.<br />
<br />
Now that European Council President Herman Van Rompuy has announced a 50% write-off by private banks of Greek sovereign debt, can the same treatment be denied Portugal, Italy, and Spain? <br />
<br />
The European Central Bank is following the lead of the Federal Reserve and creating new money to bail out debt. The cost will be paid in inflation and flight from the euro and the dollar. As an indication of the future, despite the positive spin on the news and the rise in US stocks, on October 27 the Japanese yen rose to a new high against the US dollar.</span><i><span style="font-size: medium;"><br />
<br />
Paul Craig Roberts was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He can be reached at: PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com</span></i></span></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-47546143390458866732011-10-29T10:19:00.000-07:002011-10-29T10:20:51.174-07:00Ohio's War on the Middle Class<div id="content-header"><h1 class="title">Ohio's War on the Middle Class</h1></div><div class="clear-block" id="node-header"><div class="node-master-image"><img alt="Burning row houses behind a church in Columbus, Ohio." class="imagecache imagecache-master-image imagecache-default imagecache-master-image_default" src="http://mjcdn.motherjones.com/preset_12/columbusr_425x320.jpg" title="" /> <span class="byline photo-byline">Photographs by Andrew Spear</span></div><div class="clear-block" id="node-body-top"><div class="dek">Wherein I go home, watch public servants get axed, visit the warehouse of unbearable sorrow, hang with jobless thirtysomethings living in abandoned homes, and consider whether my generation is flat-out screwed.<br />
</div><div class="byline byline-byline">—By <a href="http://motherjones.com/authors/mac-mcclelland">Mac McClelland</a><br />
</div><span class="section-lead">The decor of Erin and Anthony Rodriguez's</span> guest room could really only happen in the United States. In fact, a European did lay eyes on it one time, and his superior brow furrowed instantly with disbelief as he said, "What…is THAT?" It isn't just the powder-pinkness of the third bedroom in their Gahanna, Ohio, home. It's more the hot pink stars stenciled along the ceiling border, and that between them alternate the words "Katie" and "an American Girl." Erin, who's 30, Ohio born and raised, Ohio for life, can't decide herself if she should be excited—I mean, it's not <i>not</i> funny—or mildly embarrassed to show it to people. Nobody named Katie lives here. This paint scheme was left by the previous owners. On the early June afternoon when I drop my suitcase by the bed, Erin exclaims, "You can be our Katie!"<br />
<div class="sidebar-large-right"><b><i>Also read: </i></b><i><b><a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/rich-people-create-jobs" target="_blank">Six myths that must die</a> for our economy to live and <a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/charts-economic-myths-jobs-deficit-taxes" target="_blank">the charts</a> that prove it.</b></i><b><i> Plus: the <a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/republicans-job-creation-kill" target="_blank">conservative plan to snuff the recovery</a> and our ongoing <a href="http://motherjones.com/category/secondary-tags/ows" target="_blank">coverage of Occupy Wall Street</a>.</i></b></div>We've been roommates before. But that was back when we went to Ohio State, from which we graduated almost 10 years ago. Now Erin has a grown-up job as a public school teacher and a husband who's a public information specialist for the Ohio agency that keeps tabs on local utilities and makes sure they don't go all Enron on consumers. They have a baby, Jocelyn, who is extremely cute and well behaved, as well as a gray cat named Princess Vespa and a black cat named Barack Obama. For a long time, my contact with Erin has been limited mostly to occasional phone check-ins during which we brief each other on, like, how adulthood is going. Now I'm taking up temporary residence here not as a fun former roomie but as a reporter. I write Erin a rent check for a third of the mortgage—$430. She says she's really happy to see me, even though she knows the grown-up reporter reason I'm here is that she and her husband are state employees, so something bad is bound to happen to them in the next month. That $430, she tells me, might make an important difference in their finances soon.</div></div><div id="node-body-break"><div class="mojo_oas_ad content-ad" id="Middle1"></div><div class="post-continues post-continued-from-above"><i><a href="http://motherjones.com/about/advertising/contact-form">Advertise on MotherJones.com</a></i></div></div><span class="section-lead">If the sign at the edge of town</span> is to be believed, Gahanna is one of the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/moneymag/0707/gallery.BPTL_top_100.moneymag/96.html" target="_blank">Top 100 Places to Live</a>. The Columbus suburb is a lot like the Cleveland suburb I grew up in. Green. Sprawly. Solidly middle-class, chock-full of shopping centers. And Erin and Anthony's house is a lot like a lot of houses around it, a modest split-level with a big front yard and a deck in the back. In the wedding pictures on the walls, Erin's got short blond hair. Currently, her locks are chin length and closer in color to the chocolate corduroy couch on which we sit while, on the floor before us, Jocelyn makes herself the center of a four-foot radius of toys. Erin's beaming in the photos, and that's pretty much what she usually looks like, pretty teeth bared, shiny cheeks. She still feels warm and open even as her face creases with anxiety and she says, "When we bought our house, we basically wiped out our savings." The only reason there's any money left in the bank at all is because of the rebate from President Obama's <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/fact-sheet-worker-homeownership-and-business-assistance-act-2009" target="_blank">first-time homebuyer's credit program</a>. Because the house, like most people's houses, isn't paid for, and neither is Anthony's car, like many people's cars, the prospect that Anthony might have only three more paychecks coming is making Erin "not fine," though she's "trying to be fine." When we were in college, we all had these fabulous plans. Or at least plans to be supersecure once we found careers. To make a living and then…live. Erin blames the governor for her doubts now. She calls him some unsavory names.<br />
A lot of people are doing that. A couple of weeks ago, a poll showed the <a href="http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/05/checking-in-on-john-kasich.html" target="_blank">approval ratings</a> of <a href="http://www2.sos.state.oh.us/pls/jvgm/f?p=159:10:3958787324674256::NO::F215_CAN_ID,P10_CALL_PAGE:174,26" target="_blank">John Kasich</a>, the newly elected Republican governor, at 33 percent. Once upon a time Kasich was a United States congressman, before he left in 2001 to become a managing director at Lehman Brothers, where he worked until it imploded and destroyed a bunch of lives in 2008. On the side, he hosted his own show on Fox News, as well as frequently guest-hosting <i>The O'Reilly Factor</i> and appearing on the Sean Hannity vehicles. He took office in January, and his approval ratings have been <a href="http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1322.xml?ReleaseID=1570" target="_blank">abysmal since March</a>, something to do, no doubt, with the release of his <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254879-executive-budget-summary.html" target="_blank">proposed budget</a> for fiscal years 2012-13.<br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="Anthony Rodriguez's agency—which counsels Ohio utility consumers—faces devastating cuts." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_d.jpg" title="Anthony Rodriguez's agency—which counsels Ohio utility consumers—faces devastating cuts." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b> </b></span></span><br />
<br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>Anthony Rodriguez's agency—which counsels Ohio utility consumers—faces devastating cuts.</b></span></span>To Erin's specific dismay, the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254883-ohio-budget-in-detail-as-proposed.html#document/p12/a34648" target="_blank">governor's plan slashes</a> $3.1 billion from an estimated $58.8 billion state budget largely by cutting funding to city governments and services. Anthony's state agency, the <a href="http://www.pickocc.org/" target="_blank">Ohio Consumers' Counsel</a> (OCC)—which advocates for customers in complaints, regulatory hearings, and court cases involving utility companies—is <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254883-ohio-budget-in-detail-as-proposed.html#document/p27/a34649" target="_blank">slated to lose 51 percent</a>. The Department of Education <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254883-ohio-budget-in-detail-as-proposed.html#document/p38/a34650" target="_blank">loses 10.2 percent</a>. A <a href="http://innovationohio.org/press/budget-job-losses" target="_blank">local think tank estimates</a> that 51,000 state jobs are at stake. Local unions are panicking that the public employees who remain will have little control over their own futures, since Kasich effectively killed collective bargaining in a bill called SB 5 shortly after he took office. This is the manifestation of his campaign promise to "shine up the state." In one of his <a href="http://www.kasichforohio.com/site/c.hpIJKWOCJqG/b.5807617/k.30DF/Devoted_to_a_New_Day_for_Ohio.htm" target="_blank">campaign videos</a>, he says that his parents used to say, "Johnny, make sure the place that you were is a little better off because of the fact that you were there." He won the 2010 election, barely, on a job creation platform. His budget is called <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254879-executive-budget-summary.html" target="_blank">"The Jobs Budget."</a><br />
But for the differing accents and college football allegiances, this could be Florida, or Michigan, or Wisconsin. They've all got their own new Republican governors facing protests over public-sector job cuts or voter ID bills or union dismantling or destruction of public transportation projects or unemployment benefits. And those governors all have <a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/05/republican-governor-unpopular-obama-president" target="_blank">plummeting approval ratings</a>.<br />
<div class="pullquote-left">A layoff might knock Erin back an income class or two. But not everyone she knows has a spare income class to fall.</div>Erin and Jocelyn have been going to these protests in Columbus. Neither one of us was really an activist or even especially politically minded in college, but lately, a phone conversation that starts about these amazing ice cream bars ends with news about what Kasich is doing or some kind of fretting, like she's doing right now. With the news that Anthony will likely lose his job, she's panicked that she missed the open enrollment period for her health insurance plan because she assumed, with the faith that professionals tend to default to when they're employed, that no one in her family was about to be jobless. All three Rodriguezes are currently on Anthony's insurance, because it's much better, and cheaper. Luckily, it's not too late to switch. By the end of the week, she'll drive to the appropriate office to drop off the paperwork. And then she'll cry in the car for an hour while Jocelyn's asleep in the backseat, which she'll confess to me when I tell her she's handling her "freaking out" well.<br />
Erin recognizes that she could do a lot worse; if her nightmare of losing her house ever did come close to a reality, her parents would likely rescue her, she knows, as much as she would hate to have to take their money. But her friend, for example, who had a baby at the same time, has been surviving with her husband on his teaching-assistant salary only because they fell into a situation with free rent. Now they have to move, and they have no idea what they're going to do. And a parent of several of Erin's former students had to choose between sending his kid to college and working, since the only job he could get didn't pay enough to cover tuition—and financial aid would be available only if he were unemployed. Erin acknowledges that having to downgrade to a less-great health insurance plan is the sort of thing the upwardly mobile liberals of our generation like to refer to on the internet as "white people problems." A layoff might knock her back an income class or two. But not everyone she knows has a spare income class to fall.<br />
Now, Erin eyes her 11-month-old when she says, "<i>Thank God</i> I have a job. And a job with insurance. Anthony's applying for jobs like crazy, but he's not getting any bites."<br />
That's what he does when he gets home. It's late, almost dark out, at a time of year when the days are longest. There was a public meeting tonight about an impending rate hike from American Electric Power, the local utility, and he was there to look out for the OCC and consumers. Still, after he arrives in a tie and glasses only to get back to work on his laptop, he continuously flashes a grin that demands to be described as toothy. At his work, people are getting ready to move their desks because the office is consolidating from two floors to one; the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254909-budget-in-detail-senate.html#document/p28/a34651" target="_blank">state Senate has proposed</a> softening the OCC's cuts from 51 to 34 percent, but a lot of layoffs are still on the table. No one knows exactly what will happen when the budget is reconciled and signed at the end of the month, and right now Anthony is working on a freelance consulting project and looking for more of those and another job while the rest of us watch reality TV.<br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="A dunk tank fundraiser in Mt. Sterling, which dissolved its police force due to lack of cash" class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_f.jpg" title="A dunk tank fundraiser in Mt. Sterling, which dissolved its police force due to lack of cash" width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>A dunk-tank fundraiser in Mt. Sterling, which dissolved its police force due to lack of cash</b></span></span>"We're in that mode," Anthony says of his 81 coworkers, shaking his head, "where we're like, 'What the hell are we going to do?'" And he can fit in only a few minutes of searching and overtime, because Jocelyn misses him and won't stop pointing at him, so he picks her up to pace the carpet with her head against his shoulder, singing a soothing little song.<br />
<br />
<span class="section-lead">At <a href="http://twitter.com/#%21/MacMcClelland/status/78398329704292352" target="_blank">4:41 in the morning</a>, Barack Obama</span> finds his cat-magic way through a closed door and enters my bedroom. The Rodriguez house is as dark as the sky. But within an hour, lights are on, Jocelyn's burbling, and Anthony's walking around in shorts. As I am somewhat unaccustomed to this waking time, I'm looking sad about it under the kitchen fluorescents, I guess, since Anthony walks in and laughs at me.<br />
It's one of Erin's last days of teaching before school lets out for the summer. It's a 40-minute drive out to her rural district, plus a quick stop to drop Jocelyn off at day care. Out here, there are a lot of long, empty roads and farmland. Out here, the public schools spend nearly 20 percent less per student than the national average. It's so hot outside that a school in a city nearby actually had to shut down the other day when its air conditioning broke, but Erin's middle school never has had AC. Her seventh- and eighth-graders are restless, sweating. She spends even more time than usual vying for their attention, especially in the computer class that has access to internet games.<br />
I'm exhausted just watching her by third period, but she loves, loves, <i>loves</i> her job as a writing teacher, she tells me when we lock the door between classes so she can pump breast milk. Still, she'd prefer to be a stay-at-home mom to Jocelyn for a while. She's heartbroken every time she leaves her at day care, maybe even more than she is over the prospect of becoming a single-income family.<br />
<div class="pullquote-left">The workers on this shift all make about $9 an hour. That's a dollar less than I made at the moving company when I started there in 1998.</div>Actually, she's not totally free from worrying about becoming a no-income family; the <a href="http://www.ohea.org/" target="_blank">Ohio Education Association</a> says Kasich's budget will cost 10,000 public education jobs—nearly 5 percent of such jobs in the state. Already, Erin's school recently laid off a couple of teachers and cut a few more to half time. While her salary after eight years of teaching would normally be protected by a long-standing experience- and education-based pay schedule, a provision in the budget would require many schools—including hers—to move to a more <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254886-ohio-budget-analysis.html#document/p95/a34652" target="_blank">merit-based pay system</a>. Which sounds great and all, but what it means is this: Unless organizers get 231,147 signatures to put a repeal of anti-collective-bargaining SB 5 on the ballot in November, and then voters indeed vote to repeal it, her union will have far less power to help her if her cash-strapped school district decides she should make some arbitrary number of thousands of dollars less.<br />
It's not like she's in it for the money. American middle school teachers <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254913-oecd-data.html#document/p422/a12" target="_blank">work more hours</a> than those in any other leading industrialized nation except one, but they <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254913-oecd-data.html#document/p419/a34654" target="_blank">rank near the bottom in terms of pay</a>. Erin knew that going in, but still.<br />
"How many of you have summer jobs?" Erin asks her afternoon batch of about 30 eighth-graders. Lots of them put their hands up. When she asks them how many have jobs because they're working for family farms or businesses, most of those with their hands up keep them raised. Job growth in this county is -0.16 percent. One 14-year-old without those kinds of family connections explains he's been looking, he's looking, but no, he doesn't have a job. When I ask him why, he pauses, surprised for a second, then says, "No jobs to be <i>had</i>."<br />
<br />
<span class="section-lead">When Erin and I were in college,</span> I worked summers for a moving company. Before and after jobs, my coworkers and I hung around the cavernous warehouse full of cardboard boxes, the smell of heavy paper landing in the back of our throats in a thick and lingering way.<br />
<span class="inline inline-left"><img alt="Erin Rodriguez and daughter Jocelyn." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_b.jpg" title="Erin Rodriguez and daughter Jocelyn." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>Erin Rodriguez and her daughter Jocelyn</b></span></span>My college girlfriend now works in a warehouse, too, as a supervisor—in a quieter, sadder warehouse, where people ship merchandise for big online companies everyone has heard of but that can't be named here. The company running it, which I also can't name, is a temp agency that provides staffing for a nationwide logistics contractor that handles getting those internet purchases from their origins—many of them Chinese factories—to people's doorsteps.<br />
My ex's name is not Susie, but let's call her that so we don't get her in trouble. The first stop on the tour she gave me of her workplace: workers standing at tables, taking items out of a bulk box and putting them into smaller boxes with shipping labels on them. And...that's pretty much it. For efficiency purposes, every step of every process here has been broken down and separated out so that almost everyone does the exact same motion over and over. Like the people at the next stop, who are standing at tables and putting the labels on the boxes. Over and over. Sweating.<br />
"It's hot in here," I say unhelpfully. It's 90 degrees outside, and the Midwestern humidity concentrates itself in this giant metal-and-cement cube. "Don't you guys have air conditioning?"<br />
"We do, but it's controlled by the big guys in the suits." It is not, Susie adds, equally unpleasant for everyone. We pass by the loading docks, where a semi is backed up to the open door. A guy standing inside the cramped metal trailer bed catches taped-up, ready-to-ship boxes off the conveyor belt and stacks them in the truck. "<i>That</i> job sucks," she says. She shakes her head. "There's no circulation in there." She says in the winter, everybody in the warehouse wears hats and coats because it's freezing inside.<br />
The workers on this shift all make about $9 an hour. That's a dollar less than I made at the moving company when I started there in 1998, but it's a lot more than the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254934-ohio-minimum-wage.html" target="_blank">state minimum wage</a> of $7.40 and way more than nothing, which is what <a href="http://medinagazette.northcoastnow.com/2011/06/17/ohios-unemployment-rate-stays-at-86-percent/" target="_blank">8.6 percent of Ohio workers</a> currently earn.<br />
These workers are all hired as temps by Susie's company. If they make it 90 days, they have the opportunity, in theory, if there's an opening, to become full employees of the logistics company, which means better benefits and about an extra dollar an hour. It has been six months since the logistics company graduated someone here from temp to employee status. At one of the other locations Susie manages, no one has been hired as a real employee for two years. One of the workers in this warehouse has been a temp for a year and a half.<br />
<br />
After we walk past workers stuffing inflated plastic air pockets in boxes and a guy continuously taping shut the bottoms of just-made cartons, we go to Susie's office. "Hold on, I gotta fire somebody real quick," she says, picking up the phone. She calls a man who's been working for her for two months. She's sorry, she tells him, but she has to let him go because one of the supervisors caught him talking on the floor. The man, who she thinks is in his late 40s or early 50s, protests that he only asked a new guy where he was from. That's just not the culture, Susie tells him. You know the rules. The logistics company sets them, and she has no choice but to enforce them.<br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="In The Bottoms, just west of downtown Columbus, neighbors paint a mural." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_e.jpg" title="In The Bottoms, just west of downtown Columbus, neighbors paint a mural." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>In The Bottoms, just west of downtown Columbus, neighbors paint a mural.</b></span></span>It does say in the new-employee handout that there are no personal conversations allowed on the warehouse floor. Also, no cell phones are permitted. Like a high school teacher, Susie has a pile of phones she's confiscated in a plastic bowl on her desk. Two sick days are allotted per year, and workers must be excused to take them without penalty; after that, the temp is terminated, doctor's note or no. Every temp is allowed one 30-minute break per day, and it must be taken on company premises. Every temp is required to have an ID badge. The cost of this badge, more than an hour's worth of wages, is deducted from the temp's first paycheck.<br />
I haven't finished the orientation packet when Susie picks up the phone to hear instructions from another supervisor that I can tell are bad news for a worker. "You're not really about to fire somebody else, are you?" I ask.<br />
"Yeah."<br />
"You just fired somebody less than 10 minutes ago."<br />
"Yeah, but he's been taking too many breaks."<br />
"Are you kidding? Is anybody going to ask him why he's taking breaks? Maybe he's sick."<br />
"No, they said he's been doing it all week. He's a bigger dude, so they think he's doing it"—the break room and the bathroom are in the air-conditioned part of the warehouse where the suits have offices—"because it's too hot for him on the floor."<br />
<div class="pullquote-left">"You know, you used to be able to survive blue collar," my father says. "Now, the blue-collar guy, they just crush the life out of him. It's very depressing."</div>Later, when I tell my father about this, he groans. Coincidentally, he works with the CEOs of logistics companies sometimes. "Somebody did studies and spreadsheets and crunched those numbers," he says, "and figured out that the cheapest way to get that job done is to treat people like that." Which is important, because "the profit margins on those contracts are razor thin." Naturally. A lot of the internet retailers' merchandise is nearly worthless—Ice Princess Star-Shaped Ice Cube Tray with Straws, anthropomorphic stuffed bacon toys—and is sold for nearly nothing, often with free or reduced-price shipping.<br />
"When I was a kid working in a warehouse, I made $10 an hour," my father says.<br />
That can't be right, I tell him. As proof that he's mistaken, I point out that that's the same wage warehouses pay now.<br />
"Exactly," he says. "That's the problem. The cost of living has gone way up, but wages have just been"—and here he makes sort of a Tupperware-closing sound—"locked in." In 1980, he got his first professional job with a high school diploma in Cleveland for $28,000 a year. In 2007, I got my first professional job with a master's degree in San Francisco for $27,000. A hundred dollars in my pocket today was the equivalent of $274 in his then. "And wages are exactly the same." It's not always true, of course, that the <i>actual</i> wages for the same job are <i>actually</i> the same. But it is true that in 2010 the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254935-median-earnings.html" target="_blank">average full-time male worker earned</a> $47,715. In 1980, after adjusting for inflation, he earned $46,889.<br />
"When you were six, I was driving a brand new Chevy station wagon and paying $125 a month," he says. "I remember seeing Cadillac commercials on TV saying, 'Drive away today with little money down and $450 a month,' and I remember thinking, 'I'll <i>never</i> be able to afford that.' And today that's a totally common car payment. We lived in a three-bedroom condo with two full baths for $280 a month. Nothing"—except the kind of crap boxed up in Susie's warehouse—"is cheaper now than it was then."<br />
My father did ultimately lease a string of Cadillacs when I was older. Now he drives a Lexus SUV. Now he works at a firm that companies hire to headhunt the managers and VPs and CEOs they need, generally people in the $130,000 range but often much more. At the moment, my father has been tapped by a company to find the right candidate for a position that pays $600,000. Last year he placed someone who made $1.4 million annually, and another who made $1.5 mil. He bills enough that at the office, where I've had occasion to use the nap room, his is one of the faces etched in bronze on the plaques for people who've earned the firm a million or more.<br />
"You know, you used to be able to survive blue collar," he says. "Now, the blue-collar guy, they just crush the life out of him. It's very depressing." Unemployment has doubled since the beginning of the recession, and home equity has fallen by more than a third, but <a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph" target="_blank">Wall Street profits</a> are up more than 700 percent. Profits at his firm, which is part of a global group with more than 4,000 employees, have remained steady. "Recessions," <a href="http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff/2011/06/recession-proof-employment-ohio" target="_blank">as my father sometimes puts it</a>, "don't affect people like me."<br />
It's June 16, the day after Erin's birthday, and even from inside my pink room, I can hear the stress in her voice as she says into the phone, "Why are you yelling at me?"<br />
When she slumps to the floor in the hallway outside my door, she tells me Anthony lost his job. The budget is still being reconciled in committee, but even the best-case version slashes OCC funding by more than 30 percent. And the cut looks mostly like a favor to utility companies, rather than a money-saving measure; the OCC isn't funded out of the state's general revenue fund but rather via a <a href="http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/4911.18" target="_blank">surcharge on utility companies</a>. It's one of several exciting bits of a non-cost-cutting agenda slipped into the cost-cutting budget, which also, for example, makes it extremely <a href="http://www.sanduskyregister.com/news/2011/jun/07/o0363bc-oh-ohiobudget8thld-xml" target="_blank">difficult to get an abortion</a>. Anthony has been given two weeks' notice. After that, their income will be cut in half.<br />
Erin and I frown quietly at each other for a while. "How are you doing?" I ask.<br />
"I don't know."<br />
Jocelyn crawls across her knees.<br />
"What are we gonna do, monkey?" Erin asks her, then, with effort, puts on a goo-goo voice. "I'm going to have to start entering you in pageants."<br />
When Anthony comes home, there's a save-the-date card on the dining room table. Erin calls his attention to it, says Kristi and Scott are getting married. The Rodriguezes wouldn't have to travel. But they'd have to bring a present, and Anthony begins to sigh heavily, and Erin says quickly, "We don't <i>have</i> to go; we don't have to talk about it now," at the same time that he says, "Now's <i>not</i> the time." Tonight, while he works on his portfolio, to use in interviews "if I ever get one," he dips into the bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label someone bought them for their wedding.<br />
<br />
<span class="section-lead">At the <a href="http://www.columbuslibrary.org/" target="_blank">Columbus Metropolitan Library</a></span> a few days later, there's a career workshop courtesy of Ohio State University's <a href="http://www.ced.osu.edu/" target="_blank">Office of Continuing Education</a>, which doesn't restrict its job services to recent alumni, or even to alumni at all. "A lot of the people I'm working with have been laid off or find their field is shrinking," adviser Jeff Robek tells the audience. In 2008, librarians became overwhelmed with requests for job search assistance. So now all of CML's 20 branches run assistance programs. For as long as is feasible, anyway: Ohio libraries are in line for a 5 percent cut in Kasich's budget, in addition to the 30 percent they lost under the previous governor, while demand for services went up more than 20 percent during the same period. CML's website is the second most visited in the whole county, and the Job Help Center page is one of the most visited within it. As Robek speaks, yet another presentation is going on in a different conference room, about LinkedIn. Just before that, there was a volunteer available to help guide people through online applications. "I work with a lot of older job seekers," Robek says to a crowd ranging from twentysomethings to the AARP set. He is most perfectly Midwestern, with clean manners and khakis. "Fifty-plus, sixty-plus."<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="Career counselor Jeff Robek says in this job market, employers can demand and get whatever they want." class="image image-preview " height="450" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_h.jpg" title="Career counselor Jeff Robek says in this job market, employers can demand and get whatever they want." width="300" /><span class="caption" style="width: 298px;"><b>Career counselor Jeff Robek says in this job market, employers can demand and get whatever they want.</b></span></span><br />
In the middle of this Monday afternoon, Robek warns us that it's a hirer's market: "With the job market as tight as it is right now, employers are picky." He has a slide with statistics reinforcing the adage that it's not what you know, but <i>who</i> you know: 70 percent of jobs come from networking. Only 11 percent of people land a position through staffing agencies, 5 percent through sending résumés, and 14 percent through advertised jobs. The latter is how Anthony has been applying with increased fervor. The other day he had an interview, his first after sending out dozens of applications. Though he was lucky to get that far with 150 total applicants, he's still up against 11 other interviewees. He put on a purple shirt, and I complimented him on it. "I don't like to be bland," he said.<br />
The experienced laid-off like Anthony, plus the "encore career" crowd, which seems to be a euphemism for professionals who are old but can't afford to retire, are creating challenges for the branch of Ohio State's career offices that tries to place another huge population: OSU graduates. Stephanie Ford, the director of the university's Arts and Sciences Career Services Office, explains to me that the shrinking number of jobs and swelling number of applicants are "a double whammy" for Ohio State's 6,702 graduating seniors. "Overall," she says, "it's harder to find students employment in their field" than it was when I graduated 10 years ago. I can't tell if I feel worse for them, for myself and my fellow 2002 graduates who might be competing with them, for the warehouse workers whose jobs they might be forced to take because they can't get "real" jobs, or for the encore career people who are up against the lot of us but have more responsibilities, probably less energy, and the handicap of cultural ageism. Christ.<br />
According to Robek, there used to be a general rule in job searching: For every $10,000 in annual salary earned, it took one month of looking. I schedule an advising session with him, and he explains that nobody has fingered the standard for the new economic order yet, but anecdotally, what used to take 3 to 6 months often now takes 6 to 12. "Or even longer sometimes!" he says.<br />
Given the state of the journalism industry, statistically it would surprise no one if I got laid off. Indeed, fairly recently, Robek advised a local journalist alum who was about my age. He had worked in media for years but lost his job due to cutbacks. He searched and searched for work. Committed to staying a reporter, in the end, Robek tells me, he moved to DC and took an unpaid internship. This is a terrible story, and at this point in the economy and the industry, I have concerns about whether I could even compete for that internship. If the most recent batch of interns at my own magazine is any indication, college graduates are listening to the advice people like Ford give them about going up against people like me: Build rock-solid résumés. Among them, <a href="http://motherjones.com/about/ben-bagdikian-fellowship-program" target="_blank"><i>Mother Jones</i>' eight interns</a> speak Farsi, French, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Spanish, and Thai and have worked at PBS's <i>Frontline</i>—two of them—NPR, NBC, <i>New York Press</i>, the <i>Miami Herald</i>, <i>Washington Monthly</i>, <i>The Nation</i>, <i>Sierra</i>, <i>Bangkok Post, </i>the <i>American Prospect</i>, the ACLU, the Federal Trade Commission, and for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.<br />
"If the field you're working in has no opportunities, it might be time to find something else you're passionate about," Robek tells me. A career compatibility chart shows me to have some important values for moving to France and becoming a goat farmer—tradition, practicality, common sense—but to be lacking in crucial skills like mechanical competence. Robek says that to find a job in a new field, I'd need to do a lot of information gathering, talking to current professionals about what it's really like before stalking sites like Monster and LinkedIn to try to find a way in on the ground level. Which, as it does for many of Robek's clients, would likely involve going back to school, especially since I very pragmatically spent two years of my life obtaining a master's degree in fine arts. In an employer's market, Robek emphasizes, employers can demand exactly whatever they want.<br />
<span class="inline inline-left"><img alt="Roz Gadd (in pink), a retired teacher, and another volunteer collect signatures to repeal SB 5." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_i.jpg" title="Roz Gadd (in pink), a retired teacher, and another volunteer collect signatures to repeal SB 5." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>Roz Gadd (in pink), a retired teacher, and another volunteer collect signatures to repeal SB 5.</b></span></span>Back at the Rodriguezes', I'm not sure how long I've been sitting on my bed staring down an encroaching panic when voices call up from the family room downstairs.<br />
"Katie!" they are yelling. It's time for the weekly family tradition of watching <i>MasterChef</i>. Erin and I will gently attempt and fail to distract Jocelyn from pulling the cord out of Anthony's laptop ("Could you not, uh," Anthony will say, waving her baby fingers away, and when she makes a mad-baby face, apologize: "I know. I'm sorry. But I'm kinda trying to find a job.") or throwing pieces of his portfolio on the floor or taking pages of a job description he's studying in each hand and repeatedly slamming them together. Anthony announces he's just been rejected for a job he applied for—at Ohio State, as it happens—without even making it to the interview stage. Susie calls and says he can work for her if he gets desperate. She's hired five of her friends straight out of college to work that shit warehouse job while they struggle to find something they went to school for. Though it isn't much, it is still a favor. She has applications from hundreds of people who want it; "I could fire every person in here right now" without costing her bosses a dime of lost profits, she told me when I visited. There's no need for the logistics clients to invest in a better or more sustainable work culture. Quite literally, her workers are as disposable as the products they're shipping.<br />
<br />
<span class="section-lead">I'm not too young to remember Cleveland</span> as a place of industrial productivity. Or rather, I remember the transition between that time and now, when a lot of those factories were getting shut down, when a laid-off steel worker started yelling at me after I knocked on his door to collect for some nonprofit. Now when I come home my father shows me big blank spots on the bank of the Cuyahoga River where they tore down an entire entertainment district, a thriving strip of restaurants and bars where I used fake IDs. The <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-03-09-ohio-census_N.htm" target="_blank">population implosion</a> that revved back up again a decade ago hasn't stopped. The city's down to its lowest number of people since 1900.<br />
<br />
The Cleveland neighborhood my sister lives in has its own abandonment issues. After I drive north from Columbus to visit her in her new place, she tells me to look for the rusted-out couch frame on the porch. It's there to keep her pit bull from wandering out into the yard, Jessica says when I arrive. She's got less of an explanation for what exactly happened to the kitchen, with its walls all ripped up. It's not her house, after all. She just squats here with three other people since the owners were foreclosed on and walked away.<br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="A Labor Day event in downtown Columbus." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_j.jpg" title="A Labor Day event in downtown Columbus." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>A Labor Day event in downtown Columbus</b></span></span>"There's not much to see," she says of the spacious two-story. In lieu of furniture, the family room has piles of discarded clothes and boxes along the walls and in the corners. Upstairs in the bedrooms there are mattresses on the floor, marker scrawlings on the walls (NIETZSCHE SUCKS), clothes hanging from a pull-up bar jerry-rigged out of wood and bolted to the ceiling. One of the downstairs rooms has a couch in it, and that's where Jessica's boyfriend, Randal, is sitting.<br />
This house used to belong to his parents. They bought it 10 years ago. Now, though it's big and has nice albeit filthy wood floors, it's valued at $40,000, which is less than they still owed on it, so they packed up and moved out last year. By that time, Randal had been looking for jobs as a line cook for months with no luck. Some of the positions he applied for had more than 100 other applicants. Eventually he gave up on the prospect of using his skills and shot for low-paying jobs like dishwashing. He applied all over town, but gave up on that, too, shortly after he asked the person in charge of hiring for a $7.25-an-hour job if they'd gotten a lot of applicants, and the guy said, "Oh, yeah. Seventy."<br />
Jess and Randal, 35 and 33, respectively, have been living here since September of last year. During the day, she puts on a nice white shirt and serves people $20 appetizers at a restaurant in Shaker Heights, one of the ritziest Cleveland suburbs and once the <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,829309,00.html" target="_blank">wealthiest city in the country</a>. At night, she goes back home to an area she calls "the hood." Crime statistics seem to support this description; Cleveland is currently ranked one of the most dangerous cities in America.<br />
While we're sitting around chatting, the back door slams and footsteps approach. "Is someone HERE?" my sister asks, and there's so much edge in her voice that I instinctively brace myself, and we both start to get to our feet. There's the pit bull, but he's a pussycat. A 23-year-old unemployed and strong-looking Navy vet who was discharged for depression and anxiety also lives here, but he is very, very high. Anyway, it's just Randal's sister stopping by to say hello. "Do you want to see my gun?" my sister asks me, and she takes me upstairs to show me where she keeps it in her room and explains she's got fucking throwing knives in her car.<br />
<div class="pullquote-left">Ohio is the heart of the country. "We need people to stay here, and to come here," Kathleen Clyde tells me. But, "Who's gonna wanna move here?"</div>Before this, they were renting half of a duplex at a reasonable $400 a month. But Randal has been out of work for a long time now, and there's not much point in paying rent when this house is just standing here empty. It's something of a trend to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/us/10squatter.html?_r=1&hp%20to%20occupy" target="_blank">occupy abandoned homes</a> in the post-housing-crash world, and Randal's sort of a pro at this point. His grandmother also lost her house a little while back. She was disabled; when she worked at an auto plant in her 30s, a piece of sheet metal that flew off a rack sliced off both her feet. She took out a mortgage on her paid-for house after her husband died; later, she couldn't keep up with the payments and had to leave. It was foreclosed on and emptied, but Randal stayed on. "They probably won't get around to coming and throwing anybody out for a long time," he says. "At the rate houses foreclose around here, they can't keep up."<br />
It doesn't matter anyway. My sister and Randal and the vet are all talking about getting out of town, moving someplace where there might be opportunities—the West, Oregon. They'll become part of Ohio's population problem. <a href="http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/39000.html" target="_blank">Growth here</a> over the last decade was 1.6 percent. Nationwide, it was 9.7 percent.<br />
"We need people to stay here, and to come here," <a href="http://www.house.state.oh.us/index.php?option=com_displaymembers&task=detail&district=68" target="_blank">Kathleen Clyde</a> tells me over coffee back in Columbus. This is a battleground state. It's the heart of the country, geographically—nay, spiritually—and the next presidential election probably won't be won without it. But, as Clyde says, "Who's gonna wanna move here?" At 32, Democratic state Rep. Clyde is the youngest elected woman in the Ohio legislature, charming, exceedingly tall, of the same age and politics as most of the people I know but actually working in politics. She's not just stressing over the recession. She's talking about a sea change. "It really feels like Ohio's at an important crossroads," she laments, "and we're headed in the wrong direction." The Ohio General Assembly is passing legislation that allows <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/15/ohio-guns-in-bars-bill-law_n_877867.html" target="_blank">guns in bars</a>. <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9NSHKH80.htm" target="_blank">Drilling in state parks</a>. Giveaways to big businesses. <a href="http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/GreatOhioSell-Off2011_0801.pdf" target="_blank">Privatization of the state's revenues</a> (PDF) from liquor sales. A <a href="http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/BetterBusinessPlan2011_0729.pdf" target="_blank">53 percent cut</a> (PDF) to the Alzheimer's Respite program and an <a href="http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/BetterBusinessPlan2011_0729.pdf" target="_blank">85 percent cut</a> (PDF) to the Department of Aging. And, simultaneous to the cuts, lawmakers have extended a $1 billion income tax break, 40 percent of which goes to the wealthiest 5 percent of Ohioans, and <a href="http://tax.ohio.gov/faqs/Estate/estate.stm#1" target="_blank">suspended an estate tax</a> that only applied to the top 10 percent of estates. Ohio, which <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/census/2011-03-09-ohio-census_N.htm" target="_blank">lost 600,000 private-sector jobs</a> in the first decade of the millennium, where the percentage of working men is the lowest in its recorded history, and where <a href="http://www.policymattersohio.org/pdf/SOWO2011.pdf" target="_blank">median wages have declined</a> (PDF) more than in any other state since 2000, is about to seriously downsize its public sector too.<br />
<span class="inline inline-left"><img alt="Lindsay and her family." class="image image-preview " height="283" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_k.jpg" title="Lindsay and her family." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>Lindsay and her family</b></span></span>Because many of these policies are being pushed through the Ohio General Assembly by "70-year-olds," Clyde says, because the Ohio House was taken over by Republicans last year, when they were promising to fix the recession's problems with fiscal conservatism, Clyde urges me to move back to my home state and consider going into politics. Because engaging and energizing our generation and the one behind it might be Ohio's only shot.<br />
This is just one more in a long series of highly depressing conversations I've had over the last month. I'm reporting from Ohio, for God's sake, not the Third World, yet still my interviewees are sweating over how they'll manage to survive despite living in the richest country in the history of the world. Because some politicians are passing some greedy and indecent and inhumanely neglectful and inconsiderate laws. "Is it really so dire?" I ask Clyde.<br />
She hesitates. She opens her mouth and winces, before finally saying: "I think it is. Being in this legislature makes it hard to sleep at night."<br />
<br />
<span class="section-lead">On a Wednesday in late June,</span> Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's <a href="https://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/02/whats-happening-wisconsin-explained" target="_blank">Wisconsin Act 10</a>, which stripped most public-sector unions of most of their collective-bargaining rights, went into effect. On the same hot day in Ohio, Erin almost runs down Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman with Jocelyn's stroller.<br />
"I was just trying to shake his hand!" she says breathlessly after regaining control of the unwieldy carriage. And Mayor Coleman was trying to shake hers, and thousands of other people's, standing on the sidelines of a <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2011/06/parade_of_sb5_opponents_prepar.html" target="_blank">massive parade</a> marching through the capital. Shirts and flags identify the participants as firefighters, transit workers, teachers, electricians, bikers, state troopers; residents of Columbus, Cleveland, Findlay, Toledo; members of the SEIU, UAW, AFL-CIO. A drum line accompanied their chanting: <i>Hey hey. Ho ho. SB 5 has got to go. Workers' rights are human rights. This is what democracy looks like</i>. This swell of people has a delivery for the secretary of state. To keep SB 5 from becoming law and get it on the ballot for repeal in November, they need 231,147 signatures. They are turning in 1.3 million.<br />
<br />
"We can't guarantee anything," says a spokeswoman for <a href="http://weareohio.com/landing/rnvidhome.html" target="_blank">We Are Ohio</a>, the group driving the effort, "but we're confident with the amount of signatures we've collected that we have a lot of support on our side." In polls, Ohioans heavily favor the repeal, and most also say now, just months after the Republican majority they elected to the legislature took office, that if a congressional election took place today, they'd vote for the Democratic candidate—like angry constituents in Florida have hollered for the recall of Rick Scott, and in Michigan, of Rick Snyder. Wisconsin's Walker has an <a href="http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot.com/2011/05/walkers-numbers-continue-to-get-worse.html" target="_blank">approval rate</a> of 43 percent. Next year, Ohio will indeed be a battleground, one where the GOP finds out how much it can get away with. <br />
<span class="inline inline-right"><img alt="After this boy's parents were both laid off, their household income fell from $160,000 to what unemployment benefits provide; they've since divorced, citing financial strain." class="image image-preview " height="267" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/columbus_l.jpg" title="After this boy's parents were both laid off, their household income fell from $160,000 to what unemployment benefits provide; they've since divorced, citing financial strain." width="400" /><span class="caption" style="width: 398px;"><b>After this boy's parents were both laid off, their household income fell from $160,000 to what unemployment benefits provide; they've since divorced, citing financial strain.</b></span></span>This year, anyway, <a href="http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/PressReleases/2011/2011-07-21.aspx" target="_blank">SB 5 has the potential to be forestalled</a>. Another one of our college friends, Lindsey, is also looking to that for job and wage and general security. She teaches middle school English in rural Logan, about an hour outside Columbus, and she stops by Erin's with her two-month-old one day. After she and Erin have a very lengthy discussion about breast-feeding, they worry together.<br />
"I don't want to take <i>any</i>"—Lindsey's got this lovely southern Ohio drawl, so she says it a little bit like <i>ayny</i>—"money out of our savings" until the repeal passes, or doesn't, this fall. Her and her husband's livelihoods could <i>both</i> depend on the outcome, since he also teaches in the same school district. "We don't know <i>what</i>'s gonna happen." Until she knows for sure how it will play out, she won't let her husband buy a couch though they've got two kids now and not enough places to sit.<br />
White people problems. Like that. And that, like the rest of the Americans holding the $873 billion in outstanding student loans, Lindsey and her husband also have to figure student-loan debt into their monthly budget. There's $50,000 of it between them. "We joke that we have to pay $450 a month in loans just to make our crappy teacher pay," she says. Yes. Hilarious, for all of us. Rep. Clyde also mentioned that it's an effort to make her roughly $500-a-month loan payment on her $60,500 legislative salary. And the other day, another college roommate pointed to $120,000 in outstanding loans as the reason she can't leave her law firm, even though she's discovered she doesn't like her profession. When I asked her what she's going to do, she said, "What everybody does. Be a lawyer and hate it until I die."<br />
<div class="pullquote-left">Another college friend has $120,000 in outstanding loans. Asked what she's going to do, she said, "What everybody does. Be a lawyer and hate it until I die."</div>Erin and Anthony owe $26,000. They both went to Ohio State, which raised tuition every year we were there, in all but one of the nine years since, and will again this year after its 15 percent cut in the final budget. This debt isn't insignificant for the Rodriguezes, especially coupled with the mortgage and the car payment, but it's quite manageable—if both of them are employed.<br />
At home, the day of the parade, Erin pops into my room. "I'm shaking," she says. Anthony just called. The conference committee reconciling the House and Senate versions of the budget adopted the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/254908-ohio-budget-in-detail-as-enacted.html#document/p27/a34655" target="_blank">slightly smaller of the proposed massive cuts</a> to the OCC. Kasich would sign it into law the next day. Anthony's boss has given him the news that he is very, very lucky. Forty OCC employees are being laid off. But Anthony's position is now in the 42 that remain.<br />
"He's just really worried about what this year is gonna be like," Erin says, "because they have no money, no support staff." She's worked up, breathing shallow, talking fast. "But I was like, I don't care what your workload is—<i>you have a job</i>."<br />
She sticks a finger into Jocelyn's diaper through the leg hole and, wetness confirmed, takes her to the baby's room next door. On my first day here, I heard Anthony call down from this room to Erin in the family room: "Come here. <i>Fast</i>." She went tearing up the stairs and, when she arrived to find he wanted only to show her how cute their baby was, started to chastise him for making it sound like an emergency, but then they were both looking at the baby on the changing table, and then nobody was mad. Jocelyn's on the table again now, in the jungle-themed room, and Erin is chatting her up like always as she changes her. "Jocelyn, are you so excited that Mommy doesn't have to force you into pageant work now?" she asks. Jocelyn stares at her, the two of them below the window valance printed with happy cartoon monkeys. "Now we can just do it for fun.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/columbus-cleveland-ohio-unemployment?page=3"><b></b></a><br />
<div class="node-pager"><span class="pager-info"></span></div><div class="author-bio"><div class="author-bio">Mac McClelland is <span style="font-style: normal;">Mother Jones</span>' human rights reporter, writer of <a href="http://motherjones.com/rights-stuff"><span style="font-style: normal;">The Rights Stuff</span></a>, and the author of <a href="http://www.mac-mcclelland.com/"><span style="font-style: normal;">For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question: A Story From Burma's Never-Ending War</span></a>. <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/authors/mac-mcclelland">Read more of her stories</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/MacMcClelland">follow her on Twitter</a>. Get Mac McClelland's <a href="http://motherjones.com/rss/authors/1048" title="Get RSS feed">RSS feed</a>.</div></div><div class="block block-block region-odd odd region-count-1 count-1 blockname-block-block-bottom-of-articles--blogposts--donate---targeted-to-ows- collapsiblock-processed" id="block-block-471"><div class="block-inner"><div class="content clear-block"><i>Do you appreciate fair and factual reporting on Occupy Wall Street? <a href="https://online.icnfull.com/fnp/?action=SUBSCRIPTION&list_source=7H1110W1&extra_don=1" target="_blank">Please donate a few bucks</a> to help us expand our coverage.</i></div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-75863971555759578402011-10-29T06:54:00.000-07:002011-10-29T06:54:47.058-07:00Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue<div id="content-header"> <h1 class="title">Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue </h1></div><div class="clear-block" id="node-header"><div class="node-header-data-primary" id="node-header-data"><div class="dek">What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary activities are illegal when performed in American streets.</div><div class="byline byline-byline">—By <a href="http://motherjones.com/authors/barbara-ehrenreich">Barbara Ehrenreich</a></div><ul class="article-tools"><li class="tipjar"><a href="https://online.icnfull.com/fnp/?action=SUBSCRIPTION&list_source=7ZTIPJAR&extra_don=1" target="_blank"><img align="absmiddle" alt="Tip Jar" border="0" height="20" src="http://motherjones.com/sites/all/themes/denali/images/tipjar-icon.png" title="Feed our writers: Make a donation to our investigative fund." width="20" />Donate</a></li>
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</ul><div class="comment-bar nonteaser-comment-bar"><a class="comments active" href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/homelessness-occupy-wall-street#disqus_thread" title="Jump to the comments of this posting."></a></div></div></div><div class="clear-block" id="node-body-top"><div id="dateline">Mon Oct. 24, 2011 2:23 AM PDT</div><em><span class="inline inline-center"><img alt="Demonstrators sleep in Zuccotti Park.: Bryan Smith/Zuma" class="image image-_original " height="378" src="https://motherjones.com/files/images/sleep-zuccotti620.jpg" title="Demonstrators sleep in Zuccotti Park.: Bryan Smith/Zuma" width="620" /><span class="caption"><strong>Demonstrators sleep in Zuccotti Park. </strong>Bryan Smith/Zuma</span></span>This </em><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175457/" target="_blank"><em>story</em></a><em> first appeared on the </em><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/" target="_blank">TomDispatch</a><em> website.</em><br />
As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided—to which ends a dozen or more committees may toil night and day. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else, including job loss, the destruction of the middle class, and the reign of the 1 percent. And that is the single question: <em>Where am I going to pee?</em><br />
<div class="sidebar-small-right"><em><strong>Explore </strong></em><strong>MoJo</strong><em><strong>'s </strong></em><a href="http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/occupy-wall-street-protest-map"><em><strong>updated map of protests and arrests worldwide</strong></em></a><em><strong>, and check out </strong></em><a href="http://motherjones.com/category/secondary-tags/ows"><em><strong>all the rest of our #OWS coverage.</strong></em></a></div>Some of the Occupy Wall Street encampments now spreading across the US have access to Port-o-Potties (Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC) or, better yet, restrooms with sinks and running water (Fort Wayne, Indiana). Others require their residents to forage on their own. At Zuccotti Park, just blocks from Wall Street, this means long waits for the restroom at a nearby Burger King or somewhat shorter ones at a Starbucks a block away. At McPherson Square in DC, a twentysomething occupier showed me the pizza parlor where she can cop a pee during the hours it's open, as well as the alley where she crouches late at night. Anyone with restroom-related issues—arising from age, pregnancy, prostate problems, or irritable bowel syndrome—should prepare to join the revolution in diapers.</div><div id="node-body-break"><div class="mojo_oas_ad content-ad" id="Middle1"></div><div class="post-continues post-continued-from-above"><em><a href="http://motherjones.com/about/advertising/contact-form">Advertise on MotherJones.com</a></em></div></div>Of course, political protesters do not face the challenges of urban camping alone. Homeless people confront the same issues every day: how to scrape together meals, keep warm at night by covering themselves with cardboard or tarp, and relieve themselves without committing a crime. Public restrooms are sparse in American cities—"as if the need to go to the bathroom does not exist," travel expert Arthur Frommer <a href="http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1648349,00.html#ixzz1asP7ocUV">once observed</a>. And yet to yield to bladder pressure is to risk arrest. A report entitled "Criminalizing Crisis," to be released later this month by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, recounts the following story from Wenatchee, Washington:<br />
<blockquote> Toward the end of 2010, a family of two parents and three children that had been experiencing homelessness for a year and a half applied for a 2-bedroom apartment. The day before a scheduled meeting with the apartment manager during the final stages of acquiring the lease, the father of the family was arrested for public urination. The arrest occurred at an hour when no public restrooms were available for use. Due to the arrest, the father was unable to make the appointment with the apartment manager and the property was rented out to another person. As of March 2011, the family was still homeless and searching for housing.<br />
</blockquote>What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets—not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in <a href="http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/meanestcities.html">Sarasota, Florida</a>, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that makes it illegal to "engage in digging or earth-breaking activities"—that is, to build a latrine—cook, make a fire, or be asleep and "when awakened state that he or she has no other place to live."<br />
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312626681/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20"><img align="left" alt="" hspace="10" src="http://www.tomdispatch.com/images/managed/nickdime.gif" vspace="6" /></a>It is <a href="http://flaglerlive.com/13055/pt-sarasota-homeless-police">illegal</a>, in other words, to be homeless or live outdoors for any other reason. It should be noted, though, that there are no laws requiring cities to provide food, shelter, or restrooms for their indigent citizens.<br />
The current prohibition on homelessness began to take shape in the 1980s, along with the ferocious growth of the financial industry (Wall Street and all its tributaries throughout the nation). That was also the era in which we stopped being a nation that manufactured much beyond weightless, invisible "financial products," leaving the old industrial working class to carve out a livelihood at places like Walmart.<br />
As it turned out, the captains of the new "casino economy"—the stock brokers and investment bankers—were highly sensitive, one might say finicky, individuals, easily offended by having to step over the homeless in the streets or bypass them in commuter train stations. In an economy where a centimillionaire could turn into a billionaire overnight, the poor and unwashed were a major buzzkill. Starting with Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York, city after city passed "broken windows" or "quality of life" ordinances making it dangerous for the homeless to loiter or, in some cases, even look "indigent," in public spaces.<br />
No one has yet tallied all the suffering occasioned by this crackdown—the deaths from cold and exposure—but "Criminalizing Crisis" offers this story about a homeless pregnant woman in Columbia, South Carolina:<br />
<blockquote> During daytime hours, when she could not be inside of a shelter, she attempted to spend time in a museum and was told to leave. She then attempted to sit on a bench outside the museum and was again told to relocate. In several other instances, still during her pregnancy, the woman was told that she could not sit in a local park during the day because she would be "squatting." In early 2011, about six months into her pregnancy, the homeless woman began to feel unwell, went to a hospital, and delivered a stillborn child.<br />
</blockquote>Well before Tahrir Square was a twinkle in anyone's eye, and even before the recent recession, homeless Americans had begun to act in their own defense, creating organized encampments, usually <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/tales-tent-city">tent cities</a>, in vacant lots or wooded areas. These communities often feature various elementary forms of self-governance: food from local charities has to be distributed, latrines dug, rules—such as no drugs, weapons, or violence—enforced. With all due credit to the Egyptian democracy movement, the Spanish <em>indignados</em>, and rebels all over the world, tent cities are the domestic progenitors of the American occupation movement.<br />
There is nothing "political" about these settlements of the homeless—no signs denouncing greed or visits from left-wing luminaries—but they have been treated with far less official forbearance than the occupation encampments of the "American autumn." LA's Skid Row endures constant police harassment, for example, but when it rained, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had ponchos distributed to nearby Occupy LA.<br />
All over the country, in the last few years, police have moved in on the tent cities of the homeless, one by one, from Seattle to Wooster, Ohio, Sacramento to Providence, in raids that often leave the former occupants without even their minimal possessions. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, last summer, a charity outreach worker <a href="http://timesfreepress.com/news/2011/jul/17/nowhere-go/">explained</a> the forcible dispersion of a local tent city by saying: "The city will not tolerate a tent city. That's been made very clear to us. The camps have to be out of sight."<br />
What occupiers from all walks of life are discovering, at least every time they contemplate taking a leak, is that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born "illegals," facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn.<br />
But the occupiers are not from <em>all</em> walks of life, just from those walks that slope downwards—from debt, joblessness, and foreclosure—leading eventually to pauperism and the streets. Some of the present occupiers were homeless to start with, attracted to the occupation encampments by the prospect of free food and at least temporary shelter from police harassment. Many others are drawn from the borderline-homeless "nouveau poor," and normally encamp on friends' couches or parents' folding beds.<br />
In Portland, Austin, and Philadelphia, the Occupy Wall Street movement is taking up the cause of the homeless as its own, which of course it is. Homelessness is not a side issue unconnected to plutocracy and greed. It's where we're all eventually headed—the 99 percent, or at least the 70 percent, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior—unless this revolution succeeds.<br />
<em>Barbara Ehrenreich, </em><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175415/barbara_ehrenreich_the_fog_of_robot_war">TomDispatch regular</a><em>, is the author of </em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0312626681/ref=nosim/?tag=tomdispatch-20">Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America</a><em> (now in a 10th anniversary edition with a </em><a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175428/tom_engelhardt_on_Americans_%28not%29_getting_by_%28again%29"><em>new afterword</em></a><em>)</em><em>.</em><br />
<div class="block block-block region-odd odd region-count-1 count-1 blockname-block-block-bottom-of-articles--blogposts--donate---targeted-to-ows- collapsiblock-processed" id="block-block-471"><div class="block-inner"> <div class="content clear-block"> <em>Do you appreciate fair and factual reporting on Occupy Wall Street? <a href="https://online.icnfull.com/fnp/?action=SUBSCRIPTION&list_source=7H1110W1&extra_don=1" target="_blank">Please donate a few bucks</a> to help us expand our coverage.</em><br />
</div></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-50198797461140754542011-10-15T18:54:00.000-07:002011-10-15T19:03:57.950-07:00The Kennedy Assasination coup d'etat<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE7gHT2upcNSGT1Ya1sWfTNHXCPCZI1Pv0DTArahxBku1Etlkk4yoypKeDv-NyX8_2NUZ7brWedtXa74KnlPT74BxsJYF1lO9FHD4F826sEbCYkWUfVUqkD-WkX84SvnJqbcHY4mhVrJw/s1600/302206.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 252px; height: 303px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE7gHT2upcNSGT1Ya1sWfTNHXCPCZI1Pv0DTArahxBku1Etlkk4yoypKeDv-NyX8_2NUZ7brWedtXa74KnlPT74BxsJYF1lO9FHD4F826sEbCYkWUfVUqkD-WkX84SvnJqbcHY4mhVrJw/s400/302206.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5663904914224060834" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Here's one of the best summaries and explanations of the Kennedy assassination I've seen. Pretty brief, succinct and inclusive. Have a look:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.brasschecktv.com/videos/assassination-studies/cover-ups-are-easy-.html">Kennedy assassination video<br /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-52001838042059056892011-10-15T17:59:00.001-07:002011-10-15T17:59:51.559-07:00The Triumph of Dogma<p class="imgon2"><img src="http://www.readersupportednews.org/images/stories/article_imgs2/stk001-port-robert-reich-081609.jpg" alt="Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)" title="Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)" style="border: 0pt none;" border="0" /><br />Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)</p> <p class="noslink"><a href="http://robertreich.org/post/11410402042" target="_blank"> <img src="http://www.readersupportednews.org/images/stories/rsn_gotoarticle.jpg" alt="go to original article" title="go to original article" border="0" /></a></p> <div class="txtimg"><br /><br /><h1 class="txttitle"><br /></h1> <p class="txtauthor">By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog</p> <p class="date">14 October 11</p> <p><img src="http://www.readersupportednews.org/images/stories/alphabet/rsn-E.jpg" border="0" />very other Wednesday evening for the past few years I've been offering commentary on a spritely show on public radio called "Marketplace." On alternative Wednesdays David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, has been airing his views.</p> <p class="indent">This past Wednesday, Frum called it quits. He explained to the show's host, Kai Risdal, that he could no longer represent Republican views.</p> <blockquote> <p class="indent"><em>I think that there's a kind of expectation that when you do it that you represent the broad point of view of your half of the political spectrum. And although I consider myself a conservative and a Republican, and I think that the right-hand side of the spectrum has the better answers for the long-term growth of economy - low taxes, restrained government, less regulation - it's pretty clear that facing the immediate crisis - very intense crisis - I'm just not representing the view of most people who call themselves Republicans and conservatives these days…. And it's a service to the radio audience if they want to hear people explaining effectively why one of the two great parties takes the view that it does - it needs to have somebody who agrees with that great party.</em></p> </blockquote> <p class="indent">I respect David's decision but I disagree with his understanding of his job on "Marketplace." And I find his decision to leave a sad commentary (no pun intended) on what's happening to public discourse in America.</p> <p class="indent">Why exactly was it necessary for David Frum to "represent" the views of conservative Republicans?</p> <p class="indent">I don't feel any obligation to represent liberal Democrats. Over the years I've argued, for example, in favor of getting rid of the corporate income tax, creating school vouchers inversely related to family incomes, and extending free-trade agreements - positions not exactly favored by liberal Democrats.</p> <p class="indent">The American public doesn't want or need to hear "representatives" from the so-called right or left. It wants insight into what's best for America.</p> <p class="indent">Yet over and over again - on the radio, on TV, in print, in the blogosphere, and all over Washington - political ideology is substituting for thought.</p> <p class="indent">Politicians take oaths and sign pledges. Special-interest groups abide by litmus tests and ideological labels. The media is either assertively liberal or conservative. Pundits are either on the left or the right.</p> <p class="indent">Meanwhile, the Republican Party has become so extreme that it's more and more difficult for anyone to rationally "represent" its views. As Frum put in in a post on his website,<a href="http://www.frumforum.com/why-i-am-a-republican#more-105075" target="_blank"> FrumForum</a>, "Under the pressure of the current crisis - intoxicated by anti-Obama feelings and incited by talk radio and Fox - Republicans have staked out an extreme position on the role of government."</p> <p class="indent">What if conservative Republicans believe the sun revolves around the earth? Would someone in David Frum's position who disagrees feel compelled to stop offering "conservative" commentaries about the celestial bodies? And would a major media outlet then be obliged to find a replacement who agrees with conservative dogma? (This isn't such a far-fetched example when you consider what leading Republicans say about evolution or climate change.)</p> <p class="indent">David's particular break with Republicans has come over what to do about the continuing awful economy. Here's what he told Kai Risdal:</p> <blockquote> <p class="indent"><em>This is not a moment for government to be cutting back. … Right now we're watching state governments try to balance all of their budgets at the same time in the middle of this crisis. We've seen half a million public sector jobs disappear. Now, if these were good times, I would applaud that. We need to see a thinner public sector - especially at the state and local level. But we're seeing what happens when you do that as an anti-recession measure and you make the recession worse. And even though we're in a technical recovery, incomes and employment - all of that remains lagging for people - I think that we've rediscovered in this crisis something that I think we all knew. Which is, there's a reason why the people of the 1930s built some kind of minimum guarantee - unemployment insurance, health care coverage and things like that. And it's not because they wanted to be nice. It's because in a crisis when people lose their jobs, if there is no social safety net they loose 100 percent of their purchasing power.</em></p> </blockquote> <p class="indent">It so happens the vast majority of economists and economic policy experts agree with David on this - even though you wouldn't know it if you watched or listened to broadcast debates between a so-called "liberal" and "conservative" economists.</p> <p class="indent">No wonder Americans are so confused.</p> <p class="indent">David Frum's voice will be sorely missed. Yet I understand his dilemma. At the start of his interview on "Marketplace" explaining his decision to leave the program, he was introduced this way<strong>: </strong></p> <blockquote> <p class="indent"><em><a href="http://marketplace.publicradio.org/collections/coll_display.php?coll_id=20241" target="_blank">David Frum</a> has been a regular commentator for this program for years, offering the voice of the political right against Robert Reich and the views of the political left. </em></p> </blockquote> <p class="indent">That introduction illustrates the problem.</p> </div> <span class="article_separator"> </span> <div id="jc"> <div id="comments"><h4><br /></h4></div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-16064761808668010662011-10-13T18:04:00.000-07:002011-10-13T18:10:59.735-07:00The “Very Scary” Iranian Terror Plot<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z2yw3L1GxgwFAOYo_dNyiG7nsmtwRBbUsCKK79CO-jFnXXsiImxpbxW0xY4h9WDnSTY264IovsQex-sw_EASlgRKiXNrKWXvIsua9hZ1EQOy8N8PyYSxR_Ev5aSsfpKr-Yji_JngNTw/s1600/J6WDLSfamuAybawOzglH0TjF0aWP0S66YIkXnp_0LXpAWE88278s0Mzc7nR040rANvlH1vw%253Ds85.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 85px; height: 85px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5Z2yw3L1GxgwFAOYo_dNyiG7nsmtwRBbUsCKK79CO-jFnXXsiImxpbxW0xY4h9WDnSTY264IovsQex-sw_EASlgRKiXNrKWXvIsua9hZ1EQOy8N8PyYSxR_Ev5aSsfpKr-Yji_JngNTw/s400/J6WDLSfamuAybawOzglH0TjF0aWP0S66YIkXnp_0LXpAWE88278s0Mzc7nR040rANvlH1vw%253Ds85.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5663149032234971346" border="0" /></a><br /><div class="entryContent clearfix"> <b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"><br /> By Glenn Greenwald<br /> <br /> October 13, 2011 "</span></b><a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/12/the_very_scary_iranian_terror_plot/singleton/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"><b>Salon</b></span></a><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">" -- </span></b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> The most difficult challenge in writing about the Iranian Terror Plot unveiled yesterday is to take it seriously enough to analyze it. Iranian Muslims in the Quds Force sending marauding bands of Mexican drug cartel assassins onto sacred American soil to commit Terrorism — against Saudi Arabia and possibly Israel — is what Bill Kristol and John Bolton would feverishly dream up while dropping acid and madly cackling at the possibility that they could get someone to believe it. But since the U.S. Government rolled out its Most Serious Officials with Very Serious Faces to make these accusations, many people (therefore) do believe it; after all, U.S. government accusations = Truth. All Serious people know that. And in the ensuing reaction one finds virtually every dynamic typically shaping discussions of Terrorism and U.S. foreign policy.</span><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">To begin with, this episode continues the FBI’s record-setting <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/29/fbi_terror/">undefeated streak</a> of heroically saving us from the plots they enable. From all appearances, this is, at best, yet another spectacular “plot” hatched by some hapless loser with delusions of grandeur but without any means to put it into action except with the able assistance of the FBI, which yet again provided it through its own (paid, criminal) sources posing as Terrorist enablers. The Terrorist Mastermind at the center of the plot is a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/suspect-in-alleged-iranian-terrorism-plot-had-key-connections/2011/10/11/gIQAV6rfdL_story.html">failed used car salesman</a> in Texas with a history of pedestrian money problems. Dive under your bed. “For the entire operation, the government’s confidential sources were monitored and guided by federal law enforcement agents,” explained U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, and “no explosives were actually ever placed anywhere and <strong>no one was actually ever in any danger</strong>.’”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">But no matter. The U.S. Government and its mindless followers in the pundit and think-tank “expert” class have seized on this ludicrous plot with astonishing speed to all but turn it into a hysterical declaration of war against Evil, Hitlerian Iran. “<a target="_blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/11/iranians-charged-us-assassination-plot">The US attorney-general</a> Eric Holder said Iran would be ‘held to account’ over what he described as a flagrant abuse of international law,” and “the US says military action remains on the table,” though “it is at present seeking instead to work through diplomatic and financial means to further isolate Iran.” Hillary Clinton thundered that this “crosses a line that Iran needs to be held to account for.” The CIA’s spokesman at <em>The Washington Post</em>, David Ignatius, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/what-irans-alleged-terror-plot-tells-us/2011/10/11/gIQAl8kRdL_blog.html?hpid=z2">quoted</a> an anonymous White House official as saying the plot “appeared to have been authorized by senior levels of the Quds Force.” Meanwhile, the State Department has issued <a target="_blank" href="http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_worldwide.html">a Travel Alert</a> which warns American citizens that this plot “may indicate a more aggressive focus by the Iranian Government on terrorist activity against diplomats from certain countries, to include possible attacks in the United States.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">In case that’s not enough to frighten you — and, really, how could it not be? — some Very Serious Experts are very, very afraid and want you to know how Serious this all is. Within moments of Holder’s news conference, National Security Expert Robert Chesney – without a molecule of critical thought in his brain — <a target="_blank" href="http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/10/arrest-in-an-alleged-iranian-plot-to-kill-the-saudi-ambassador-to-the-united-states/">announced</a> that this “remarkable development” was “<strong>very scary.” </strong>Very, very scary. Chesney then printed large blocks of the DOJ’s Press Release to prove it. Self-proclaimed “counter-terrorism expert” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross tapped into his vast expertise <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/DaveedGR/status/123835093688127489">to explain</a>: ”Holder weighing in on the plot’s connection to Iran means the administration is<strong> deadly serious</strong> about it.” Progressive think-tank expert and <em>Atlantic</em> writer Steve Clemons <a target="_blank" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/iran-allegedly-sought-to-assassinate-saudi-ambassador-to-us/246491/">decreed</a> that if the DOJ’s accusations are true, then ”the US has reached a point where it <strong>must take action</strong>” and “this is time for a <strong>significant strategic response</strong> to the Iran challenge in the Middle East and globally,” <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/SCClemons/status/123840625924775937">which</a> “could involve military.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The ironies here are so self-evident it’s hard to work up the energy to point them out. Outside of Pentagon reporters, <em>Washington Post</em> Editorial Page Editors, and Brookings “scholars,” is there a person on the planet anywhere who can listen with a straight face as drone-addicted U.S. Government officials righteously condemn the evil, <strong>illegal</strong> act of entering another country to commit an assassination? Does anyone, for instance, have any interest in finding out who is responsible for the spate of serial murders <a target="_blank" href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/2011/07/27/third-iranian-nuclear-scientist-shot-dead">aimed at Iran’s nuclear scientists</a>? Wouldn’t people professing to be so outraged by the idea of entering another country to engage in assassination be eager to get to the bottom of that?</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Then there’s the War on Terror irony: our Hated Enemy here (Iran) is a country which had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. Meanwhile, our close ally, the victim on whose behalf we are so outraged (Saudi Arabia), is not only one of the most tyrannical and <a target="_blank" href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125746088928732009.html">aggressive</a><a target="_blank" href="http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/28/world/la-fg-saudi-yemen28-2010jan28"> regimes on the planet</a>, but produced 15 of the 19 hijackers and had <a target="_blank" href="http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/former-sen-bob-graham-calls-for-new-911-investigation/">extensive</a> and <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/09/07/sept_11_unanswered_questions/">still-unknown</a> involvement in that attack. If the U.S. is so deeply offended by the involvement of a foreign government in an attack on U.S. soil, it would be looking first to its close friend Saudi Arabia, where “elements of the government” were likely involved in an actual plot rather than a joke of a plot.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">To make sure you understand just how dastardly and evil the Iranian plotters here are, the DOJ in <a target="_blank" href="http://pt.scribd.com/doc/68392163/Complaint-amended-finaL">its complaint</a> highlighted that the used-car-salesman-Terrorist-Mastermind said that he preferred that nobody else be killed when the Saudi Ambassador was assassinated, but if it were absolutely necessary, he could accept some unintended deaths! Here’s how the <em>NYT </em>summarizes that:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The complaint quotes Mr. Arbabsiar as making conflicting statements about the possibility of bystander deaths; at one point he is said to say that killing the ambassador alone would be preferable, but on another occasion he said it would be “no big deal” if many others at the restaurant — possibly including United States senators — died in any bombing.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">What kind of monster thinks that way, we are supposed to ponder. Behold the warped mind of the Terrorist! He’s actually willing to accept that others die besides his intended targeted! Is that not the mentality that drives U.S. behavior in multiple countries around the world every day? The U.S. <a target="_blank" href="http://articles.sfgate.com/2003-04-08/news/17484541_1_air-strikes-flames-and-plumes-iraqi-soldiers">flattened an entire civilian apartment building in Baghdad</a> with a 2,000-pound bomb when it thought Saddam Hussein was there (he wasn’t — oops — but lots of innocent people were). NATO <a target="_blank" href="http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2068773,00.html">repeatedly bombed structures</a> in Tripoli where it thought (mistakenly) Moammar Gadaffi was located, in the process almost certainly killing large numbers of unintended targets. The U.S. just killed one of its own citizens that it insists (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.emptywheel.net/2011/10/08/how-can-samir-khan-be-collateral-damage-if-olc-memo-restricted-civilian-death">not very credibly</a>) it did not intend to kill in order to eradicate the life of Anwar Awlaki, and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/06/07-7">killed dozens of innocent people</a> when it previously tried to kill Awlaki with cluster bombs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The U.S. is the living, breathing symbol of this “collateral damage” rationale. It’s what drives all the multi-nation American wars and occupations and drone campaigns and assassinations that continuously <a target="_blank" href="http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/04/gen_mcchrystal_weve_shot_an_amazing_number_of_peop.php">pile up the corpses of innocent people</a>. But we’re all going to gather in righteous disgust at the idea that this monstrous International Terrorist would be willing to incur some unintended civilian deaths in order to assassinate an official of the peaceful, freedom-loving Saudi regime. Really, for brazen irony, how can <a target="_blank" href="http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/10/11/official-fbi-dea-disrupt-terror-plot-in-u-s-involving-iran/?hpt=hp_t1">this be beat</a>?</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Tom Kean, former chairman of the 9/11 Commission said the alleged plot “surprises me.” Speaking to CNN’s Erin Burnett, Kean said the plot is “pretty close to an act of war. <strong>You don’t go in somebody’s capital to blow somebody up.</strong>”</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Meanwhile, President Obama decried this plot as “a flagrant violation of US and international law.” But maybe some Persian <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/09/the_awlaki_memo_and_marty_lederman/singleton/">Marty Lederman</a> in Tehran wrote a secret legal memo concluding that this was all in accordance with domestic and international law, which — as we know — is conclusive and provides a full shield of immunity.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">So facially absurd are the claims here — why would Iran possibly wake up one day and decide that it wanted to engage in a Terrorist attack on U.S. soil when it could much more easily kill Saudi officials elsewhere? and if Iran and its Quds Force are really behind this inept, hapless, laughable plot, then nothing negates the claim that Iran is some Grave Threat like this does — that there is more skepticism expressed even in establishment media accounts than one normally finds about such things. Even the <em>NYT</em> noted — with great understatement — that the allegations “provoked puzzlement from specialists on Iran, who said it <strong>seemed unlikely that the government would back a brazen murder and bombing plan on American soil</strong>.” <em>The Post </em><a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/alleged-plot-is-uncharacteristically-bold/2011/10/11/gIQA7vzpdL_story.html?hpid=z1">noted</a> that “the very rashness of the alleged assassination plot raised doubts about whether Iran’s normally cautious ruling clerics supported or even know about it.” <em>The Atlantic</em>‘s Max Fisher <a target="_blank" href="http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/would-iran-really-want-to-blow-up-the-saudi-ambassador-to-the-us/246505/">has more</a> on why this would be so out of character for Iran.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">But while some attention has been devoted to asking what motive Iran would have for doing this, little attention has been paid to asking what motive the U.S. would have for exaggerating or concocting the connection of Iran’s government to this plot. Aside from the benefits the FBI and DOJ receive when breaking up a “very scary” plot — the bigger, the better — it has been one of Obama’s highest foreign policy priorities to isolate Iran and sanction it further: as a means of placating Israel and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/qassem-suleimani-iran-iraq-influence">punishing Iran for thwarting America’s natural right to rule that region</a> (so monstrous is Iran that, as the U.S. has repeatedly complained, they actually continue to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/28/top-general-iran-continue_n_221966.html">“interfere” in Iraq</a> as well as <a target="_blank" href="http://www.payvand.com/news/08/may/1060.html">in Afghanistan</a>!). As Ignatius explains, the U.S. Government instantly converted this plot into a vehicle for furthering those policy ambitions:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">With its alleged plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Iran has handed the United States an opportunity to undermine Tehran at a moment when U.S. officials believe the Iranian regime is especially vulnerable. . . . “<strong>We see this as a chance to go out to capitals around the world and talk to allies and partners about what the Iranians tried to do,</strong>” the [White House] official said. “We’re not going to tolerate targeting a diplomat in Washington. <strong>We’re going to try to use this to isolate them to the maximum extent possible</strong>.”</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Meanwhile, Joe Biden <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/#%21/BreakingNews/status/124082273107718144">announced today</a> that the U.S. is “working to unite the world” behind a response to Iran’s “outrageous” actions <a target="_blank" href="http://news.yahoo.com/biden-nothing-off-table-iran-d-c-terror-111811820.html">and that</a> ”nothing has been taken off the table.” So Iran’s supposed involvement in this plot is the ideal weapon for the U.S. to advance its long-standing goals with regard to that country. Maybe that warrants some serious skepticism about whether the U.S. Government’s claims are true? But we all know that only Bad Muslim countries exploit foreign policy exaggerations or fabrications for political gain, and not the United States of America (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/10/11/also-too-2/">especially not with Barack Obama</a>, rather than a Republican, in the White House).</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">What’s most significant is that not even 24 hours have elapsed since these allegations were unveiled. No evidence has been presented of Iran’s involvement. And yet there is no shortage of people — especially in the media — breathlessly talking about all of this as though it’s all clearly true. <strong>If the Obama administration decided tomorrow that military action against Iran were warranted in response, is there any doubt that large majorities of Americans — and large majorities of Democrats — would support that?</strong> As I said when discussing the Awlaki killing, the truly “scary” aspect of all of this is that the U.S. Government need only point and utter the word “Terrorist” and hordes of citizens will rise up and demand not evidence, but blood.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">UPDATE</span></strong></span><span style="font-size:130%;">: Perpetual war-cheerleader Ken Pollack of Brookings <a target="_blank" href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/11/iran-s-covert-war-against-the-united-states-shows-tehran-has-no-fear-of-us-military-retaliation.html">says that</a>, if true, this plot “shows that Tehran is meaner and nastier than ever before” and “would represent a major escalation of Iranian terrorist operations against the United States.” Also, he announces, this “should remind us that Iran also is not a normal country by any stretch of the imagination.” That — self-anointed arbiter of who is and is not a “normal country” — from a person <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Threatening-Storm-Case-Invading-Iraq/dp/0375509283">as responsible</a> as any pundit or think-tank expert for the attack on Iraq that killed at least 100,000 human beings, denouncing as Terrorists and abnormal a country that has invaded nobody.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">UPDATE II</span></strong></span><span style="font-size:130%;">: <a target="_blank" href="http://www.npr.org/2011/10/12/141259488/u-s-iran-behind-plot-to-kill-saudi-envoy">On NPR this morning</a>, Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations — and Ken Pollack’s <a target="_blank" href="http://www.cfr.org/iran/doubling-down-iran/p25868">co-author on Iran</a> — said this when asked if he has any doubts about the accuracy of U.S. government statements: “The only unusual aspect of this is actually having a terrorist operation on American territory. <strong>I don’t know what the evidence about this is, but I’m not in a position to doubt it</strong>.” That perfectly summarizes the political, media and “expert” class’ attitude toward U.S. Government claims: <em>they’re keeping everything secret about their accusations, so there’s no reason to doubt what they’re claiming. </em>The National Security Priesthood that uncritically amplified every U.S. Government claim and fanned the flames of war against Iraq is alive, well, and more mindless and dutiful than ever.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">UPDATE III</span></strong></span><span style="font-size:130%;">: The <a target="_blank" href="http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1012/Why-Iran-assassination-plot-doesn-t-add-up-for-Iran-experts"><em>Christian Science Monitor </em>details</a> the many reasons why “Iran specialists who have followed the Islamic Republic for years say that many details in the alleged plot just don’t add up.”</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">UPDATE IV</span></strong></span><span style="font-size:130%;">: <a target="_blank" href="http://thehill.com/video/administration/186951-biden-iran-plot-an-outrageous-act">On <em>Good Morning America</em></a> this morning, Joe Biden warned that “the Iranians are going to have to be held accountable” and “nothing has been taken off the table,” and then promised: “And when you see the case presented<strong> you will find there is compelling evidence for the assertion being made</strong>.” Except — after 24 hours of media hysteria — there’s <a target="_blank" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/12/us-usa-iran-plot-idUSTRE79B7VO20111012">this <em>Reuters</em> article</a>, which — under the headline “Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot” — reports:</span></span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Iran’s supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were <strong>likely</strong> aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, but <strong>hard evidence of that is scant</strong>, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The United States<strong> does not have solid information</strong> about “exactly how high it goes,” one official said. . . .The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based</span><strong><span style="font-size:130%;"> largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates.</span></strong></span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">I wouldn’t exactly call that — what was the phrase Biden used? — “compelling evidence for the assertions being made.” In fact, it reminds me of the language anonymous government officials <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/06/execution_by_secret_wh_committee/singleton/">began using</a> to describe their “knowledge” of Anwar Awlaki’s alleged operational role in plots against the U.S. once they killed him: “patchy”; “partial”; “suspicion.” But what we learned with Awlaki is likely what we’ll see here: many people reflexively believe government accusations even when unaccompanied by evidence, and that belief is not diluted even when government officials began acknowledging (albeit anonymously) that they do not possess and never did possess any conclusive evidence to support their accusations.</span></p></div> <dl class="author"><dt> </dt><dd><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><i><span style="font-size:130%;">Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: <a target="_blank" href="http://twitter.com/ggreenwald">@ggreenwald</a>.</span><a href="http://politics.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/"><span style="font-size:130%;">More Glenn Greenwald</span></a></i></span></dd></dl>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-21390617622030768542011-10-11T21:28:00.000-07:002011-10-11T21:32:04.708-07:00Here's a Profound Image for You.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOtqWTCoE8DfsWoFiJePUQgH30-Xc4FVUoTKJQfF7vz2AyqBHOw_vQESZQguQg_En1Ldqyb1Yg_AUAnZ7rxdrjufj9SYQoAKc3_wSZL1yoOSiyt3B8MFXj1hUBnOurRgm1OJqh8UQW0U/s1600/251011_1864711092478_1082031755_1900767_759586_n.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpOtqWTCoE8DfsWoFiJePUQgH30-Xc4FVUoTKJQfF7vz2AyqBHOw_vQESZQguQg_En1Ldqyb1Yg_AUAnZ7rxdrjufj9SYQoAKc3_wSZL1yoOSiyt3B8MFXj1hUBnOurRgm1OJqh8UQW0U/s400/251011_1864711092478_1082031755_1900767_759586_n.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662458718618131778" border="0" /></a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-17147945690420634552011-10-11T19:05:00.000-07:002011-10-11T19:09:36.354-07:00The Real Story of How Israel Was Created<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98Cr2c2ArcuZ_VUHJILMSuJq02G9I76_IEhmdXjuGQByf9aDYg7bu34UKMSJNaAPFz3xGCWuTyJqMlvY0i8ySoJIlckqpyr9kCCUXaQlsyxdvGLZmdqWPOPjPX2B7goV9idCiuYTgEk4/s1600/images-2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 140px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj98Cr2c2ArcuZ_VUHJILMSuJq02G9I76_IEhmdXjuGQByf9aDYg7bu34UKMSJNaAPFz3xGCWuTyJqMlvY0i8ySoJIlckqpyr9kCCUXaQlsyxdvGLZmdqWPOPjPX2B7goV9idCiuYTgEk4/s200/images-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662421982570621250" border="0" /></a><br /><p><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Alison Weir October 11, 2011 </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"><b><br /> </b><br /> </span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>October 11, 2011 </b><strong>"</strong></span><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>Information Clearing House</strong></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>" </strong>-</span><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;"> To better understand the Palestinian <a target="_blank" href="http://www.councilforthenationalinterest.org/news/opinion-a-analysis/item/846-context-background-on-palestinian-un-bid">bid for membership</a> in the United Nations, it is important to understand the original 1947 U.N. action on Israel-Palestine. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The common representation of Israel’s birth is that the U.N. created Israel, that the world was in favor of this move, and that the U.S. governmental establishment supported it. All these assumptions are demonstrably incorrect. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">In reality, while the U.N. General Assembly recommended the creation of a Jewish state in part of Palestine, that recommendation was non-binding and never implemented by the Security Council. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Second, the General Assembly passed that recommendation only after Israel proponents threatened and bribed numerous countries in order to gain a required two-thirds of votes.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Third, the U.S. administration supported the recommendation out of domestic electoral considerations and took this position over the strenuous objections of the State Department, the CIA, and the Pentagon. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The passage of the General Assembly recommendation sparked increased violence in the region. Over the following months the armed wing of the pro-Israel movement, which had long been preparing for war, perpetrated a series of massacres and expulsions throughout Palestine, implementing a plan to clear the way for a majority-Jewish state.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">It was this armed aggression, and the ethnic cleansing of at least three-quarters of a million indigenous Palestinians, that created the Jewish state on land that had been 95 percent non-Jewish prior to Zionist immigration and that even after years of immigration remained 70 percent non-Jewish. And despite the shallow patina of legality its partisans extracted from the General Assembly, Israel was born over the opposition of American experts and of governments around the world, who opposed it on both pragmatic and moral grounds.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Let us look at the specifics. </span></p> <p><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Background of the U.N. Partition Recommendation</span></b></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">In 1947 the U.N. took up the question of Palestine, a territory that was then <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html#british">administered by the British</a>. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Approximately 50 years before, a movement called <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html#early">political Zionism</a> had begun in Europe. Its intention was to create a Jewish state in Palestine through pushing out the Christian and Muslim inhabitants who made up <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-nakba.html">over 95 percent</a> of its population and replacing them with Jewish immigrants.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">As this colonial project grew through subsequent years, the indigenous Palestinians reacted with occasional <a target="_blank" href="http://middleeast.about.com/od/thisdayinmideasthistory/ig/August-14-August-20-in-Mideast/Arab-Revolt-of-1929.htm">bouts</a> of violence; Zionists had anticipated this since people usually resist being expelled from their land. In various written documents cited by numerous <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Expulsion-Palestinians-Transfer-Political-1882-1948/dp/0887282423/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2">Palestinian</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/antiwarbookstore">Israeli</a> historians, they discussed their strategy: They would either buy up the land until all the previous inhabitants had emigrated or, failing this, use violence to force them out. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">When the buy-out effort was able to obtain only a few percent of the land, Zionists created a number of terrorist groups to fight against both the Palestinians and the British. Terrorist and future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin later <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html#_edn128">bragged</a> that Zionists had brought terrorism both to the Middle East and to the world at large. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Finally, in 1947 the British announced that they would be ending their control of Palestine, which had been created through the League of Nations following World War I, and turned the question of Palestine over to the United Nations. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">At this time, the Zionist immigration and buyout project had increased the Jewish <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Population-Palestine-History-Statistics-Institute/dp/0231071108/antiwarbookstore">population</a> of Palestine to 30 percent and <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887282113/antiwarbookstore">land ownership</a> from 1 percent to approximately 6 percent.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Since a founding principle of the U.N. was “<a target="_blank" href="http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml">self-determination of peoples,”</a> one would have expected to the U.N. to support fair, democratic elections in which inhabitants could create their own independent country. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Instead, Zionists pushed for a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/un/res181.htm">General Assembly resolution</a> in which they would be given a disproportionate 55 percent of Palestine. (While they rarely announced this publicly, their stated plan was to <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/history/origin.html#partition">later take the rest</a> of Palestine.)</span></p> <p><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">U.S. Officials Oppose Partition Plan</span></b></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The U.S. State Department <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html">opposed this partition plan</a> strenuously, considering Zionism contrary to both fundamental American principles and U.S. interests.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Author Donald Neff <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Fallen-Pillars-Policy-Towards-Palestine/dp/0887282598/antiwarbookstore">reports</a> that Loy Henderson, Director of the State Department’s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, wrote a memo to the secretary of state warning:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[S]upport by the Government of the United States of a policy favoring the setting up of a Jewish State in Palestine would be contrary to the wishes of a large majority of the local inhabitants with respect to their form of government. Furthermore, it would have a strongly adverse effect upon American interests throughout the Near and Middle East ….” [<a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html">Citations</a>.]</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Henderson went on to emphasize: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the war.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">When Zionists began pushing for a partition plan through the U.N., Henderson recommended strongly against supporting their proposal. He warned that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and emphasized that it was “not based on any principle.” He went on to <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html#_edn78">write</a>:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[Partition] would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future …. </span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Henderson went on to emphasize: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [U.N.] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race …. </span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Henderson was far from alone in making his recommendations. He wrote that his views were not only those of the entire Near East Division but were shared by “nearly every member of the Foreign Service or of the Department who has worked to any appreciable extent on Near Eastern problems.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Henderson wasn’t exaggerating. Official after official and agency after agency opposed Zionism. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">In 1947 the <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Taking-Sides-Americas-Relations-Militant/dp/0688026435/antiwarbookstore">CIA reported</a> that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.” </span></p> <p><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Truman Accedes to Pro-Israel Lobby</span></b></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">President Harry Truman, however, ignored this advice. Truman’s political adviser, Clark Clifford, believed that the Jewish vote and contributions were essential to winning the upcoming presidential election and that supporting the partition plan would garner that support. (Truman’s opponent, Dewey, took similar stands for similar reasons.)</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Secretary of State George Marshall, the renowned World War II general and author of the Marshall Plan, was furious to see electoral considerations taking precedence over policies based on national interest. He condemned what he <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/America-founding-Israel-investigation-morality/dp/0964515709/antiwarbookstore">called</a> a “transparent dodge to win a few votes,” which would cause “[t]he great dignity of the office of president [to be] seriously diminished.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Marshall wrote that the counsel offered by Clifford “was based on domestic political considerations, while the problem which confronted us was international. I said bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the president ….” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Henry F. Grady, who has been called “America’s top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War,” headed a 1946 commission aimed at coming up with a solution for Palestine. Grady later <a target="_blank" href="http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/israel/large/documents/index.php?documentdate=0000-00-00&documentid=4-7&studycollectionid=ROI&pagenumber=1">wrote</a> about the Zionist lobby and its damaging effect on U.S. national interests. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Grady argued that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the Soviets.” He also described the decisive power of the lobby: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">I have had a good deal of experience with lobbies but this group started where those of my experience had ended …. I have headed a number of government missions but in no other have I ever experienced so much disloyalty …. [I]n the United States, since there is no political force to counterbalance Zionism, its campaigns are apt to be decisive. </span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson’s biographer <a target="_blank" href="http://books.google.com/books?id=8LcEOW7hnWMC&pg=PT201&lpg=PT201&dq=dean+acheson+on+palestine&source=bl&ots=e1BncQBmI9&sig=6on_nTi1rzQmZqgm1Z5eZlxmV0s&hl=en&ei=AHyMTpaDKunksQKP8tCsBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAw#v=snippet&q=palestine&f=false">writes</a> that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Another Author, John Mulhall, <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html#_edn87">records</a> Acheson’s warning: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[T]o transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East. </span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Secretary of Defense James Forrestal also tried, unsuccessfully, to oppose the Zionists. He was outraged that Truman’s Mideast policy was based on what he <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html#_edn88">called</a> “squalid political purposes,” asserting that “United States policy should be based on United States national interests and not on domestic political considerations.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Forrestal represented the general Pentagon view when he said that “no group in this country should be permitted to influence our policy to the point where it could endanger our national security.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">A report by the National Security Council warned that the Palestine turmoil was acutely endangering the security of the United States. A CIA report stressed the strategic importance of the Middle East and its oil resources.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Similarly, George F. Kennan, the State Department’s director of policy planning, issued a top-secret document on Jan. 19, 1947, that <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html#_edn84">outlined</a> the enormous damage done to the U.S. by the partition plan (“Report by the Policy Planning Staff on Position of the United States with Respect to Palestine”). </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Kennan cautioned that “important U.S. oil concessions and air base rights” could be lost through U.S. support for partition and warned that the USSR stood to gain by the partition plan.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s nephew and a legendary intelligence agent, was another who was deeply disturbed by events. He <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Passionate-Attachment-Americas-Involvement-Present/dp/0393029336/antiwarbookstore">noted</a>:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The process by which Zionist Jews have been able to promote American support for the partition of Palestine demonstrates the vital need of a foreign policy based on national rather than partisan interests …. Only when the national interests of the United States, in their highest terms, take precedence over all other considerations, can a logical, farseeing foreign policy be evolved. No American political leader has the right to compromise American interests to gain partisan votes ….</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">He went on: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The present course of world crisis will increasingly force upon Americans the realization that their national interests and those of the proposed Jewish state in Palestine are going to conflict. It is to be hoped that American Zionists and non-Zionists alike will come to grips with the realities of the problem.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The head of the State Department’s Division of Near Eastern Affairs, Gordon P. Merriam, warned against the partition plan on moral grounds:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">U.S. support for partition of Palestine as a solution to that problem can be justified only on the basis of Arab and Jewish consent. Otherwise we should violate the principle of self-determination which has been written into the Atlantic Charter, the declaration of the United Nations, and the United Nations Charter — a principle that is deeply embedded in our foreign policy. Even a United Nations determination in favor of partition would be, in the absence of such consent, a stultification and violation of U.N.’s own charter.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Merriam added that without consent, “bloodshed and chaos” would follow, a tragically accurate prediction.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">An internal State Department memorandum accurately predicted how Israel would be born through armed aggression masked as defense: </span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[T]he Jews will be the actual aggressors against the Arabs. However, the Jews will claim that they are merely defending the boundaries of a state which were traced by the U.N. …. In the event of such Arab outside aid the Jews will come running to the Security Council with the claim that their state is the object of armed aggression and will use every means to obscure the fact that it is their own armed aggression against the Arabs inside which is the cause of Arab counter-attack.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">And American Vice Consul William J. Porter <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Decision-Palestine-Recognise-Institution-publication/dp/0817971815/antiwarbookstore">foresaw</a> another outcome of the partition plan: that no Arab State would actually ever come to be in Palestine. </span></p> <p><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Pro-Israel Pressure on General Assembly Members</span></b></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">When it was clear that the partition recommendation did not have the required two-thirds of the U.N. General Assembly to pass, Zionists pushed through a delay in the vote. They then used this period to pressure numerous nations into voting for the recommendation. A number of people later <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html">described</a> this campaign.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Robert Nathan, a Zionist who had worked for the U.S. government and who was particularly active in the Jewish Agency, wrote afterward, “We used any tools at hand,” such as telling certain delegations that the Zionists would use their influence to block economic aid to any countries that did not vote the right way. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Another Zionist proudly <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/What-Price-Israel-Anniversary-1953-2003/dp/0741419270/antiwarbookstore">stated</a>, “Every clue was meticulously checked and pursued. Not the smallest or the remotest of nations, but was contacted and wooed. Nothing was left to chance.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Financier and longtime presidential adviser Bernard Baruch told France it would lose U.S. aid if it voted against partition. Top White House executive assistant David Niles organized pressure on Liberia through rubber magnate Harvey Firestone, who told the Liberian president that if Liberia did not vote in favor of partition, Firestone would revoke his planned expansion in the country. Liberia voted yes. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Latin American delegates were told that the pan-American highway construction project would be more likely if they voted yes. Delegates’ wives received mink coats (the wife of the Cuban delegate returned hers); Costa Rica’s President Jose Figueres reportedly received a blank checkbook. Haiti was promised economic aid if it would change its original vote opposing partition. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Longtime Zionist Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, along with 10 senators and Truman domestic adviser Clark Clifford, threatened the Philippines (seven bills were pending on the Philippines in Congress). </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Before the vote on the plan, the Philippine delegate had given a passionate speech against partition, defending the inviolable “primordial rights of a people to determine their political future and to preserve the territorial integrity of their native land.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">He went on to say that he could not believe that the General Assembly would sanction a move that would place the world “back on the road to the dangerous principles of racial exclusiveness and to the archaic documents of theocratic governments.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Twenty-four hours later, after intense Zionist pressure, the delegate voted in favor of partition. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The U.S. delegation to the U.N. was so outraged when Truman insisted that they support partition that the State Department director of U.N. affairs was sent to New York to prevent the delegates from resigning en masse. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">On Nov. 29, 1947, the partition resolution, 181, passed. While this resolution is frequently cited, it was of limited (if any) legal impact. General Assembly resolutions, unlike Security Council resolutions, are not binding on member states. For this reason, the resolution <a target="_blank" href="http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/un/res181.htm">requested</a> that “[t]he Security Council take the necessary measures as provided for in the plan for its implementation,” which the Security Council never did. Legally, the General Assembly Resolution was a “recommendation” and did not create any states.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">What it did do, however, was increase the fighting in Palestine. Within months (and before Israel dates the beginning of its founding war) the Zionists <a target="_blank" href="http://ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html">had forced out 413,794 people</a>. Zionist military units had stealthily been preparing for war before the U.N. vote and had acquired massive weaponry, some of it through a widespread network of illicit gunrunning operations in the U.S. under a number of front groups. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">The U.N. eventually managed to create a temporary and very partial cease-fire. A Swedish U.N. mediator who had previously rescued thousands of Jews from the Nazis was dispatched to negotiate an end to the violence. <a target="_blank" href="http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/164-1995-september/7987-jewish-terrorists-assassinate-un-peacekeeper-count-folke-bernadotte.html">Israeli assassins killed him</a>, and Israel continued what it was to call its “war of independence.” </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">At the end of this war, through a larger military force than that of its adversaries and the ruthless implementation of <a target="_blank" href="http://docs.google.com/a/ifamericansknew.org/viewer?a=v&q=cache:LBt_LUtdefMJ:www.palestine-studies.org/enakba/Khalidi,%20Plan%20Dalet%20Revisited.pdf+plan+dalet&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESis7HqpacPCRVK0AFiJHDXxZB_ZJhQLiykocA3gBm_mD6aMBTYcpZLFbOydhSIPaxbFVy9JJPVpfKiINzr6yHCmQmBBiAGhV1HfRzTe7DMjIU31Pa8b-pvm1oIlxG1A3Yy4Lno1&sig=AHIEtbSJ3I26BOgDBfojeJ3lO1_h_i_KYg">plans</a> to push out as many non-Jews as possible, Israel came into existence on <a target="_blank" href="http://www.passia.org/palestine_facts/MAPS/1947-un-partition-plan-reso.html">78 percent of Palestine</a>. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">At least <a target="_blank" href="http://www.ifamericansknew.org/history/ref-qumsiyeh.html">33 massacres</a> of Palestinian civilians were perpetrated, half of them before a single Arab army had entered the conflict, hundreds of villages were depopulated and razed, and a <a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Landscape-History-Honorable-Association/dp/0520234227/antiwarbookstore">team of cartographers</a> was sent out to give every town, village, river, and hillock a new Hebrew name. All vestiges of Palestinian habitation, history, and culture were to be erased from history, an effort that almost succeeded.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Israel, which claims to be the “only democracy in the Middle East,” decided not to declare official borders or to write a constitution, a situation which continues to this day. In 1967 it took still more Palestinian and Syrian land, which is now illegally occupied territory, since the annexation of land through military conquest is <a target="_blank" href="http://www.israellawresourcecenter.org/internationallaw/studyguides/sgil3a.htm">outlawed by modern international law</a>. It has continued this campaign of growth through armed acquisition and illegal confiscation of land ever since.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">Individual Israelis, like Palestinians and all people, are legally and morally entitled to an array of human rights.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">On the other hand, the state of Israel’s vaunted “right to exist” is based on an alleged “right” derived from might, an outmoded concept that international legal conventions do not recognize and in fact specifically prohibit. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:130%;">[Detailed citations for the above information are available at "<a href="http://ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/history.html">The History of Israel-U.S. Relations, Part One</a>."] </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size:130%;">This item was first posted at </span><a href="http://original.antiwar.com/alison-weir/2011/10/10/the-real-story-of-how-israel-was-created/"><span style="font-size:130%;">Antiwar.com</span></a></span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-29876520555958248342011-10-10T16:54:00.000-07:002011-10-11T08:25:48.497-07:00Pretend Eveything is OK<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPvXM-IkPDqaYVn2pev7Jmv0mFTd_fSb3N_6KxH6hEiyrDJvX3QaaWXsh0R2rmDBGdMZMPTVJpFnm2p-uRqNOGCUyBvitgOlWC_4tOJ2F6X7e_PRn5DwtHf-YlDjkQ9tNJ-emz5pPkpY/s1600/IMG_0600.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 205px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiPvXM-IkPDqaYVn2pev7Jmv0mFTd_fSb3N_6KxH6hEiyrDJvX3QaaWXsh0R2rmDBGdMZMPTVJpFnm2p-uRqNOGCUyBvitgOlWC_4tOJ2F6X7e_PRn5DwtHf-YlDjkQ9tNJ-emz5pPkpY/s200/IMG_0600.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5662016430157114962" border="0" /></a>This is my ribbon on my car. I commissioned it, though, in fairness, it's not original. Malcolm of Iraq Veterans for Peace has the first one I'd ever seen. Aside from his and mine, I've not seen another. The masses of folks with ribbons similar to this on their cars are pretending everything is OK, as do the conservatives and Tea Party-ers who believe that, but for some socialist interlopers, things are or would be OK.<br /><br />The fundamental truth is that things are not OK. Middle American incomes have not increased, in real terms, since the 70's, and in many cases have declined. We've exported a large share of living wage jobs to Asia, a very large share particularly if you've a high school education or less. Walk through your store of choice and read where things are made, things we used to make. It's all China and Indonesia and so on. These were once American jobs, paying a wage that allowed a family to survive, and provided health care and pension benefits as well That's gone. Folks will now have to accustom themselves to jobs in the $8 to $14 range. Not enough to get by one at current standards of living. As I tell my economics classes, we're a third world country, we just don't know it yet.<br /><br />Lest one think things might get better, consider that, due to the Citizens United case (another example of the name being the exact opposite of what it really is), corporate money is now unlimited in political campaigns. This is the end of democracy in America. No on else has that kind of money, not citizens (united or otherwise) or unions--which barely exist anyway. No, we're now slaves of the corporate world and their wants. Things are not OK.<br /><br />As the years drag on, it becomes increasingly clear that the best option for the young, high school graduate is the military. We've generated a military "class"and a military mentality that is so separate from the civilian world that even military commanders acknowledge and decry it. This does not bode well for the nation.<br /><br />The Obama administration is even more secretive that that of GW Bush, and amplifies those policies while fighting to avoid prosecuting Bush era staffers for the crimes they committed. We're engaged in extrajudicial executions of American citizens set in motion by secret committees responsible to no one with rules that remain unspecified.<br /><br />This list is depressingly endless, and I tire of elaborating it. Suffice to say that Americans must "pretend everything is OK" , or take to the streets.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-64150552883548566752011-10-07T18:35:00.000-07:002011-10-07T18:39:00.833-07:00Occupy Wall Street: The Most Important Thing in the World Now<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvvpfCNJiRz1i5LxFglkeRKAz-9FgeW8QdKUQAhwBOkeA9VgsGEcfg2pviYk4_t82dIwFxBcgmtI_6lcnbrjMsHkgdSKytJsMGFm3pGK2MsSf7wiX2PJSzhkN7GUM_VI6a4x_T_QhZGNM/s1600/thumbnail.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 154px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvvpfCNJiRz1i5LxFglkeRKAz-9FgeW8QdKUQAhwBOkeA9VgsGEcfg2pviYk4_t82dIwFxBcgmtI_6lcnbrjMsHkgdSKytJsMGFm3pGK2MsSf7wiX2PJSzhkN7GUM_VI6a4x_T_QhZGNM/s200/thumbnail.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5660929582517150434" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><p><b><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size:6;"><br /> </span><br /> By Naomi Klein</span></b></p> <div align="center"> <table border="0" width="90%"> <tbody><tr> <td><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><em>I was honored to be invited to speak at <a target="_blank" href="http://occupywallst.org/">Occupy Wall Street</a> on Thursday night. Since amplification is (disgracefully) banned, and everything I said had to be repeated by hundreds of people so others could hear (a.k.a. “the human microphone”), what I actually said at Liberty Plaza had to be very short. With that in mind, here is the longer, uncut version of the speech.</em> </span></td> </tr> </tbody></table> </div> <p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>October 07, 2011 </b><strong>"</strong><b><em><a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/163844/occupy-wall-street-most-important-thing-world-now">The Nation</a></em>" -- </b><strong style="font-weight: 400"> </strong>I love you.<br /> <br /> And I didn’t just say that so that hundreds of you would shout “I love you” back, though that is obviously a bonus feature of the human microphone. Say unto others what you would have them say unto you, only way louder.<br /> <br /> Yesterday, one of the speakers at the labor rally said: “We found each other.” That sentiment captures the beauty of what is being created here. A wide-open space (as well as an idea so big it can’t be contained by any space) for all the people who want a better world to find each other. We are so grateful.<br /> <br /> If there is one thing I know, it is that the 1 percent loves a crisis. When people are panicked and desperate and no one seems to know what to do, that is the ideal time to push through their wish list of pro-corporate policies: privatizing education and social security, slashing public services, getting rid of the last constraints on corporate power. Amidst the economic crisis, this is happening the world over.<br /> <br /> And there is only one thing that can block this tactic, and fortunately, it’s a very big thing: the 99 percent. And that 99 percent is taking to the streets from Madison to Madrid to say “No. We will not pay for your crisis.”<br /> <br /> That slogan began in Italy in 2008. It ricocheted to Greece and France and Ireland and finally it has made its way to the square mile where the crisis began.<br /> <br /> “Why are they protesting?” ask the baffled pundits on TV. Meanwhile, the rest of the world asks: “What took you so long?” “We’ve been wondering when you were going to show up.” And most of all: “Welcome.”<br /> <br /> Many people have drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street and the so-called anti-globalization protests that came to world attention in Seattle in 1999. That was the last time a global, youth-led, decentralized movement took direct aim at corporate power. And I am proud to have been part of what we called “the movement of movements.”<br /> <br /> But there are important differences too. For instance, we chose summits as our targets: the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the G8. Summits are transient by their nature, they only last a week. That made us transient too. We’d appear, grab world headlines, then disappear. And in the frenzy of hyper patriotism and militarism that followed the 9/11 attacks, it was easy to sweep us away completely, at least in North America.<br /> <br /> Occupy Wall Street, on the other hand, has chosen a fixed target. And you have put no end date on your presence here. This is wise. Only when you stay put can you grow roots. This is crucial. It is a fact of the information age that too many movements spring up like beautiful flowers but quickly die off. It’s because they don’t have roots. And they don’t have long term plans for how they are going to sustain themselves. So when storms come, they get washed away.<br /> <br /> Being horizontal and deeply democratic is wonderful. But these principles are compatible with the hard work of building structures and institutions that are sturdy enough to weather the storms ahead. I have great faith that this will happen.<br /> <br /> Something else this movement is doing right: You have committed yourselves to non-violence. You have refused to give the media the images of broken windows and street fights it craves so desperately. And that tremendous discipline has meant that, again and again, the story has been the disgraceful and unprovoked police brutality. Which we saw more of just last night. Meanwhile, support for this movement grows and grows. More wisdom.<br /> <br /> But the biggest difference a decade makes is that in 1999, we were taking on capitalism at the peak of a frenzied economic boom. Unemployment was low, stock portfolios were bulging. The media was drunk on easy money. Back then it was all about start-ups, not shut downs.<br /> <br /> We pointed out that the deregulation behind the frenzy came at a price. It was damaging to labor standards. It was damaging to environmental standards. Corporations were becoming more powerful than governments and that was damaging to our democracies. But to be honest with you, while the good times rolled, taking on an economic system based on greed was a tough sell, at least in rich countries.<br /> <br /> Ten years later, it seems as if there aren’t any more rich countries. Just a whole lot of rich people. People who got rich looting the public wealth and exhausting natural resources around the world.<br /> <br /> The point is, today everyone can see that the system is deeply unjust and careening out of control. Unfettered greed has trashed the global economy. And it is trashing the natural world as well. We are overfishing our oceans, polluting our water with fracking and deepwater drilling, turning to the dirtiest forms of energy on the planet, like the Alberta tar sands. And the atmosphere cannot absorb the amount of carbon we are putting into it, creating dangerous warming. The new normal is serial disasters: economic and ecological.<br /> <br /> These are the facts on the ground. They are so blatant, so obvious, that it is a lot easier to connect with the public than it was in 1999, and to build the movement quickly.<br /> <br /> We all know, or at least sense, that the world is upside down: we act as if there is no end to what is actually finite -- fossil fuels and the atmospheric space to absorb their emissions. And we act as if there are strict and immovable limits to what is actually bountiful -- the financial resources to build the kind of society we need.<br /> <br /> The task of our time is to turn this around: to challenge this false scarcity. To insist that we can afford to build a decent, inclusive society – while at the same time, respect the real limits to what the earth can take.<br /> <br /> What climate change means is that we have to do this on a deadline. This time our movement cannot get distracted, divided, burned out or swept away by events. This time we have to succeed. And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.<br /> <br /> I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society. That is hard to fit into a single media-friendly demand, and it’s also hard to figure out how to do it. But it is no less urgent for being difficult.<br /> <br /> That is what I see happening in this square. In the way you are feeding each other, keeping each other warm, sharing information freely and proving health care, meditation classes and empowerment training. My favorite sign here says “I care about you.” In a culture that trains people to avoid each other’s gaze, to say, “Let them die,” that is a deeply radical statement.<br /> <br /> A few final thoughts. In this great struggle, here are some things that don’t matter.<br /> <br /> - What we wear.<br /> <br /> - Whether we shake our fists or make peace signs.<br /> <br /> - Whether we can fit our dreams for a better world into a media soundbite.<br /> <br /> And here are a few things that do matter.<br /> <br /> - Our courage.<br /> <br /> - Our moral compass.<br /> <br /> - How we treat each other.<br /> <br /> We have picked a fight with the most powerful economic and political forces on the planet. That’s frightening. And as this movement grows from strength to strength, it will get more frightening. Always be aware that there will be a temptation to shift to smaller targets – like, say, the person sitting next to you at this meeting. After all, that is a battle that’s easier to win.<br /> <br /> Don’t give in to the temptation. I’m not saying don’t call each other on shit. But this time, let’s treat each other as if we plan to work side by side in struggle for many, many years to come. Because the task before will demand nothing less.<br /> <br /> Let’s treat this beautiful movement as if it is most important thing in the world. Because it is. It really is. <i><br /> <br /> </i><em>Editor's Note: Naomi's speech also appeared in Saturday's edition of the </em><i>Occupied Wall Street Journal. </i></span></p> <table border="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td> <div class="" id="idc-container-parent"><div class="idc" id="idc-container"><a style="float: right; text-decoration: none; margin-left: 10px;" title="Share on Google Buzz" target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm&srcUrl=http://intensedebate.com/&srcTitle=via+IntenseDebate&title=%C2%A0:%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News"><img src="http://s.intensedebate.com/images/buzz.png" /> Buzz It</a><a style="text-decoration: none; float: right;" target="_blank" class="fb_share_button" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm">Share</a><div style="display: block; margin: 15px 0pt;"><a href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204556628&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description=" class="a2a_dd"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif" border="0" height="16" width="125" /></a></div><div id="IDCommentsHead" class="idc-head idc-user"> <div class="idc-right"> <div class="idc-share"> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/postRSS/109980989" class="idc-head_tools-share" title="http://intensedebate.com/postRSS/109980989">Follow the discussion</a> </div> </div><h3><span id="idc-commentcount_label">Comments</span><span id="idc-commentcount_wrap"> (<span id="idc-commentcount">20</span>)</span></h3> <div class="idc-head_action idc-user"> <div class="idc-right"> <a class="snap_noshots" href="http://intensedebate.com/userDash">Dashboard</a> <span class="idc-divider"><span>|</span></span> <a class="snap_noshots" href="http://intensedebate.com/editprofile">Edit profile</a> <span class="idc-divider"><span>|</span></span> <a class="snap_noshots" href="http://intensedebate.com/logout">Logout</a> </div> <div> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/francisferguson" class="idc-a snap_noshots" id="IDCommentUserBarLink1"><img class="idc-avatar" src="http://gravatar.com/avatar/1099e823f535c3076d9aa5d3f371b227?s=26&d=http://s.intensedebate.com/smallimages/1822856" /></a> </div> <ul class="idc-user_i"><li>Logged in as <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/francisferguson" class="snap_noshots" id="IDCommentUserBarLink2">francisferguson</a></li></ul> </div> <div class="idc-toolbar" id="idc-toolbar"> <div id="idc-sortLinks"> <p>Sort by: <a id="IDSortLink1" class="idc-sel">Date</a> <a id="IDSortLink0">Rating</a> <a id="IDSortLink2">Last Activity</a></p> </div> </div><span class="idc-clear"></span></div><div id="idc-cover" class="idc-comments"> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204556628"><div id="IDComment204556628" class="idc-c "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204556628">+3</span> </div> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/joell109" class="idc-a"><img src="http://gravatar.com/avatar/b21fc63bd2126ebda6c57f0fbeb1d013?s=26&d=http://s.intensedebate.com/smallimages/3483197" class="idc-avatar" alt="joell109's avatar - Go to profile" /> </a> <p class="idc-i"> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/joell109">joell109</a> <span class="idc-rep idc-level1" title="User's reputation score. The better commenter, the greater number."><span></span><span class="idc-r">72p</span></span> <em class="idc-time"> · <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204556628" id="IDCommentTime204556628" class="IDCommentTime">2 hours ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204556628" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204556628" class="idc-c-t-inner"> "I was honored to be invited to speak at Occupy Wall Street on Thursday night"<br /><br />The participants and supporters of the Occupy Wall Street Protests should be very leery of ANYONE associated with the stealth Democratic Party subsidiary known as The Nation magazine.<br /><br />There are many other professional progressives like Michael Moore, Medea Benjamin who should be viewed suspiciously as well.<br /><br />These status quo operatives will infiltrate and neuter these protests. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204565561&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204556628" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204556628"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204556628"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204565561"><div id="IDComment204565561" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204565561">+2</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="DrS's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=f5a7fcdfcdf3e880b8652fd9b0d14143&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> DrS </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204565561" id="IDCommentTime204565561" class="IDCommentTime">1 hour ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204565561" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204565561" class="idc-c-t-inner"> We are losing a sense of caring and compassionate for others.<br /><br />We cannot go forward as a progressive society if there are individuals/groups that are left behind.<br /><br />We all must be prepared to help one another. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204568369&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204565561" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204565561"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204565561"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread idc-collapse" id="IDThread204568369"><div id="IDComment204568369" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204568369">+3</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="rjamesd's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=c50824763201f4af90e1fb2bf322f118&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> rjamesd </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204568369" id="IDCommentTime204568369" class="IDCommentTime">1 hour ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204568369" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204568369" class="idc-c-t-inner"> The ruling elite are the enemy of humanity.<br />The elites tools are the media, the law and the capitalist system.<br />The elite will never give up their wealth and power willingly.<br />Asking the people to remain non-violent in the face of such an evil system is a bit like asking the Palestinians to welcome the Zionists. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204571714&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204568369" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204568369"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204568369"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <a id="IDCommentCollapseLink204568369" class="idc-collapselink_closed">9 replies </a> <em class="idc-thread_active">· <span id="IDCommentThreadTime204568369" class="IDCommentThreadTimeRead">active 9 minutes ago</span></em> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread idc-collapse" id="IDThread204571714"><div id="IDComment204571714" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204571714">+3</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="humanbeing's avatar" src="http://s.intensedebate.com/images/avatar-normal.png" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> humanbeing </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204571714" id="IDCommentTime204571714" class="IDCommentTime">1 hour ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204571714" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204571714" class="idc-c-t-inner"> Naomi Klein has demonstrated a level of insight that few observers have. She sees the larger picture. She doesn't know how to solve all the problems but knows which direction to move. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204572227&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204571714" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204571714"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204571714"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <a id="IDCommentCollapseLink204571714" class="idc-collapselink_closed">1 reply </a> <em class="idc-thread_active">· <span id="IDCommentThreadTime204571714" class="IDCommentThreadTimeRead">active 7 minutes ago</span></em> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204572227"><div id="IDComment204572227" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204572227">+4</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="alh's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=62d2eedf29e7e948fd087d34df9c597e&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> alh </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204572227" id="IDCommentTime204572227" class="IDCommentTime">1 hour ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204572227" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204572227" class="idc-c-t-inner"> Both parties are bought & paid for by Wall Sterrt! <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204580382&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204572227" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204572227"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204572227"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204580382"><div id="IDComment204580382" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204580382">0</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="ariana's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=4d157de1bcafd8a345df97f4c1f2ca95&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> ariana </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204580382" id="IDCommentTime204580382" class="IDCommentTime">51 minutes ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204580382" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204580382" class="idc-c-t-inner"> "And I’m not talking about regulating the banks and increasing taxes on the rich, though that’s important.<br />I am talking about changing the underlying values that govern our society.......... struggle for many, many years to come"<br /><br />So we're talking working on "changing the values" over the next generation or two while the system is in place?!?? <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204582632&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204580382" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204580382"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204580382"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204582632"><div id="IDComment204582632" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204582632">+4</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="John's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=6c75fd2a19de043b56cb7859ae6a39c7&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> John </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204582632" id="IDCommentTime204582632" class="IDCommentTime">44 minutes ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204582632" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204582632" class="idc-c-t-inner"> Investigate 9/11! <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204587234&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204582632" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204582632"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204582632"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204587234"><div id="IDComment204587234" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204587234">+1</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="Bruce E's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=0a410da560eb9936c75c417d2454998f&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> Bruce E </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204587234" id="IDCommentTime204587234" class="IDCommentTime">28 minutes ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204587234" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204587234" class="idc-c-t-inner"> Naomi Kline is one of this smartest people out there talking and writing. One can get a mini education about our modern economic, political system by reading her books and writings. You have to know what you are up against if you are going to fight it---you have to have some idea of what works and what doesn't work. That means you need to know something about history. The Shock Doctrine is a pretty good place to start. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204587337&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204587234" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204587234"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204587234"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204587337"><div id="IDComment204587337" class="idc-c idc-anonymous "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204587337">+1</span> </div> <span class="idc-a"><img alt="roxanne's dad's avatar" src="http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php?gravatar_id=b7598205f2eb48b60ae3cfac21cd5ff7&default=http%3A%2F%2Fs.intensedebate.com%2Fimages%2Favatar-normal.png&size=26&rating=PG" class="idc-avatar" height="26" width="26" /> </span> <p class="idc-i"> <span> roxanne's dad </span> <em class="idc-time">· <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204587337" id="IDCommentTime204587337" class="IDCommentTime">27 minutes ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204587337" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204587337" class="idc-c-t-inner"> Naomi Klein rules! <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle29332.htm%23IDCommentIDComment204591918&title=%C2%A0%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%20News&description="><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204587337" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204587337"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204587337"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div> <div class="idc-thread" id="IDThread204591918"><div id="IDComment204591918" class="idc-c "><div class="idc-c-h"> <div class="idc-c-h-inner"> <div class="idc-v"> <span class="idc-v-total" id="IDCommentVoteScore204591918">+1</span> </div> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/evelynburch" class="idc-a"><img src="http://gravatar.com/avatar/08ddde547720d6226e7d80ca1658a659?s=26&d=http://s.intensedebate.com/smallimages/3488286" class="idc-avatar" alt="evelynburch's avatar - Go to profile" /> </a> <p class="idc-i"> <a href="http://intensedebate.com/people/evelynburch">evelynburch</a> <span class="idc-rep idc-level2" title="User's reputation score. The better commenter, the greater number."><span></span><span class="idc-r">110p</span></span> <em class="idc-time"> · <a title="Comment Permalink" href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29332.htm#IDComment204591918" id="IDCommentTime204591918" class="IDCommentTime">11 minutes ago</a></em> </p> </div></div> <div id="IDCommentTop204591918" class="idc-c-t"> <div id="IDComment-CommentText204591918" class="idc-c-t-inner"> much as i appreciate the enthusiasm roxanne's dad expresses, i have read enough of klein's work to know she don't wanna rule.<br />her bold request that this time we avoid the small targets (each other) and stay focused on systemic change is crucial to success of this maybe gonna be an uprising. <div style="display:block;margin:6px 0 0"><a class="a2a_dd" href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save"><img src="http://static.addtoany.com/buttons/share_save_171_16.png" alt="Share/Save/Bookmark" border="0" height="16" width="171" /></a></div></div> </div> <div id="IDCommentBottom204591918" class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDCommentLinksRight204591918"> <a>Report</a> </div> <div id="IDCommentPostReplyLink204591918"> <a class="idc-btn_s"><span></span><span class="idc-r">Reply</span></a> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div></div></div> <div id="IDCommentsNewThreadCover" class="idc-new"> <a name="respond"></a> <h3>Post a new comment</h3> <p class="idc-secondary" id="seesmicNewThreadPPost">Or <a>post a video comment</a></p><div class="idc-thread" id="IDCThread"> <div style="width: 100%;" id="IDCommentsNewThread" class="idc-c idc-reply "> <ul class="idc-c-plugins" id="idc-plugin-buttons-new-thread"><li><a><img title="Add a YouTube Video" alt="YouTube" src="http://www.youtube.com/favicon.ico" /><span>Embed video</span></a></li><li><a><img src="http://s.intensedebate.com/images1/-plugins/simplysmileys-icon.png" alt="Smileys" title="Add a smiley" /><span></span></a></li><li><a><img title="Proofread Comment w/ After the Deadline" alt="AtD" src="http://static.afterthedeadline.com/atd_jquery/images/atdbuttontr.gif" /><span>Check Spelling</span></a></li></ul> <div class="idc-c-t"> <form id="IDCommentNewThreadForm1"> <div class="idc-c-t-inner"> <textarea class="idc-text_noresize" style="color: rgb(204, 204, 204); width: 394px;" id="IDCommentNewThreadText">Enter text right here!</textarea> <span class="idc-clear"> </span></div> </form> </div> <p class="" id="IDCommentsNewThreadListItem1">Posting as <a class="snap_noshots" href="http://intensedebate.com/people/francisferguson">francisferguson</a> (<a id="IDLogoutLink2" class="snap_noshots" href="http://intensedebate.com/logout">Logout</a>)</p> <div class="idc-c-b"> <div class="idc-right" id="IDNewThreadSubmitLI"> <a class="idc-btn_l"><span></span><span class="idc-r"><strong>Submit Comment</strong></span></a> </div> <div class="idc-new_subscribe" id="IDSubscribeToThisWrapper"> <label for="IDSubscribeToThis" class="idc-nofloat"> Subscribe to </label> </div> <div class="idc-customtext"> <span id="customText">Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate material will be removed from the site. </span> </div> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="idc-foot"> <span class="idc-clear"></span> </div></div><span id="idc-clear"></span></div></td> <td width="456"> <br /></td></tr></tbody></table>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-27101834257727413292011-10-06T18:50:00.000-07:002011-10-06T18:51:58.103-07:00The Middle of the Road<div id="header"> <div id="masthead"> <div id="branding" role="banner"> <div id="site-title"> <span> <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/" title="The Middle of the Road" rel="home"><br /></a> </span> </div> <div id="site-description">The Centrist's View</div> <img src="http://tmotr.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/tmotr_topban9401.jpg" alt="" height="198" width="940" /> </div> <div id="access" role="navigation"> <div class="skip-link screen-reader-text"><a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/#content" title="Skip to content">Skip to content</a></div> </div> </div> </div> <div id="nav-above" class="navigation"> <div class="nav-previous"><a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/scan-pat-down-or-blow-up-your-choice/" rel="prev"><span class="meta-nav">←</span> Scan, Pat Down or Blow up: Your Choice.</a></div> </div> <div id="post-807" class="post-807 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized tag-2 tag-armageddon tag-billions tag-bush-tax-cuts tag-congress tag-debt-ceiling tag-legislate tag-millions tag-rich tag-tax-breaks tag-taxes tag-trillions"> <h1 class="entry-title">Going for Broke – Will Legislate For Food</h1> <div class="entry-meta"> <span class="meta-prep meta-prep-author">Posted on</span> <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/" title="7:55 am" rel="bookmark"><span class="entry-date">July 4, 2011</span></a> <span class="meta-sep">by</span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/author/gmyers2112/" title="View all posts by gmyers2112">gmyers2112</a></span> </div> <div class="entry-content"> <p><a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/congressdevil300/" rel="attachment wp-att-821"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-821" title="congressdevil300" src="http://tmotr.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/congressdevil300.jpg?w=250&h=250" alt="" height="250" width="250" /></a>The count down to Armageddon is on again. Apparently, if we don’t pay off some of our debt or raise the debt ceiling, the world will end Tuesday.</p> <p>You know what? I am soooo over this whole “the world will end if we don’t do such and such” mindset that the politicians and the newsie want to keep us perpetually wrapped within. Fear keeps them employed so I can see why they like it. I just can’t figure out why we let them do it.</p> <p>Here’s two things about our most recent world ending, hellsacommin fearfest:</p> <p>A) If every nation that ties its currency to ours suddenly fails because we owe more than we’re allowed to by law (an arbitrary law we made up and changed several times to suit our expedient needs) then they’re all stupid and deserve to go belly up. But they’re not stupid and they won’t go belly up. They’ll change a law or a line in a law or move some electronic numbers from one column to another and the sun will still come up on Wednesday. Everybody will still be here and the next fear threat scandal will already be loaded up in the barrel and ready to fire straight at our gawping faces.</p> <p>B) There’s too much money and real estate involved and they’re never going to let it all crumble away because rich people will always do what is in the best interest of rich people. If you count on nothing else in life it should be that the ultra wealthy have very strong instincts for survival and greed (and the survival of greed).</p> <p>Here’s the info you should have in the front of your brain but don’t. This is the stuff that the republicans seem to be very good at deflecting attention from and the democrats seem to be completely incapable of focusing our attention on:<br />If we let the Bush tax cuts expire… the tax cuts for the top 2% of the wealthiest Americans (the wealthiest population in the history of wealthy populations), we would be out of debt in just over 5 years. We, the US, the country with the biggest debt any nation has ever had, the largest economic engine the world has ever known and the home of the greediest muthers the planet has ever seen, could be out of debt and paying for new roads, bridges, hospitals and teachers in five short years if we simply asked our richest 2% to pay the level of taxes that they were paying under Bill “depends on what the meaning of IS is” Clinton.</p> <p>Why isn’t that “Page One – Above the Fold” in every newspaper? Why isn’t it on the front of Google and Yahoo News, AOL, MSN, the NYTimes-Online and the Washington Post eVersion every day… all day? </p> <p>It’s almost like rich people control the media.</p> <p>Why aren’t you mad about this? You live here. You vote, or at least I hope you do. You may feel powerless. You may think, “What’s the point? They’re going to do what they’ve always done.” But the only reason they get to do that is that you stay sitting on your couch when you should be sitting at your computer typing 60 enflamed words a minute to your congress person telling them to get this shit fixed and that the 2% can damn well cough up some green backs to repair the thing that they broke in the first place.</p> <p>In the 1950′s the pay separation between the average worker and CEO’s in what we now call the Fortune 500 companies used to be about 20 to 1 (for every dollar a mid level manager made, a CEO made 20 dollars. ) 20 to 1 was here in American and extreme compared to the rest of the world where even now it is more commonly about half of that. During the 1980s the pay gap between CEO’s and <img class="alignright" title="table_sm" src="http://tmotr.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/table_sm.jpg?w=250&h=221" alt="" height="221" width="250" />average workers grew from 42:1 to almost 85:1. By 2004 it had jumped to 301 : 1. And now???… well now, right here in the good old US of A, the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay is running 475 to 1 while in Japan, a very profitable nation with a very good standard of living, the ratio is 11 to 1. The average Japanese CEO would kill himself in shame if his company failed so badly that it needed to be bailed out by the government in order to stop the world economy from crashing. American CEO’s take bonuses of 15 million dollars for doing that.</p> <p>In case you need somebody to characterize that for you… that’s a bad thing. This level of greed is not a sign of American business success and superiority. It is an example of institutionalized insanity because these companies can and do lose billions of dollars in a single year and the CEO’s still make the monster money.</p> <p>How can there be people who think of themselves as republicans while also being middle-income, poor or unemployed? How is it even possible that there are people who are not rich, yet still believe that it’s in their best interest to vote for the republicans who clearly have only the protection of the rich as their goal? It reminds me of that line about the greatest thing the devil ever did was to convince you that he wasn’t real… Well, the greatest thing the republicans ever did was to convince 14% of the american population that protecting the rights of the rich was somehow good for poor and middle-income people. The reason I say 14% is that one-third of eligible voters (33%) actually vote and one half of them ( 16% or so) vote republican. Take out the top earning 2% and you’re left with 14% of the population that have been brainwashed into protecting rich people contrary to their own self interest. It’s like these people are saying to themselves, “Maybe I’ll be rich someday so I’m not going to vote for things that are against the interests of other rich people.”</p> <p>They have a better chance of winning the lottery or being hit by lightning than of becoming rich enough to join the two percenters. Yet they feel they need to protect the future possibility of success rather than the current reality of privation.</p> <p>Republican politicians protect themselves and their monied patrons with the argument that what’s good for business is good for the country and that, in turn, is good for poor people. Taxing rich people is bad for business and therefore bad for poor people. They’ve done a fantastic job of connecting the two arguments but I promise you that they are not connected. Taxing the rich is not the same as taxing business. The tax rate for businesses is too high (one of the highest in the world) and is one of the primary reasons that so many corporations have moved their operations and business addresses overseas. On the other hand, the tax rate for rich people is the absolute lowest in the world.</p> <p>We need to separate the concept that Rich People equals Business Owners. It’s just not true in most cases. The richest rich guys I’m talking about are not owners. They’re the CEO’s hired by stock holding board members to run the companies and they’re living like princes. Employment packages for these guys now normally include massive contractual bonus structures, golden parachutes and stock options that pay off regardless of the company’s actual bottom line. The basic argument in favor of this system is that you have to pay really big money to get the best people. But these are the same guys that destroyed the economy and bankrupted the world as well as their own companies. Yet they still got paid. In some cases, they got paid with our money from the bail outs.</p> <p>The Bush tax cuts that need to expire are not about companies. They’re not about keeping business moving or greasing the wheels of industry. They’re about tax breaks for private jets and massive yachts and 15 million dollar bonuses. They’re for rich people. For protecting the money of rich people who have paid their republican butt monkeys to hold the rest of us hostage and threaten the end of everything we hold dear so that they can continue to light giant cigars with hundred-dollar bills. And if that doesn’t piss you off, you’ve either been completely hypnotized by republican rhetoric or you’re opening a box of stogies right now.</p> <p>Got a light?</p> <div class="sharedaddy sd-like-enabled sd-sharing-enabled"><div class="robots-nocontent sd-block sd-social sd-social-icon-text sd-sharing"><h3 class="sd-title">Share this:</h3><div class="sd-content"><ul><li class="share-email share-service-visible"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-email sd-button share-icon" href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/?share=email&nb=1" title="Click to email this to a friend"><span>Email</span></a></li><li class="share-facebook"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-facebook sd-button share-icon" href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/?share=facebook&nb=1" title="Share on Facebook"><span>Facebook</span></a></li><li class="share-twitter"><a rel="nofollow" class="share-twitter sd-button share-icon" href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/?share=twitter&nb=1" title="Click to share on Twitter"><span>Twitter</span></a></li><li class="share-end"><br /></li></ul></div></div><div id="wpl-likebox" class="sd-block sd-like"><br /></div></div> </div> <div class="entry-utility"> This entry was posted in <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/" title="View all posts in Uncategorized" rel="category tag">Uncategorized</a> and tagged <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/2/" rel="tag">2%</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/armageddon/" rel="tag">Armageddon</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/billions/" rel="tag">billions</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/bush-tax-cuts/" rel="tag">bush tax cuts</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/congress/" rel="tag">congress</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/debt-ceiling/" rel="tag">debt ceiling</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/legislate/" rel="tag">legislate</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/millions/" rel="tag">millions</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/rich/" rel="tag">rich</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/tax-breaks/" rel="tag">tax breaks</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/taxes/" rel="tag">taxes</a>, <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/tag/trillions/" rel="tag">trillions</a>. Bookmark the <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/going-for-broke-will-legislate-for-food/" title="Permalink to Going for Broke – Will Legislate For Food" rel="bookmark">permalink</a>. </div> </div> <a href="http://tmotr.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/scan-pat-down-or-blow-up-your-choice/" rel="prev"><span class="meta-nav">←</span> Scan, Pat Down or Blow up: Your Cho</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-24534920525382936842011-10-06T14:27:00.001-07:002011-10-06T14:27:48.505-07:00Murder Inc.<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><br /> <br /> <b><span style="font-size:6;"><i>Execution By Secret WH Committee</i><br /> </span></b><br /> <b>By Glenn Greenwald</b></span></p> <div class="entryContent clearfix"> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>October 06, 2011 "</b></span><a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/06/execution_by_secret_wh_committee/singleton/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>Salon</b></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>" - - </b>Here is what the Democratic President has created and implemented, and what many party loyalists <a target="_blank" href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/10/telling_you_what_i_think.php">explicitly endorse</a> (when there’s a Democrat in the White House) — <a target="_blank" href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005">from <em>Reuters</em></a>:</span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><a target="_blank" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGw5V9qb4Vk/To2a6NeEb3I/AAAAAAAAAP0/Jlumn6I2sSk/s1600/reuters.png"><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nGw5V9qb4Vk/To2a6NeEb3I/AAAAAAAAAP0/Jlumn6I2sSk/s320/reuters.png" alt="" border="0" height="70" width="320" /></a></span></div> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are<strong> placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials</strong>, which then informs the president of its decisions . . . . There is <strong>no public record</strong> of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House’s National Security Council . . . . <strong>Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules</strong> by which it is supposed to operate. . . . The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process. . . .</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, was asked by reporters about the killing. The process involves “going through the National Security Council, then it eventually goes to the president” . . . .Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described. They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval . . . But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no known law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed by the CIA, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider. It is difficult to describe the level of warped authoritarianism necessary to cause someone to lend their support to a twisted Star Chamber like that; I genuinely wonder whether the Good Democrats doing so actually first convince themselves that if this were the Bush White House’s hit list, or if it becomes Rick Perry’s, they would be supportive just the same. Seriously: if you’re willing to endorse having White House functionaries meet in secret — with no known guidelines, no oversight, no transparency — and compile lists of American citizens to be killed by the CIA without due process, what aren’t you willing to support?</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Of all the things I’ve seen over the past several years, easily one of the most repellent has been the number of people — especially journalists — who are running around definitively asserting that Awlaki had an “operational role” in Terrorist plots and had “taken up arms” against the U.S. <strong>even though they have no idea whether that’s actually true</strong> (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1011/65046.html"><em>Politico</em>‘s Roger Simon</a>: “U.S. citizen living overseas and plotting the death of American citizens from, let’s say, Yemen, you can say hello to our little friends, the 100-lb. Hellfires”; <a target="_blank" href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/10/telling_you_what_i_think.php">Josh Marshall</a>: Awlaki was “a key leader of an international terrorist group, <strong>organizing</strong> and inspiring terrorist attacks within the US” ). Just consider how even the anonymous government officials who spoke to <em>Reuters</em> in order to defend the Awlaki killing characterize the “evidence” they have to support that claim:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The Obama administration <strong>has not made public an accounting of the classified evidence that Awlaki was operationally involved</strong> in planning terrorist attacks.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">But officials acknowledged that some of the intelligence purporting to show Awlaki’s hands-on role in plotting attacks was <strong>patchy</strong>.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">For instance, one plot in which authorities have said Awlaki was involved Nigerian-born Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underpants.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">There is no doubt Abdulmutallab was an admirer or follower of Awlaki, since he admitted that to U.S. investigators. . . . But at the time the White House was considering putting Awlaki on the U.S. target list, intelligence connecting Awlaki specifically to Abdulmutallab and his alleged bomb plot was partial. Officials said at the time the United States had voice intercepts involving a phone known to have been used by Awlaki and someone who<strong> they believed, but were not positive, was Abdulmutallab.</strong></span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Someone spoke to someone on “a phone known to have been used by Awlaki”: maybe it was Abdulmutallab, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was Awlaki, maybe it wasn’t. Who knows? Who cares? Some officials “believed” it may have involved those two, so it’s time to kill Awlaki. Remember, Good Democrats hate the death penalty because they think it’s so terribly barbaric to execute people whose guilt is in doubt (even if, unlike Awlaki, they’ve enjoyed an indictment and full jury trial, lawyers, the right to examine evidence and to confront witnesses, multiple appeals, and habeas petitions). There’s also this:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Awlaki was also implicated in a case in which a British Airways employee was imprisoned for plotting to blow up a U.S.-bound plane. E-mails retrieved by authorities from the employee’s computer showed what an investigator described as ” operational contact” between Britain and Yemen.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Authorities believe the contacts were mainly between the U.K.-based suspect and his brother. But there was <strong>a strong suspicion</strong> Awlaki was<strong> at the brother’s side</strong> when the messages were dispatched.</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">There was a “strong suspicion” — not that Awlaki participated in this email plotting, but that he was “at the side” of someone who did. Who needs “beyond a reasonable doubt’? That is so pre-9/11. ”A strong suspicion” that he may have been next to someone plotting an attack: that’s the McCarthyite standard Democratic Party loyalists are holding up to justify the due-process-free execution of their fellow citizen by a secret, lawless White House “panel.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">What’s crucial to keep in mind is that nobody can see this “evidence” which these anonymous government officials are claiming exists. It’s in their exclusive possession. As a result, they’re able to characterize it however they want, to present it in the best possible light to support their pro-assassination position, and to prevent any detection of its flaws. As any lawyer will tell you, anyone can make a case for anything when they’re in exclusive possession of all the relevant evidence and are the only side from whom one is hearing; all evidence becomes less compelling when it’s subjected to adversarial scrutiny. Yet <strong>even given all those highly favorable pro-government conditions here, it’s obvious — even these officials admit — that the evidence is “partial,” “patchy,” based on “suspicions” rather than knowledge.</strong></span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">But no matter. Officials in the Obama White House and then the President decreed in secret that Awlaki should die. So the U.S. Government killed him. Republicans who always cheer acts of violence against Muslims are joined by Democrats who reflexively cheer what this Democratic President does, and now this death panel for U.S. citizens — operating with no known rules, transparency, or oversight — is entrenched as bipartisan consensus and a permanent fixture of American political life. I’m sure this will never be abused: unrestrained power exercised in secret has a very noble history in the U.S. (<em>Reuters</em> says that the only American they could confirm on the hit list is Awlaki, though Dana Priest<a target="_blank" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012604239_2.html?sid=ST2010012700394"> reported last year</a> that either three or four Americans were on a hit list).</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Anyway, look over there: wasn’t it outrageous how George Bush imprisoned people without any due process and tried to seize unrestrained power, and isn’t it horrifying what a barbaric death cult Republicans are for favoring executions even when there’s doubt about guilt? Even for those deeply cynical about American political culture: wouldn’t you have thought a few years ago that having the President create a White House panel to place Americans on a CIA hit list — in secret, without a shred of due process — would be a bridge too far?</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"> </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">UPDATE</span></strong>: I don’t think it’s dispositive of the question here — because the U.S. Government isn’t permitted to murder fugitives who aren’t violently resisting apprehension and, in any event, Awlaki was never a fugitive since he was never indicted by the U.S. for anything — but <a target="_blank" href="http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/10/a-touch-more-on-drone-strikes">Robert Farley persuasively highlights</a> the baselessness of the excuse that Awlaki could not have been apprehended (and he also documents how dubious, uncertain and filled with doubt is the case against Awlaki generally).</span></p></div> <dl class="author"><dd> <p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><i>Follow Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: <a href="http://politics.salon.com/2011/10/06/execution_by_secret_wh_committee/singleton/">@ggreenwald</a>.<a href="http://politics.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/">More Glenn Greenwald</a></i></span></p></dd></dl>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-77572817430300602062011-10-02T19:49:00.000-07:002011-10-02T19:53:25.499-07:00Anwar al-Awlaki's Extrajudicial Murder<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnDtOzRVFNTWOgL8HGIbEMpWWBYku14so2WqegfiG1VNADoodHI2f1pT2Qn4rmGCmBa5EHqiHk0U59sNKxpUeB0JpxwNdfHW8ihCRHtdRpVYsEoQwdxXSdd4YHYJr6R7hJ3ZXMgZWUJsE/s1600/anwar_al_awlaki_620x350.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 113px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnDtOzRVFNTWOgL8HGIbEMpWWBYku14so2WqegfiG1VNADoodHI2f1pT2Qn4rmGCmBa5EHqiHk0U59sNKxpUeB0JpxwNdfHW8ihCRHtdRpVYsEoQwdxXSdd4YHYJr6R7hJ3ZXMgZWUJsE/s200/anwar_al_awlaki_620x350.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5659093478728683442" border="0" /></a><br /><div id="article-body-blocks"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b><span style="font-size:6;"></span></b></span><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The law on the use of lethal force by executive order is specific. This assassination broke it – that creates a terrifying precedent<br /> <br /> <b>By Michael Ratner<br /> <br /> October 01, 20911 "</b></span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/30/anwar-awlaki-extrajudicial-murder?newsfeed=true"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>The Guardian</b></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>" -- Is</b> this the world we want? Where the president of the <a title="More from guardian.co.uk on United States" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa">United States</a> can place an American citizen, or anyone else for that matter, living outside a war zone on a targeted assassination list, and then <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/30/anwar-al-awlaki-dead">have him murdered by drone strike</a>. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This was the very result we at the <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/aclu-sues-us-government-awlakis-hit-list-designation/story?id=11316084">Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU feared when we brought a case in US federal court on behalf of Anwar al-Awlaki's father</a>, hoping to prevent this targeted killing. <a href="http://www.politico.com/blogs/joshgerstein/0211/ACLU_CCR_drop_suit_over_Awlaki__kill_list.html">We lost the case on procedural grounds</a>, but the judge considered the implications of the practice as raising "serious questions", asking:</span></p> <blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">"Can the executive order the assassination of a US citizen without first affording him any form of judicial process whatsoever, based on the mere assertion that he is a dangerous member of a terrorist organisation?"</span></p> </blockquote> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Yes, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/02/profile-anwar-al-awlaki-cleric">Anwar al-Awlaki was a radical Muslim cleric</a>. Yes, his language and speeches were incendiary. He may even have engaged in plots against the United States – but we do not know that because he was never indicted for a crime. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">This profile should not have made him a target for a killing without due process and without any effort to capture, arrest and try him. The US government knew his location for purposes of a drone strike, so why was no effort made to arrest him in <a title="More from guardian.co.uk on Yemen" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/yemen">Yemen</a>, a country that apparently was allied in the US efforts to track him down?</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">There are – or were – laws about the circumstances in which deadly force can be used, including against those who are bent on causing harm to the United States. Outside of a war zone, as Awlaki was, lethal force can <em>only</em> be employed in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances: when there is a concrete, specific and imminent threat of an attack; and even then, deadly force must be a last resort. </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The claim, after the fact, by President Obama that Awlaki "operationally directed efforts" to attack the United States was never presented to a court before he was placed on the "kill" list and is untested. Even if President Obama's claim has some validity, unless Awlaki's alleged terrorists actions were imminent and unless deadly force employed as a last resort, this killing constitutes murder.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">We know the government makes mistakes, lots of them, in giving people a "terrorist" label. Hundreds of men were wrongfully detained at Guantánamo. Should this same government, or any government, be allowed to order people's killing without due process? </span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The dire implications of this killing should not be lost on any of us. There appears to be no limit to the president's power to kill anywhere in the world, even if it involves killing a citizen of his own country. Today, it's in Yemen; tomorrow, it could be in the UK or even in the United States.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Michael Ratner is president of the <a href="http://ccrjustice.org/">Centre for Constitutional Rights</a> </span></p></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-55194204669591490602011-09-30T21:49:00.000-07:002011-09-30T21:52:55.942-07:00Ron Paul Condemns Killing of "al Qaeda’s" Awlaki By Eliza<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJWa4VXi7gCAjuE_JQZ92fx-hhnSl2ThtYvPT-tVBxJ3Lron0B37enRWZxCHbezK038NiPlVEX2b0DC3AfO3r6_0YElmXZGJN8qsXCZo5h-0NajBUYBNPnVKQDMRfbWxnX0QYZurQhFnk/s1600/images-1.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 146px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJWa4VXi7gCAjuE_JQZ92fx-hhnSl2ThtYvPT-tVBxJ3Lron0B37enRWZxCHbezK038NiPlVEX2b0DC3AfO3r6_0YElmXZGJN8qsXCZo5h-0NajBUYBNPnVKQDMRfbWxnX0QYZurQhFnk/s200/images-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5658381625725930498" border="0" /></a><br /><p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>beth Williamson<br /> </b></span></p><p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>It's likely I don't like this guy, but you don't kill an American without due process, and what the Obama administration hints as as "proper secret process" just logically sucks. We're on a downward slope.<br /></b></span></p><p align="left"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b> September 30, 2011 "</b></span><a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/09/30/ron-paul-condemns-killing-of-al-qaedas-awlaki/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>WSJ</b></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>" - -GOFFSTOWN, N.H.–</b>Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul condemned the U.S.-backed killing of al Qaeda figure and U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki.<br /> <br /> “Nobody knows if he ever killed anybody,” Mr. Paul said after a breakfast at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics. “If the American people accept this blindly and casually…I think that’s sad.”<br /> <br /> Mr. Awlaki, accused by the U.S. of planning al Qaeda attacks on U.S. citizens and recruiting terrorists, has been a longtime target of the U.S.<br /> <br /> The libertarian Mr. Paul, a strong opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, said his disagreement is based in large part on the fact that Mr. Awlaki is an American citizen, and U.S. authorities “have never been specific about the crime.”<br /> <br /> In May, the Texas congressman supported the killing of Osama bin Laden by a team of Navy SEALs in Pakistan, writing at the time: “Osama bin Laden applauded the 9/11 attacks. Such deliberate killing of innocent lives deserved retaliation. It is good that bin Laden is dead and justice is served.” He also said bin Laden’s death was one more reason the U.S. should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.<br /> <br /> Mr. Paul has taken a clear,if controversial, stance against aspects of the U.S. war on terrorism, which in his view represents an encroachment by government on individual freedoms. In his latest book, “Liberty Defined,” Mr. Paul writes that the targeting of Mr. Awlaki represents a move “much further along in the disintegration of American jurisprudence.”</span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-90360923271443201682011-09-30T21:41:00.000-07:002011-09-30T21:42:38.702-07:00An Incortrovertable Argument. Have a Look.<img src="http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc6/69531_129465147112648_112713662121130_168398_2076597_n.jpg" alt="" class="spotlight" />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-2304578796996820072011-09-30T21:30:00.001-07:002011-09-30T21:35:31.674-07:00CIA Assassinates Two American Citizens in Yemen<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie3BbJnU_E6A_gACh5X5LlqBu77OXOxVV4dVzBQDE1nwh9-p9tnT2FEzGQ6imiv14r_hRU9TuOpK6ze-wnp6gnoKIvgGbTTLx_2jsTa_7uCfREyTMOg59sX5LnwY-5kceMFmPOaiHHLEc/s1600/images-2.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 146px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEie3BbJnU_E6A_gACh5X5LlqBu77OXOxVV4dVzBQDE1nwh9-p9tnT2FEzGQ6imiv14r_hRU9TuOpK6ze-wnp6gnoKIvgGbTTLx_2jsTa_7uCfREyTMOg59sX5LnwY-5kceMFmPOaiHHLEc/s200/images-2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5658377700574932738" border="0" /></a><br /><div id="box"> <h3><a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/cia-assassinates-two-american-citizens-in-yemen/">CIA Assassinates Two American Citizens in Yemen</a></h3> <h4 id="pagesub">Obama Lauds Killings as Proof of America's Reach</h4> <div class="details"> by Jason Ditz, September 30, 2011 </div> </div> <div id="navcontainer"> | <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/cia-assassinates-two-american-citizens-in-yemen/print/" title="Print This" rel="nofollow">Print This</a> | <a href="http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?v=20">Share This</a> | <a href="http://antiwar-talk.com/">Antiwar Forum</a> </div> <p>A CIA-JSOC coordinated attack against a vehicle convoy in Yemen today left two American citizens dead along with “some companions.” The slain were high profile <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15121879">Sunni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki</a> and magazine editor Samir Khan.</p> <p>This was the latest in a long series of attempted assassinations of Awlaki, who the National Intelligence Director <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2010/04/07/us-confirms-citizen-is-on-cia-assassination-list/">confirmed in April 2010 was the first American citizen</a> ever added to President Obama’s official list of assassination targets for the CIA.</p> <p>The confirmation sparked immediate concern because despite repeatedly railing at Awlaki for his anti-US sermons and implying he had some sort of tie with al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) was not charged with any crimes at all, let alone a capital offense.</p> <p>It also spawned an attempted lawsuit by Awlaki’s father and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.antiwar.com%2F2010%2F08%2F30%2Flawsuit-challenges-govts-right-to-assassinate-us-citizens%2F&rct=j&q=Awlaki%20lawsuit%20site%3Anews.antiwar.com&ei=IgCGTr61GKeOsQKjg5yWDw&usg=AFQjCNGzibcIrHLkSu3yuOKsG4CCfpFMlw&sig2=cqiUTOnrlttdGBCeqZIWCg&cad=rja">who argued that </a>it was inappropriate for the president to order the execution of American citizens without formal charges and a trial. The Justice Department demanded the case be thrown out on the grounds that the<a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2010/09/26/justice-dept-assassinations-up-to-executive-branch-not-courts-to-decide/"> courts have no oversight over who the president can assassinate</a> on the grounds of national security. Eventually the court dismissed the lawsuit, saying it <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2010/12/07/judge-throws-out-challenge-to-obamas-planned-assassination-of-us-cleric/">was up to “elected branches of government”</a> to decide if people were to be assassinated.</p> <p>The Obama Administration had been working with Yemen’s Saleh regime to track down Awlaki, but the New Mexico-born cleric’s tribe is vast and powerful in Yemen’s interior, and the government had long been unsuccessful in moving against him.</p> <p>His killing was immediately praised by President Obama, saying it was <a href="http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2011/09/obama-terrorists-will-find-no-safe-haven-anywhere/1">“further proof” of America’s global reach and that there was “no safe haven anywhere in the world”</a> from potential assassination once marked by a president. Most of the domestic coverage in the US centered around praise for the killings and reiterating the half-formed allegations against Awlaki, while glossing over the fact that the administration’s primary objection to Awlaki, and the one which actually put him in US sights in the first place, was his collection of religious sermons critical of America’s imperial ambitions.</p> <p>This of course explains why there was no trial, because religious sermons critical of a president’s foreign policy are not against the law. Interestingly the closest thing to an allegation of direct AQAP ties was his <a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2009/12/31/yemeni-official-points-finger-at-us-born-cleric-over-detroit-plot/">putative influence</a> on the December 2009 Christmas underbomber. This of course came just days after another<a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2009/12/25/despite-yemeni-optimism-us-born-cleric-apparently-unharmed/"> failed assassination attempt by US cruise missiles</a> killed a large number of Yemeni civilians.</p> <p>The other American victim of the assassination was the much lower profile Samir Khan, a <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319845/Samir-Khan-talks-pride-traitor-Al-Qaeda-magazine.html">North Carolina-born would-be jihadist</a> whose primary claim to fame was his role in the publication of Inspire Magazine, the embarrassingly over-the-top English language webzine.</p> <p>Inspire Magazine was known for its wacky and ridiculously implausible ideas for terrorist attacks, which almost always spawned media scare pieces treating them as a legitimate threat. Among those was the infamous “<a href="http://news.antiwar.com/2011/09/30/2010/10/12/fords-with-swords-al-qaedas-fall-magazine-floats-ideas-for-attack/">Fords With Swords</a>” piece, in which they proposed strapping a bunch of scimitars to a Ford truck and driving it into a crowd of conveniently located infidels. Needless to say, the “plot” was never attempted.</p> <p>Though Khan was at the very least a self-professed member of AQAP, he too was not actually charged with any crimes, and most of his press centered either around the magazine itself, or<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/american-jihadi-samir-khan-killed-awlaki/story?id=14640013"> his faux-gangsta Internet releases</a>, including “Jihad 4 Eva” graffiti and his “Cold Diss of Hosni Mubarak.”</p> <p>The sheer goofiness of Khan’s AQAP role and the entirely speculative nature of Anwar Awlaki’s must inevitably raise further questions about the legality of the US government simply assassinating them, and what it might mean for others who run afoul of the administration for one reason or another. It seems trials are simply not a part of the president’s strategy when he is criticized, and assassinating a critical cleric appears to rank among his proudest moments since taking office.</p> <p>The assassination was mostly cheered by Obama’s potential opponents in 2012 as well, with both Rick Perry cheering it as “an important victory” and Mitt Romney terming the extralegal assassination “proper justice.” Rep. Ron Paul (R – TX) was predictably the lone critic, saying that he was concerned with “<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/09/ron-paul-condemns-us-assassination-of-al-awlaki-perry-romney-praise-obama/245949/">assassinating American citizens without charges</a>.”</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-30515725070415225232011-09-30T21:24:00.001-07:002011-09-30T21:24:55.071-07:00Al Gore: Climate of Denial<div id="main"> <h2>Can science and the truth withstand the merchants of poison?</h2> <h3 class="byline">by: <strong>Al Gore</strong></h3> <div class="body"> <div class="assetContainer imageStandard floatLt"> <img alt="" src="http://assets.rollingstone.com/assets/images/story/climate-of-denial-20110622/306x306/main.jpg" /> <div class="imageCredit" style="width:290px;">Illustration by Matt Mahurin</div> </div> <p>The first time I remember hearing the question "is it real?" was when I went as a young boy to see a traveling show put on by "professional wrestlers" one summer evening in the gym of the Forks River Elementary School in Elmwood, Tennessee.</p> <p>The evidence that it was real was palpable: "They're really hurting each other! That's real blood! Look a'there! They can't fake that!" On the other hand, there was clearly a script (or in today's language, a "narrative"), with good guys to cheer and bad guys to boo.</p> <p>But the most unusual and in some ways most interesting character in these dramas was the referee: Whenever the bad guy committed a gross and obvious violation of the "rules" — such as they were — like using a metal folding chair to smack the good guy in the head, the referee always seemed to be preoccupied with one of the cornermen, or looking the other way. Yet whenever the good guy — after absorbing more abuse and unfairness than any reasonable person could tolerate — committed the slightest infraction, the referee was all over him. The answer to the question "Is it real?" seemed connected to the question of whether the referee was somehow confused about his role: Was he too an entertainer?</p> <p><a class="inStoryLink" href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scorched-earth-20110624">Scorched Earth: How Climate Change Is Spreading Drought Throughout the Globe</a></p> <p>That is pretty much the role now being played by most of the news media in refereeing the current wrestling match over whether global warming is "real," and whether it has any connection to the constant dumping of 90 million tons of heat-trapping emissions into the Earth's thin shell of atmosphere every 24 hours.</p> <p>Admittedly, the contest over global warming is a challenge for the referee because it's a tag-team match, a real free-for-all. In one corner of the ring are Science and Reason. In the other corner: Poisonous Polluters and Right-wing Ideologues.</p> <p>The referee — in this analogy, the news media — seems confused about whether he is in the news business or the entertainment business. Is he responsible for ensuring a fair match? Or is he part of the show, selling tickets and building the audience? The referee certainly seems distracted: by Donald Trump, Charlie Sheen, the latest reality show — the list of serial obsessions is too long to enumerate here.</p> <p>But whatever the cause, the referee appears not to notice that the Polluters and Ideologues are trampling all over the "rules" of democratic discourse. They are financing pseudoscientists whose job is to manufacture doubt about what is true and what is false; buying elected officials wholesale with bribes that the politicians themselves have made "legal" and can now be made in secret; spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on misleading advertisements in the mass media; hiring four anti-climate lobbyists for every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. (Question: Would Michael Jordan have been a star if he was covered by four defensive players every step he took on the basketball court?)</p> <p>This script, of course, is not entirely new: A half-century ago, when Science and Reason established the linkage between cigarettes and lung diseases, the tobacco industry hired actors, dressed them up as doctors, and paid them to look into television cameras and tell people that the linkage revealed in the Surgeon General's Report was not real at all. The show went on for decades, with more Americans killed each year by cigarettes than all of the U.S. soldiers killed in all of World War II.</p> <p>This time, the scientific consensus is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scientific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most authoritative study by 3,000 of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged "unequivocal."</p> <p>But wait! The good guys transgressed the rules of decorum, as evidenced in their private e-mails that were stolen and put on the Internet. The referee is all over it: Penalty! Go to your corner! And in their 3,000-page report, the scientists made some mistakes! Another penalty!</p> <p>And if more of the audience is left confused about whether the climate crisis is real? Well, the show must go on. After all, it's entertainment. There are tickets to be sold, eyeballs to glue to the screen.</p> <p>Part of the script for this show was leaked to <em>The New York Times</em> as early as 1991. In an internal document, a consortium of the largest global-warming polluters spelled out their principal strategy: "Reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact." Ever since, they have been sowing doubt even more effectively than the tobacco companies before them.</p> <p>To sell their false narrative, the Polluters and Ideologues have found it essential to undermine the public's respect for Science and Reason by attacking the integrity of the climate scientists. That is why the scientists are regularly accused of falsifying evidence and exaggerating its implications in a greedy effort to win more research grants, or secretly pursuing a hidden political agenda to expand the power of government. Such slanderous insults are deeply ironic: extremist ideologues — many financed or employed by carbon polluters — accusing scientists of being greedy extremist ideologues.</p> <p>After World War II, a philosopher studying the impact of organized propaganda on the quality of democratic debate wrote, "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."</p> <p>Is the climate crisis real? Yes, of course it is. Pause for a moment to consider these events of just the past 12 months:</p> <p>• <strong>Heat.</strong> According to NASA, 2010 was tied with 2005 as the hottest year measured since instruments were first used systematically in the 1880s. Nineteen countries set all-time high temperature records. One city in Pakistan, Mohenjo-Daro, reached 128.3 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature ever measured in an Asian city. Nine of the 10 hottest years in history have occurred in the last 13 years. The past decade was the hottest ever measured, even though half of that decade represented a "solar minimum" — the low ebb in the natural cycle of solar energy emanating from the sun.</p> <p>• <strong>Floods.</strong> Megafloods displaced 20 million people in Pakistan, further destabilizing a nuclear-armed country; inundated an area of Australia larger than Germany and France combined; flooded 28 of the 32 districts that make up Colombia, where it has rained almost continuously for the past year; caused a "thousand-year" flood in my home city of Nashville; and led to all-time record flood levels in the Mississippi River Valley. Many places around the world are now experiencing larger and more frequent extreme downpours and snowstorms; last year's "Snowmaggedon" in the northeastern United States is part of the same pattern, notwithstanding the guffaws of deniers.</p> <p>• <strong>Drought.</strong> Historic drought and fires in Russia killed an estimated 56,000 people and caused wheat and other food crops in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to be removed from the global market, contributing to a record spike in food prices. "Practically everything is burning," Russian president Dmitry Medvedev declared. "What's happening with the planet's climate right now needs to be a wake-up call to all of us." The drought level in much of Texas has been raised from "extreme" to "exceptional," the highest category. This spring the majority of the counties in Texas were on fire, and Gov. Rick Perry requested a major disaster declaration for all but two of the state's 254 counties. Arizona is now fighting the largest fire in its history. Since 1970, the fire season throughout the American West has increased by 78 days. Extreme droughts in central China and northern France are currently drying up reservoirs and killing crops.</p> <p>• <strong>Melting Ice.</strong> An enormous mass of ice, four times larger than the island of Manhattan, broke off from northern Greenland last year and slipped into the sea. The acceleration of ice loss in both Greenland and Antarctica has caused another upward revision of global sea-level rise and the numbers of refugees expected from low-lying coastal areas. The Arctic ice cap, which reached a record low volume last year, has lost as much as 40 percent of its area during summer in just 30 years.</p> <p>These extreme events are happening in real time. It is not uncommon for the nightly newscast to resemble a nature hike through the Book of Revelation. Yet most of the news media completely ignore how such events are connected to the climate crisis, or dismiss the connection as controversial; after all, there are scientists on one side of the debate and deniers on the other. A Fox News executive, in an internal e-mail to the network's reporters and editors that later became public, questioned the "veracity of climate change data" and ordered the journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."</p> <p>But in the "real" world, the record droughts, fires, floods and mudslides continue to increase in severity and frequency. Leading climate scientists like Jim Hansen and Kevin Trenberth now say that events like these would almost certainly not be occurring without the influence of man-made global warming. And that's a shift in the way they frame these impacts. Scientists used to caution that we were increasing the probability of such extreme events by "loading the dice" — pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. Now the scientists go much further, warning that we are "painting more dots on the dice." We are not only more likely to roll 12s; we are now rolling 13s and 14s. In other words, the biggest storms are not only becoming more frequent, they are getting bigger, stronger and more destructive.</p> <p>"The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change," Munich Re, one of the two largest reinsurance companies in the world, recently stated. "The view that weather extremes are more frequent and intense due to global warming coincides with the current state of scientific knowledge."</p> <p>Many of the extreme and destructive events are the result of the rapid increase in the amount of heat energy from the sun that is trapped in the atmosphere, which is radically disrupting the planet's water cycle. More heat energy evaporates more water into the air, and the warmer air holds a lot more moisture. This has huge consequences that we now see all around the world.</p> <p>When a storm unleashes a downpour of rain or snow, the precipitation does not originate just in the part of the sky directly above where it falls. Storms reach out — sometimes as far as 2,000 miles — to suck in water vapor from large areas of the sky, including the skies above oceans, where water vapor has increased by four percent in just the last 30 years. (Scientists often compare this phenomenon to what happens in a bathtub when you open the drain; the water rushing out comes from the whole tub, not just from the part of the tub directly above the drain. And when the tub is filled with more water, more goes down the drain. In the same way, when the warmer sky is filled with a lot more water vapor, there are bigger downpours when a storm cell opens the "drain.")</p> <p>In many areas, these bigger downpours also mean longer periods between storms — at the same time that the extra heat in the air is also drying out the soil. That is part of the reason so many areas have been experiencing both record floods and deeper, longer-lasting droughts.</p> <p>Moreover, the scientists have been warning us for quite some time — in increasingly urgent tones — that things will get much, much worse if we continue the reckless dumping of more and more heat-trapping pollution into the atmosphere. <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-scorched-earth-20110624">Drought is projected to spread across significant, highly populated areas of the globe throughout this century.</a> Look at what the scientists say is in store for the Mediterranean nations. Should we care about the loss of Spain, France, Italy, the Balkans, Turkey, Tunisia? Look at what they say is in store for Mexico. Should we notice? Should we care?</p> <p>Maybe it's just easier, psychologically, to swallow the lie that these scientists who devote their lives to their work are actually greedy deceivers and left-wing extremists — and that we should instead put our faith in the pseudoscientists financed by large carbon polluters whose business plans depend on their continued use of the atmospheric commons as a place to dump their gaseous, heat-trapping waste without limit or constraint, free of charge.</p> <p>The truth is this: What we are doing is functionally insane. If we do not change this pattern, we will condemn our children and all future generations to struggle with ecological curses for several millennia to come. Twenty percent of the global-warming pollution we spew into the sky each day will still be there 20,000 years from now!</p> <p>We do have another choice. Renewable energy sources are coming into their own. Both solar and wind will soon produce power at costs that are competitive with fossil fuels; indications are that twice as many solar installations were erected worldwide last year as compared to 2009. The reductions in cost and the improvements in efficiency of photovoltaic cells over the past decade appear to be following an exponential curve that resembles a less dramatic but still startling version of what happened with computer chips over the past 50 years.</p> <p>Enhanced geothermal energy is potentially a nearly limitless source of competitive electricity. Increased energy efficiency is already saving businesses money and reducing emissions significantly. New generations of biomass energy — ones that do not rely on food crops, unlike the mistaken strategy of making ethanol from corn — are extremely promising. Sustainable forestry and agriculture both make economic as well as environmental sense. And all of these options would spread even more rapidly if we stopped subsidizing Big Oil and Coal and put a price on carbon that reflected the true cost of fossil energy — either through the much-maligned cap-and-trade approach, or through a revenue-neutral tax swap.</p> <p>All over the world, the grassroots movement in favor of changing public policies to confront the climate crisis and build a more prosperous, sustainable future is growing rapidly. But most governments remain paralyzed, unable to take action — even after years of volatile gasoline prices, repeated wars in the Persian Gulf, one energy-related disaster after another, and a seemingly endless stream of unprecedented and lethal weather disasters.</p> <p>Continuing on our current course would be suicidal for global civilization. But the key question is: How do we drive home that fact in a democratic society when questions of truth have been converted into questions of power? When the distinction between what is true and what is false is being attacked relentlessly, and when the referee in the contest between truth and falsehood has become an entertainer selling tickets to a phony wrestling match?</p> <p>The "wrestling ring" in this metaphor is the conversation of democracy. It used to be called the "public square." In ancient Athens, it was the Agora. In the Roman Republic, it was the Forum. In the Egypt of the recent Arab Spring, "Tahrir Square" was both real and metaphorical — encompassing Facebook, Twitter, Al-Jazeera and texting.</p> <p>In the America of the late-18th century, the conversation that led to our own "Spring" took place in printed words: pamphlets, newsprint, books, the "Republic of Letters." It represented the fullest flower of the Enlightenment, during which the oligarchic power of the monarchies, the feudal lords and the Medieval Church was overthrown and replaced with a new sovereign: the Rule of Reason.</p> <p>The public square that gave birth to the new consciousness of the Enlightenment emerged in the dozen generations following the invention of the printing press — "the Gutenberg Galaxy," the scholar Marshall McLuhan called it — a space in which the conversation of democracy was almost equally accessible to every literate person. Individuals could both find the knowledge that had previously been restricted to elites and contribute their own ideas.</p> <p>Ideas that found resonance with others rose in prominence much the way Google searches do today, finding an ever larger audience and becoming a source of political power for individuals with neither wealth nor force of arms. Thomas Paine, to take one example, emigrated from England to Philadelphia with no wealth, no family connections and no power other than that which came from his ability to think and write clearly — yet his <em>Common Sense</em> became the <em>Harry Potter</em> of Revolutionary America. The "public interest" mattered, was actively discussed and pursued.</p> <p>But the "public square" that gave birth to America has been transformed beyond all recognition. The conversation that matters most to the shaping of the "public mind" now takes place on television. Newspapers and magazines are in decline. The Internet, still in its early days, will one day support business models that make true journalism profitable — but up until now, the only successful news websites aggregate content from struggling print publications. Web versions of the newspapers themselves are, with few exceptions, not yet making money. They bring to mind the classic image of Wile E. Coyote running furiously in midair just beyond the edge of the cliff, before plummeting to the desert floor far beneath him.</p> <p>The average American, meanwhile, is watching television an astonishing five hours a day. In the average household, at least one television set is turned on more than eight hours a day. Moreover, approximately 75 percent of those using the Internet frequently watch television at the same time that they are online.</p> <p>Unlike access to the "public square" of early America, access to television requires large amounts of money. Thomas Paine could walk out of his front door in Philadelphia and find a dozen competing, low-cost print shops within blocks of his home. Today, if he traveled to the nearest TV station, or to the headquarters of nearby Comcast — the dominant television provider in America — and tried to deliver his new ideas to the American people, he would be laughed off the premises. The public square that used to be a commons has been refeudalized, and the gatekeepers charge large rents for the privilege of communicating to the American people over the only medium that really affects their thinking. "Citizens" are now referred to more commonly as "consumers" or "the audience."</p> <p>That is why up to 80 percent of the campaign budgets for candidates in both major political parties is devoted to the purchase of 30-second TV ads. Since the rates charged for these commercials increase each year, the candidates are forced to raise more and more money in each two-year campaign cycle.</p> <p>Of course, the only reliable sources from which such large sums can be raised continuously are business lobbies. Organized labor, a shadow of its former self, struggles to compete, and individuals are limited by law to making small contributions. During the 2008 campaign, there was a bubble of hope that Internet-based fundraising might even the scales, but in the end, Democrats as well as Republicans relied far more on traditional sources of large contributions. Moreover, the recent deregulation of unlimited — and secret — donations by wealthy corporations has made the imbalance even worse.</p> <p>In the new ecology of political discourse, special-interest contributors of the large sums of money now required for the privilege of addressing voters on a wholesale basis are not squeamish about asking for the quo they expect in return for their quid. Politicians who don't acquiesce don't get the money they need to be elected and re-elected. And the impact is doubled when special interests make clear — usually bluntly — that the money they are withholding will go instead to opponents who are more than happy to pledge the desired quo. Politicians have been racing to the bottom for some time, and are presently tunneling to new depths. It is now commonplace for congressmen and senators first elected decades ago — as I was — to comment in private that the whole process has become unbelievably crass, degrading and horribly destructive to the core values of American democracy.</p> <p>Largely as a result, the concerns of the wealthiest individuals and corporations routinely trump the concerns of average Americans and small businesses. There are a ridiculously large number of examples: eliminating the inheritance tax paid by the wealthiest one percent of families is considered a much higher priority than addressing the suffering of the millions of long-term unemployed; Wall Street's interest in legalizing gambling in trillions of dollars of "derivatives" was considered way more important than protecting the integrity of the financial system and the interests of middle-income home buyers. It's a long list.</p> <p>Almost every group organized to promote and protect the "public interest" has been backpedaling and on the defensive. By sharp contrast, when a coalition of powerful special interests sets out to manipulate U.S. policy, their impact can be startling — and the damage to the true national interest can be devastating.</p> <p>In 2002, for example, the feverish desire to invade Iraq required convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein was somehow responsible for attacking the United States on September 11th, 2001, and that he was preparing to attack us again, perhaps with nuclear weapons. When the evidence — the "facts" — stood in the way of that effort to shape the public mind, they were ridiculed, maligned and ignored. Behind the scenes, the intelligence was manipulated and the public was intentionally deceived. Allies were pressured to adopt the same approach with their publics. A recent inquiry in the U.K. confirmed this yet again. "We knew at the time that the purpose of the dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence," Maj. Gen. Michael Laurie testified. "To make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence, the wording was developed with care." Why? As British intelligence put it, the overthrow of Saddam was "a prize because it could give new security to oil supplies."</p> <p>That goal — the real goal — could have been debated on its own terms. But as Bush administration officials have acknowledged, a truly candid presentation would not have resulted in sufficient public support for the launching of a new war. They knew that because they had studied it and polled it. So they manipulated the debate, downplayed the real motive for the invasion, and made a different case to the public — one based on falsehoods.</p> <p>And the "referee" — the news media — looked the other way. Some, like Fox News, were hyperactive cheerleaders. Others were intimidated into going along by the vitriol heaped on any who asked inconvenient questions. (They know it; many now acknowledge it, sheepishly and apologetically.)</p> <p>Senators themselves fell, with a few honorable exceptions, into the same two camps. A few weeks before the United States invaded Iraq, the late Robert Byrd — God rest his soul — thundered on the Senate floor about the pitiful quality of the debate over the choice between war and peace: "Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent — ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing."</p> <p>The chamber was silent, in part, because many senators were somewhere else — attending cocktail parties and receptions, largely with special-interest donors, raising money to buy TV ads for their next campaigns. Nowadays, in fact, the scheduling of many special-interest fundraisers mirrors the schedule of votes pending in the House and Senate.</p> <p>By the time we invaded Iraq, polls showed, nearly three-quarters of the American people were convinced that the person responsible for the planes flying into the World Trade Center Towers was indeed Saddam Hussein. The rest is history — though, as Faulkner wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Because of that distortion of the truth in the past, we are still in Iraq; and because the bulk of our troops and intelligence assets were abruptly diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq, we are also still in Afghanistan.</p> <p>In the same way, because the banks had their way with Congress when it came to gambling on unregulated derivatives and recklessly endangering credit markets with subprime mortgages, we still have almost double-digit unemployment, historic deficits, Greece and possibly other European countries teetering on the edge of default, and the threat of a double-dip recession. Even the potential default of the United States of America is now being treated by many politicians and too many in the media as yet another phony wrestling match, a political game. Are the potential economic consequences of a U.S. default "real"? Of course they are! Have we gone completely nuts?</p> <p>We haven't gone nuts — but the "conversation of democracy" has become so deeply dysfunctional that our ability to make intelligent collective decisions has been seriously impaired. Throughout American history, we relied on the vibrancy of our public square — and the quality of our democratic discourse — to make better decisions than most nations in the history of the world. But we are now routinely making really bad decisions that completely ignore the best available evidence of what is true and what is false. When the distinction between truth and falsehood is systematically attacked without shame or consequence — when a great nation makes crucially important decisions on the basis of completely false information that is no longer adequately filtered through the fact-checking function of a healthy and honest public discussion — the public interest is severely damaged.</p> <p>That is exactly what is happening with U.S. decisions regarding the climate crisis. The best available evidence demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that the reckless spewing of global-warming pollution in obscene quantities into the atmospheric commons is having exactly the consequences long predicted by scientists who have analyzed the known facts according to the laws of physics.</p> <p>The emergence of the climate crisis seems sudden only because of a relatively recent discontinuity in the relationship between human civilization and the planet's ecological system. In the past century, we have quadrupled global population while relying on the burning of carbon-based fuels — coal, oil and gas — for 85 percent of the world's energy. We are also cutting and burning forests that would otherwise help remove some of the added CO2 from the atmosphere, and have converted agriculture to an industrial model that also runs on carbon-based fuels and strip-mines carbon-rich soils.</p> <p>The cumulative result is a radically new reality — and since human nature makes us vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable, it naturally seems difficult to accept. Moreover, since this new reality is painful to contemplate, and requires big changes in policy and behavior that are at the outer limit of our ability, it is all too easy to fall into the psychological state of denial. As with financial issues like subprime mortgages and credit default swaps, the climate crisis can seem too complex to worry about, especially when the shills for the polluters constantly claim it's all a hoax anyway. And since the early impacts of climatic disruption are distributed globally, they masquerade as an abstraction that is safe to ignore.</p> <p>These vulnerabilities, rooted in our human nature, are being manipulated by the tag-team of Polluters and Ideologues who are trying to deceive us. And the referee — the news media — is once again distracted. As with the invasion of Iraq, some are hyperactive cheerleaders for the deception, while others are intimidated into complicity, timidity and silence by the astonishing vitriol heaped upon those who dare to present the best evidence in a professional manner. Just as TV networks who beat the drums of war prior to the Iraq invasion were rewarded with higher ratings, networks now seem reluctant to present the truth about the link between carbon pollution and global warming out of fear that conservative viewers will change the channel — and fear that they will receive a torrent of flame e-mails from deniers.</p> <p>Many politicians, unfortunately, also fall into the same two categories: those who cheerlead for the deniers and those who cower before them. The latter group now includes several candidates for the Republican presidential nomination who have felt it necessary to abandon their previous support for action on the climate crisis; at least one has been apologizing profusely to the deniers and begging for their forgiveness.</p> <p>"Intimidation" and "timidity" are connected by more than a shared word root. The first is designed to produce the second. As Yeats wrote almost a century ago, "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."</p> <p>Barack Obama's approach to the climate crisis represents a special case that requires careful analysis. His election was accompanied by intense hope that many things in need of change would change. Some things have, but others have not. Climate policy, unfortunately, is in the second category. Why?</p> <p>First of all, anyone who honestly examines the incredible challenges confronting President Obama when he took office has to feel enormous empathy for him: the Great Recession, with the high unemployment and the enormous public and private indebtedness it produced; two seemingly interminable wars; an intractable political opposition whose true leaders — entertainers masquerading as pundits — openly declared that their objective was to ensure that the new president failed; a badly broken Senate that is almost completely paralyzed by the threat of filibuster and is controlled lock, stock and barrel by the oil and coal industries; a contingent of nominal supporters in Congress who are indentured servants of the same special interests that control most of the Republican Party; and a ferocious, well-financed and dishonest campaign poised to vilify anyone who dares offer leadership for the reduction of global-warming pollution.</p> <p>In spite of these obstacles, President Obama included significant climate-friendly initiatives in the economic stimulus package he presented to Congress during his first month in office. With the skillful leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and committee chairmen Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, he helped secure passage of a cap-and-trade measure in the House a few months later. He implemented historic improvements in fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles, and instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to move forward on the regulation of global-warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. He appointed many excellent men and women to key positions, and they, in turn, have made hundreds of changes in environmental and energy policy that have helped move the country forward slightly on the climate issue. During his first six months, he clearly articulated the link between environmental security, economic security and national security — making the case that a national commitment to renewable energy could simultaneously reduce unemployment, dependence on foreign oil and vulnerability to the disruption of oil markets dominated by the Persian Gulf reserves. And more recently, as the issue of long-term debt has forced discussion of new revenue, he proposed the elimination of unnecessary and expensive subsidies for oil and gas.</p> <p>But in spite of these and other achievements, President Obama has thus far failed to use the bully pulpit to make the case for bold action on climate change. After successfully passing his green stimulus package, he did nothing to defend it when Congress decimated its funding. After the House passed cap and trade, he did little to make passage in the Senate a priority. Senate advocates — including one Republican — felt abandoned when the president made concessions to oil and coal companies without asking for anything in return. He has also called for a massive expansion of oil drilling in the United States, apparently in an effort to defuse criticism from those who argue speciously that "drill, baby, drill" is the answer to our growing dependence on foreign oil.</p> <p>The failure to pass legislation to limit global-warming pollution ensured that the much-anticipated Copenhagen summit on a global treaty in 2009 would also end in failure. The president showed courage in attending the summit and securing a rhetorical agreement to prevent a complete collapse of the international process, but that's all it was — a rhetorical agreement. During the final years of the Bush-Cheney administration, the rest of the world was waiting for a new president who would aggressively tackle the climate crisis — and when it became clear that there would be no real change from the Bush era, the agenda at Copenhagen changed from "How do we complete this historic breakthrough?" to "How can we paper over this embarrassing disappointment?"</p> <p>Some concluded from the failure in Copenhagen that it was time to give up on the entire U.N.-sponsored process for seeking an international agreement to reduce both global-warming pollution and deforestation. Ultimately, however, the only way to address the climate crisis will be with a global agreement that in one way or another puts a price on carbon. And whatever approach is eventually chosen, the U.S. simply must provide leadership by changing our own policy.</p> <p>Yet without presidential leadership that focuses intensely on making the public aware of the reality we face, nothing will change. The real power of any president, as Richard Neustadt wrote, is "the power to persuade." Yet President Obama has never presented to the American people the magnitude of the climate crisis. He has simply not made the case for action. He has not defended the science against the ongoing, withering and dishonest attacks. Nor has he provided a presidential venue for the scientific community — including our own National Academy — to bring the reality of the science before the public.</p> <p>Here is the core of it: we are destroying the climate balance that is essential to the survival of our civilization. This is not a distant or abstract threat; it is happening now. The United States is the only nation that can rally a global effort to save our future. And the president is the only person who can rally the United States.</p> <p>Many political advisers assume that a president has to deal with the world of politics as he finds it, and that it is unwise to risk political capital on an effort to actually lead the country toward a new understanding of the real threats and real opportunities we face. Concentrate on the politics of re-election, they say. Don't take chances.</p> <p>All that might be completely understandable and make perfect sense in a world where the climate crisis wasn't "real." Those of us who support and admire President Obama understand how difficult the politics of this issue are in the context of the massive opposition to doing anything at all — or even to recognizing that there is a crisis. And assuming that the Republicans come to their senses and avoid nominating a clown, his re-election is likely to involve a hard-fought battle with high stakes for the country. All of his supporters understand that it would be self-defeating to weaken Obama and heighten the risk of another step backward. Even writing an article like this one carries risks; opponents of the president will excerpt the criticism and strip it of context.</p> <p>But in this case, the President has reality on his side. The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. It is time to act.</p> <p>Those who profit from the unconstrained pollution that is the primary cause of climate change are determined to block our perception of this reality. They have help from many sides: from the private sector, which is now free to make unlimited and secret campaign contributions; from politicians who have conflated their tenures in office with the pursuit of the people's best interests; and — tragically — from the press itself, which treats deception and falsehood on the same plane as scientific fact, and calls it objective reporting of alternative opinions.</p> <p>All things are not equally true. It is time to face reality. We ignored reality in the marketplace and nearly destroyed the world economic system. We are likewise ignoring reality in the environment, and the consequences could be several orders of magnitude worse. Determining what is real can be a challenge in our culture, but in order to make wise choices in the presence of such grave risks, we must use common sense and the rule of reason in coming to an agreement on what is true.</p> <p>So how can we make it happen? How can we as individuals make a difference? In five basic ways:</p> <p>First, become a committed advocate for solving the crisis. You can start with something simple: Speak up whenever the subject of climate arises. When a friend or acquaintance expresses doubt that the crisis is real, or that it's some sort of hoax, don't let the opportunity pass to put down your personal marker. The civil rights revolution may have been driven by activists who put their lives on the line, but it was partly won by average Americans who began to challenge racist comments in everyday conversations.</p> <p>Second, deepen your commitment by making consumer choices that reduce energy use and reduce your impact on the environment. The demand by individuals for change in the marketplace has already led many businesses to take truly significant steps to reduce their global-warming pollution. Some of the corporate changes are more symbolic than real — "green-washing," as it's called — but a surprising amount of real progress is taking place. Walmart, to pick one example, is moving aggressively to cut its carbon footprint by 20 million metric tons, in part by pressuring its suppliers to cut down on wasteful packaging and use lower-carbon transportation alternatives. Reward those companies that are providing leadership.</p> <p>Third, join an organization committed to action on this issue. The Alliance for Climate Protection (climateprotect.org), which I chair, has grassroots action plans for the summer and fall that spell out lots of ways to fight effectively for the policy changes we need. We can also enable you to host a slide show in your community on solutions to the climate crisis — presented by one of the 4,000 volunteers we have trained. Invite your friends and neighbors to come and then enlist them to join the cause.</p> <p>Fourth, contact your local newspapers and television stations when they put out claptrap on climate — and let them know you're fed up with their stubborn and cowardly resistance to reporting the facts of this issue. One of the main reasons they are so wimpy and irresponsible about global warming is that they're frightened of the reaction they get from the deniers when they report the science objectively. So let them know that deniers are not the only ones in town with game. Stay on them! Don't let up! It's true that some media outlets are getting instructions from their owners on this issue, and that others are influenced by big advertisers, but many of them are surprisingly responsive to a genuine outpouring of opinion from their viewers and readers. It is way past time for the ref to do his job.</p> <p>Finally, and above all, don't give up on the political system. Even though it is rigged by special interests, it is not so far gone that candidates and elected officials don't have to pay attention to persistent, engaged and committed individuals. President Franklin Roosevelt once told civil rights leaders who were pressing him for change that he agreed with them about the need for greater equality for black Americans. Then, as the story goes, he added with a wry smile, "Now go out and make me do it."</p> <p>To make our elected leaders take action to solve the climate crisis, we must forcefully communicate the following message: "I care a lot about global warming; I am paying very careful attention to the way you vote and what you say about it; if you are on the wrong side, I am not only going to vote against you, I will work hard to defeat you — regardless of party. If you are on the right side, I will work hard to elect you."</p> <p>Why do you think President Obama and Congress changed their game on "don't ask, don't tell?" It happened because enough Americans delivered exactly that tough message to candidates who wanted their votes. When enough people care passionately enough to drive that message home on the climate crisis, politicians will look at their hole cards, and enough of them will change their game to make all the difference we need.</p> <p>This is not naive; trust me on this. It may take more individual voters to beat the Polluters and Ideologues now than it once did — when special-interest money was less dominant. But when enough people speak this way to candidates, and convince them that they are dead serious about it, change will happen — both in Congress and in the White House. As the great abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass once observed, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will."</p> <p>What is now at risk in the climate debate is nothing less than our ability to communicate with one another according to a protocol that binds all participants to seek reason and evaluate facts honestly. The ability to perceive reality is a prerequisite for self-governance. Wishful thinking and denial lead to dead ends. When it works, the democratic process helps clear the way toward reality, by exposing false argumentation to the best available evidence. That is why the Constitution affords such unique protection to freedom of the press and of speech.</p> <p>The climate crisis, in reality, is a struggle for the soul of America. It is about whether or not we are still capable — given the ill health of our democracy and the current dominance of wealth over reason — of perceiving important and complex realities clearly enough to promote and protect the sustainable well-being of the many. What hangs in the balance is the future of civilization as we know it.</p> <p><strong>Related:</strong> <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/photos/extreme-weather-and-the-climate-crisis-20110622">Photos: 11 Extreme-Weather Signs the Climate Crisis is Real</a><br />• <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-bill-r-i-p-20100721">How Obama Gave Up on Climate Change Legislation</a><br />• <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/lists/whos-to-blame-12-politicians-and-execs-blocking-progress-on-global-warming-20110119">Photos: Who's to Blame: 12 Politicians and Execs Blocking Progress on Global Warming</a><br />• <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/as-the-world-burns-20100106">How Oil and Gas Companies Have Blocked Progress on Global Warming</a></p> <p><em>This story is from </em>Rolling Stone<em> issue 1134/1135, available on newsstands and through Rolling Stone All Access on June 24, 2011.</em></p> </div> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-30339209248150018952011-09-29T19:52:00.000-07:002011-09-29T19:54:49.168-07:00US Becomes a Center of Poverty-wage Manufacturing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihSjslceLXYRWHfChkQh4Nzm6IWkW8YWaFQHcWKe_E9t5qC4ubaqb-_4B60rJBiHa5H8BMOe9MneffV8nVEdIXyq0e2ahfzi4_2a2iqwYxSDSRUAiTEPmwkWRjVRUtwKmC6YIosx3j-ko/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 175px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihSjslceLXYRWHfChkQh4Nzm6IWkW8YWaFQHcWKe_E9t5qC4ubaqb-_4B60rJBiHa5H8BMOe9MneffV8nVEdIXyq0e2ahfzi4_2a2iqwYxSDSRUAiTEPmwkWRjVRUtwKmC6YIosx3j-ko/s200/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5657980608114134914" border="0" /></a><br /><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><br /> <b>By Andre Damon<br /> <br /> September 29, 2011 "</b></span><a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/pers-s29.shtml"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>WSWS</b></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b>" --</b> Earlier this month, the <em>World Socialist Web Site</em> <a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/chat-s23.shtml">reported</a> that production workers are now being hired at $12 an hour at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee plant, and that BMW has opened a new assembly line in Spartanburg, South Carolina that employs mostly contract workers earning $15 per hour.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">These wages, among the lowest for autoworkers anywhere in the developed world, are the result of the unrelenting assault on living standards of American workers over the last three decades. This has reached new heights since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2008.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">With the full backing of the Obama administration, US and foreign-based corporations are exploiting levels of mass unemployment and poverty not seen since the Great Depression in order to transform the US into a cheap labor platform in direct competition with Mexico, China and other low-wage countries.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Tennessee, like nearly half of all US states, has an unemployment rate hovering around 10 percent, and its real jobless rate is probably double. When Volkswagen began taking applications for 1,700 jobs in Chattanooga, it received over 65,000 responses in the first three weeks. On the basis of cutting labor costs by at least a third at its US factory, Volkswagen is able to sell cars for $7,000 less than comparable models made in Germany.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Aided by the plummeting dollar, the wage gap between American workers and their brutally exploited counter-parts in Mexico and Asia is increasingly being narrowed. Asked by a <em>New York Times</em> columnist why Siemens chose to build a new plant in Charlotte, North Carolina instead of China, a spokesman said that for highly skilled work, the labor cost differential wasn’t very big. “For this kind of manufacturing,” he said, “the US can compete with China.”</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The lowering of wages is a key part of Obama administration’s goal of doubling US exports by 2015. While doing nothing to alleviate the jobs crisis, the administration spearheaded the drive to cut wages during the forced bankruptcies and restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler in 2009.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Using the threat of liquidation, the White House demanded the expansion of near poverty wages throughout the industry, stripped workers of the right to strike and demanded labor costs be kept in line with the Asian and European manufacturers operating non-union factories in the South. This has resulted in booming profits for the US-based automakers, which have, in turn, refused to provide any wage increases to workers while shoveling out tens of millions in executive bonuses.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Far from defending the interests of workers, the United Auto Workers has facilitated the systematic lowering of wages. The recent agreement signed by the UAW will increase hourly labor costs for GM by only 1 percent annually, the smallest amount in the past four decades. This includes plans to sharply expand the number of low-paid tier-two workers whose current $15 an hour wage brings them on par with workers at Volkswagen’s Chattanooga plant.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">For decades, the UAW and other unions screamed about workers in low-wage countries “taking American jobs.” Now UAW President Bob King is boasting that GM has shifted production from Mexican plants back to UAW-represented factories in Michigan and other states.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The low-wage benchmark set by the UAW has unleashed a competitive struggle to lower wages throughout the global auto industry. European workers are now being told they must accept American-style wage concessions and “labor flexibility” or their plants will be closed. As the WSWS noted earlier this month, the same year BMW announced it would move production of its X3 sports-utility vehicle to Spartanburg, South Carolina, it announced 5,000 layoffs in Germany.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The severe decline in living standards for the auto workers is particularly striking because they have historically been the highest paid industrial workers in the US, making so-called “middle class wages.” But the experience of plummeting pay and casual labor conditions is common to every section of the working class in what has become the “new normal” in America.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Since the start of the economic downturn, wages have been in free fall, and there is no prospect for any recovery of the jobs market. According to a census report released earlier this month, real median household income fell 2.3 percent ($1,154) last year and 7.1 percent below the rate reached a decade ago. Young workers have been particularly hard hit, with more than a third of all households headed by a parent under thirty living in poverty in 2010.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The explosion of poverty over the last three years—along with home foreclosures, homelessness, hunger and the growing number of uninsured—takes place alongside the accumulation of fantastic levels of wealth by the financial aristocracy that controls the economy and political system.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">These intolerable conditions can only be stopped through the collective resistance of the working class. New organizations of struggle, independent of the UAW and other anti-labor organizations, must be built to spearhead an industrial and political struggle by every section of the working class—union and non-union, manufacturing and service, at US and foreign-owned companies. In every factory, office, and store, workers should set up committees to plan and organize collective resistance to wage cuts and layoffs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Such a fight requires an entirely new political perspective. The national chauvinism and race to the bottom promoted by the trade unions and the big business parties must be rejected so that US workers can consciously unite their struggles with workers in Europe, Asia and Latin America.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">It is necessary to understand that this is a battle not simply against this or that employer but the entire capitalist system, which is impoverishing the majority of the world’s population in order to enrich the wealthy few. In every country, the political parties and trade unions defend the profit system and are complicit in the looting of society by the corporate and financial aristocracy.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">In the US, the Obama administration has demonstrated that the Democratic Party, no less than the Republican, is a tool of Wall Street and the corporations, determined to gut living standards and slash vitally necessary social programs.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The working class must build a mass political party to fight to take power in its own hands. The economic dictatorship of the banks and big corporations must be broken and economic life reorganized to meet the interests of the masses of working people who create society’s wealth.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">The Socialist Equality Party calls for the transformation of the major financial and industrial concerns, including the auto industry, into publicly owned utilities. Capitalism must be replaced with a planned and rational system based on social need, not the profits of billionaires. Only then can the right to a job and a decent wage be secured for all people.</span></p> <p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">Copyright © 1998-2011 <i>World Socialist Web Site</i> </span></p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-89127069254968949392011-09-05T17:27:00.000-07:002011-09-05T17:28:16.900-07:00In the world's breadbasket, climate change feeds some worry<div id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761435" class="yom-mod yom-art-hd"><div id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761434" class="bd"><h1 id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761436" class="headline">In the world's breadbasket, climate change feeds some worry</h1><a href="http://www.reuters.com/" rel="nofollow"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/FZN6924R0WZ__x92.x6.GA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/reuters/d0c3eb8ca18907492a4b337b5cec5193.jpeg" alt="Reuters" title="" class="logo" /></a><cite id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761433" class="byline vcard">By <span class="fn">Christine Stebbins</span> | <span class="provider org">Reuters</span> – <abbr title="2011-09-05T19:21:02Z">5 hrs ago</abbr></cite></div></div> <div id="yui_3_3_0_5_1315268645437114" class="yom-mod social-buttons"><div id="yui_3_3_0_5_1315268645437113" class="bd"><div class="yui3-widget yui3-ymsb" id="yui_3_3_0_5_131526864543761"><div id="ymsb-13152686450361-1" class="ymsb ymsb-facebook ymsb-retweet ymsb-inshare ymsb-mail ymsb-print yui3-ymsb-content"><ul><li id="yui_3_3_0_5_1315268645437101" class="ymsb-module ymsb-facebook-module" style="min-width: 89px;"><span id="yui_3_3_0_5_131526864543799"></span><br /></li><li class="ymsb-module ymsb-retweet-module lang-en"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/_xhr/social/share/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fworlds-breadbasket-climate-change-feeds-worry-192102446.html&text=In%20the%20world%27s%20breadbasket%2C%20climate%20change%20feeds%20some%20worry%20-%20Yahoo%21%20News&via=YahooNews&related=YahooOddNew,Yahoo&counturl=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fworlds-breadbasket-climate-change-feeds-worry-192102446.html&lang=en&action=retweet" title="tweet" class="ymsb-retweet-btn" target="popup"><span>tweet</span></a><a id="yui_3_3_0_5_1315268645437117" href="http://twitter.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fworlds-breadbasket-climate-change-feeds-worry-192102446.html" title="tweet count" class="ymsb-retweet-count count-enabled" target="tab"><span>11</span></a></li><li class="ymsb-module ymsb-inshare-module lang-en-US"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/_xhr/social/share/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.yahoo.com%2Fworlds-breadbasket-climate-change-feeds-worry-192102446.html&text=In%20the%20world%27s%20breadbasket%2C%20climate%20change%20feeds%20some%20worry%20-%20Yahoo%21%20News&action=inshare" title="Share" class="ymsb-inshare-btn" target="popup"><span>Share</span></a><a id="yui_3_3_0_5_1315268645437122" title="Share count" class="ymsb-inshare-count count-enabled"><span>1</span></a></li><li class="ymsb-module ymsb-mail-module lang-en-US "><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/_xhr/mtf/panel/" title="Email" class="ymsb-mail-btn" rel="nofollow"><span>Email</span></a></li><li class="ymsb-module ymsb-print-module lang-en-US "><a title="Print" class="ymsb-print-btn"><span>Print</span></a></li></ul></div></div></div></div> <div class="yog-col yog-5u"> <div class="yom-mod yom-art-related yom-art-related-modal" id="mediaarticlerelated"><div class="hd"><h3>Related Content</h3></div><div class="bd"><ul><li class="photo first last"><a href="http://news.yahoo.com/photos/reuters-national-news-photos-1314895075-slideshow/field-corn-shown-iowa-photo-192102446.html" class="media"><img src="http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/gCi5IBObivi3AFBj4j5bPA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Y2g9MzAwO2NyPTE7Y3c9NDUwO2R4PTA7ZHk9MDtmaT11bGNyb3A7aD0xMjc7cT04NTt3PTE5MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/Reuters/2011-09-05T192102Z_01_BTRE7841HR600_RTROPTP_2_OBAMA.JPG" alt="A field of corn is shown from the motorcade carrying U.S. President Barack Obama in between stops near Monona, Iowa, August 16, 2011. REUTERS/Jason Reed" title="A field of corn is shown from the motorcade carrying U.S. President Barack Obama in between stops near Monona, Iowa, August 16, 2011. REUTERS/Jason Reed" height="127" width="190" /></a><p>A field of corn is shown from the motorcade carrying U.S. President Barack Obama …</p></li></ul></div></div> </div> <div id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761396" class="yom-mod yom-art-content"><div id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761395" class="bd"> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761432">CHICAGO (Reuters) - It can't happen here, can it?</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761399">The United States, the breadbasket and supplier of last resort for a hungry world, has been such an amazing food producer in the last half-century that most Americans take for granted annual bounteous harvests of grain, meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables and other crops.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761400">When horrific images of drought or famine in Africa, Asia or other regions land in American media, America is usually first in line with food aid shipments, air drops, and other rescue efforts from its seemingly endless stores.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761429">The U.S. alone accounts for half of all world corn exports, 40 percent of soybean exports and 30 percent of wheat exports.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761401">But climate change fears are sounding some warning bells.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761402">Some scientists and agronomists are becoming increasingly concerned about the real effects they see now on growing conditions in the Midwest, the vast black-soiled region long the core region of the U.S. agricultural miracle.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761403">They also say that not only skeptical farmers but also government authorities are trying to quietly adapt, from equipment to planting to research.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761404">"We don't have a long-term reserve. We have a global food supply of about 2 or 3 weeks," said Eugene Takle, Professor of Agricultural Meteorology and Director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State University.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761405">"We've become insensitive to climate -- with air conditioning, irrigation and better practices," he said. "Well, I think we need to rethink that. Just how vulnerable are we?"</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761406">Takle and others say the future is now.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761407">"It's not the long-term climate trends," Takle says, "It's the variability. It's the extreme events that have brought the vulnerability of agriculture to climate into the forefront. We think about, and wring our hands for awhile."</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761408">Jerry Hatfield, Laboratory Director at the National Soil Tilth Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, has worked with other scientists in research for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He says climate change is occurring right now, as is adaptation to it, in the U.S. farm belt.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761409">"We don't have to think about 2030 or 2050, in the recent memories we've had a lot more variability in our weather," Hatfield said. "This increasing variability of weather, which is associated with our changing climate scenarios, is going to continue to increase the variability in production.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761410">"That's what concerns a lot of us," Hatfield said.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761411">GOVERNMENT FUNDING RESEARCH, FARMERS ADJUSTING</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761412">The IPCC, which has been attacked by climate change skeptics, concluded in 2007 that increased frequency of heat stress, droughts and floods are "creating the possibility for surprises, with impacts that are larger, and occurring earlier, than predicted using changes in mean variables alone."</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761413">"Climate variability and change also modify the risks of fires, pest and pathogen outbreak, negatively affecting food, fiber and forestry," the Panel said.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761414">Despite the attacks by skeptics, IPCC's conclusions have been accepted as valid by institutions like the U.S. National Academies of Sciences.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761415">In June 2009, the science academies of the G8 countries, plus Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa, demanded action to address global climate change that "is happening even faster than previously estimated."</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761416">Takle said Midwest farmers are already adapting.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761417">"Farmers say they don't believe in climate change, but you look at how they spend money and are adapting," he said.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761418">Takle pointed to bigger machinery to allow faster and denser seeding amid rainier springs in the Midwest. Frosts are trending later so crops are kept in fields longer to dry.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761419">But many of the changes are more subtle and hidden than the weather events that grab the headlines, like the massive wildfires, flooding and tornadoes that have hit agricultural areas of the Midwest, Plains and Southwest this year.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761420">Takle said measurable trends of more humidity, for example, has led to higher night-time summer temperatures in the Corn Belt and likely trimmed corn yields in recent years. Corn likes hot days but cool nights.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761421">In Iowa, dew point temperatures have risen 3-1/2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 35-40 years, equating to 13 percent more moisture in the air during the summertime, he said.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761422">"It's very important that we recognize the vulnerability," Takle said. "We have situations like in Texas. Huge reservoirs have just vanished. You can't do a work around."</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761423">The U.S. Agriculture Department this year issued its first grants to study crops and climate change.</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761424">"If you're interested in adapting to changes in climatic norms you need to have access to diversity," said Randy Wisser of the University of Delaware, who will study the genetics in exotic tropical maize to see how this might help farmers.</p> <p>Other grants will address greenhouse gas emissions that affect climate, notably methane from livestock and carbon dioxide from growing crops.</p> <p>"We are just trying to find a suitable way to keep these farmers in business. It took generations to create the problem it will take generations to fix the problem," said William Horwath of the University in California, who will develop strategy for rice growing in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.</p> <p>"It's a pretty darn complex problem," Hatfield said. "We poke at it, but we need to get very serious about how do we think about adapting our crop production goals to the concepts of variability."</p> <p id="yui_3_3_0_1_1315268653761597">(Reporting by Christine Stebbins; Editing by Peter Bohan)</p> </div></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-38177603208144462902011-09-04T20:16:00.000-07:002011-09-04T20:35:10.222-07:009/11, a decade on.I've watched a string of 9/11 conspiracy pieces on broadcast tv and radio. All begin with the assumption that, of course, 9/11 "conspiracy theorists" are wrong, and the official story is right. The reason you believe the official story is because you don't know the official story. This video, "Loose Change" is not the last (or even the end of the first words) on the problems with the "official" story. You might check out Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth. Still, Loose Change is a good starting point for examining why the official story just doesn't make much sense.
<br /><a href="http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE"></a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Go Here</span></a>
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-32576168737655840582011-07-11T17:13:00.000-07:002011-07-11T17:18:21.438-07:00Say What? Defense Secretary Panetta Tells Troops They're in Iraq Because of 9/11 Attack<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNNy7u0QVceess73Fh6U0dgrvfWjiB43QEeApnIUv6SYEYofnfx_3UaQ2Gv86mKJZkGAvOCyc00iRp7cb5xiMCiN8h8HplPAnYztev5Fwc5uFXqd3LbcjTHGXpFE49FgubiuxELvmO7XI/s1600/480px-Leon_Panetta_official_portrait.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 160px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNNy7u0QVceess73Fh6U0dgrvfWjiB43QEeApnIUv6SYEYofnfx_3UaQ2Gv86mKJZkGAvOCyc00iRp7cb5xiMCiN8h8HplPAnYztev5Fwc5uFXqd3LbcjTHGXpFE49FgubiuxELvmO7XI/s200/480px-Leon_Panetta_official_portrait.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5628253526974277330" border="0" /></a><br /><div class="headline"><h1>Say What? Defense Secretary Panetta Tells Troops They're in Iraq Because of 9/11 Attack</h1></div> <p name="paragraph1" id="paragraph1">Looks like Panetta is off to a stellar start. The Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/panetta-echoes-bush-comments-linking-iraq-invasion-to-war-on-al-qaeda/2011/07/11/gIQA3m3h8H_story.html">reports</a>:</p><blockquote><p name="paragraph3" id="paragraph3">Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday appeared to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq as part of the war against al-Qaeda, an argument controversially made by the Bush administration but refuted by President Obama and many Democrats.</p></blockquote><p name="paragraph5" id="paragraph5">While speaking in Iraq to soldiers, the Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/national-security/panetta-echoes-bush-comments-linking-iraq-invasion-to-war-on-al-qaeda/2011/07/11/gIQA3m3h8H_story.html">reports</a>:</p><blockquote><p name="paragraph7" id="paragraph7">"The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked," Panetta told the troops. "And 3,000 Americans -- 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings -- got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we've been fighting as a result of that."</p></blockquote><p name="paragraph9" id="paragraph9">Really? Our Secretary of Defense in 2011 is still re-iterating Bushisms about Iraq. I thought we had debunked that big old lie, but apparently one pretty important person in charge of our military didn't get the memo.</p><p name="paragraph10" id="paragraph10">As Joan McCarter writes for <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/07/11/993480/-Panetta:-Were-in-Iraq-because-of9-11?via=blog_1">Daily Kos</a>:</p><blockquote><p name="paragraph12" id="paragraph12">Granted, telling troops who are still risking their lives in Iraq that they are still there based on a big fat lie, a war of choice that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks by al Qaeda, which had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq, wouldn't do anything to help what is undoubtedly already pretty shitty morale.</p></blockquote><p name="paragraph14" id="paragraph14">But he didn't have to go with the big Bush lie.</p>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-22435040336750043012011-06-29T14:44:00.000-07:002011-06-29T14:46:11.188-07:00A World Overwhelmed By Western Hypocrisy<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYZPv8h57kt3l_dc9BFymypVN-Gkf_UQurvc_XFvKAYxdPFe9k0q8lvjDnnsxw3C_y1Nt1hZHS308lCgcx6VAm9cuGLokyOIlHjn_MAdVX16pxS7YpzHP3lrjwfU2YNPZiabEqGoYlx6I/s1600/Paul_craig_roberts.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 165px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYZPv8h57kt3l_dc9BFymypVN-Gkf_UQurvc_XFvKAYxdPFe9k0q8lvjDnnsxw3C_y1Nt1hZHS308lCgcx6VAm9cuGLokyOIlHjn_MAdVX16pxS7YpzHP3lrjwfU2YNPZiabEqGoYlx6I/s200/Paul_craig_roberts.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623761290099768530" border="0" /></a><br /> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top"> <br /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> <div class="postContent"> <div class="text parbase section"> <div class="text"> <span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><b><span style="font-size:6;">A World Overwhelmed By Western Hypocrisy<br /> </span></b><br /> <b>By Paul Craig Roberts<br /> <br /> June 29, 2011 </b><strong>"</strong></span><a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/"><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>Information Clearing House</strong></span></a><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"><strong>" </strong>--<b> -- -- - Western institutions have become caricatures of hypocrisy. </b><br /> <br /> The International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank are violating their charters in order to bail out French, German, and Dutch private banks. The IMF is only empowered to make balance of payments loans, but is lending to the Greek government for prohibited budgetary reasons in order that the Greek government can pay the banks. The ECB is prohibited from bailing out member country governments, but is doing so anyway in order that the banks can be paid. The German parliament approved the bailout, which violates provisions of the European Treaty and Germany’s own Basic Law. The case is in the German Constitutional Court, a fact unreported in the US media.<br /> <br /> US president George W. Bush appointed an immigrant, who is not impressed with the US Constitution and the separation of powers, to the Justice (sic) Department in order to get a ruling that the president has “unitary powers” that elevate him above statutory US law, treaties, and international law. According to this immigrant’s legal decisions, the “unitary executive” can violate with impunity the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which prevents spying on Americans without warrants obtained from the FISA Court. The immigrant also ruled that Bush could violate with impunity the statutory US laws against torture as well as the Geneva Conventions. In other words, the fictional “unitary powers” make the president into a Caesar.<br /> <br /> Constitutional protections, such as habeas corpus, which prohibit government from holding people indefinitely without presenting charges and evidence to a court, and which prohibit government from denying detained people due process of law and access to an attorney, were thrown out the window by the US Department of Justice (sic), and the federal courts went along with most of it.<br /> <br /> As did Congress, “the people’s representatives”. Congress even enacted the Military Tribunals Commissions Act of 2006, signed by the White House Brownshirt on October 17.<br /> <br /> This act allows anyone alleged to be an “unlawful enemy combatant” to be sentenced to death on the basis of secret and hearsay evidence not presented in the kangaroo military court placed out of reach of US federal courts. The crazed nazis in Congress who supported this total destruction of Anglo-American law masqueraded as “patriots in the war against terrorism.”<br /> <br /> The act designates anyone accused by the US, without evidence being presented, as being part of the Taliban, al-Qaeda, or “associated forces” to be an “unlawful enemy combatant,” which strips the person of the protection of law. Not even George Orwell could have conceived of such a formulation.<br /> <br /> The Taliban consists of indigenous Afghan peoples, who, prior to the US military intervention, were fighting to unify the country. The Taliban are Islamist, and the US government fears another Islamist government, like the one in Iran that was blowback from US intervention in Iran’s internal affairs. The “freedom and democracy” Americans overthrew an elected Iranian leader and imposed a tyrant. American-Iranian relations have never recovered from the tyranny that Washington imposed on Iranians.<br /> <br /> Washington is opposed to any government whose leaders cannot be purchased to perform as Washington’s puppets. This is why George W. Bush’s regime invaded Afghanistan, why Washington overthrew Saddam Hussein, and why Washington wants to overthrow Libya, Syria, and Iran.<br /> <br /> America’s First Black (or half white) President inherited the Afghan war, which has lasted longer than World War II with no victory in sight. Instead of keeping with his election promises and ending the fruitless war, Obama intensified it with a “surge,”<br /> <br /> The war is now ten years old, and the Taliban control more of the country than does the US and its NATO puppets. Frustrated by their failure, the Americans and their NATO puppets increasingly murder women, children, village elders, Afghan police, and aid workers.<br /> <br /> A video taken by a US helicopter gunship, leaked to Wikileaks and released, shows American forces, as if they were playing video games, slaughtering civilians, including camera men for a prominent news service, as they are walking down a peaceful street. A father with small children, who stopped to help the dying victims of American soldiers’ fun and games, was also blown away, as were his children. The American voices on the video blame the children’s demise on the father for bringing kids into a “war zone.” It was no war zone, just a quiet city street with civilians walking along.<br /> <br /> The video documents American crimes against humanity as powerfully as any evidence used against the Nazis in the aftermath of World War II at the Nuremberg Trials.<br /> <br /> Perhaps the height of lawlessness was attained when the Obama regime announced that it had a list of American citizens who would be assassinated without due process of law.<br /> <br /> One would think that if law any longer had any meaning in Western civilization, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, indeed, the entire Bush/Cheney regime, as well as Tony Blair and Bush’s other co-conspirators, would be standing before the International Criminal Court.<br /> <br /> Yet it is Gadaffi for whom the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants. Western powers are using the International Criminal Court, which is supposed to serve justice, for self-interested reasons that are unjust.<br /> <br /> What is Gadaffi’s crime? His crime is that he is attempting to prevent Libya from being overthrown by a US-supported, and perhaps organized, armed uprising in Eastern Libya that is being used to evict China from its oil investments in Eastern Libya.<br /> <br /> Libya is the first armed revolt in the so-called “Arab Spring.” Reports have made it clear that there is nothing “democratic” about the revolt. <a href="http://www.english.rfi.fr/print/95867?print=now">http://www.english.rfi.fr/print/95867?print=now</a><br /> <br /> The West managed to push a “no-fly” resolution through its puppet organization, the United Nations. The resolution was limited to neutralizing Gadaffi’s air force. However, Washington, and its French puppet, Sarkozy, quickly made an “expansive interpretation” of the UN resolution and turned it into authorization to become directly involved in the war.<br /> <br /> Gadaffi has resisted the armed rebellion against the state of Libya, which is the normal response of a government to rebellion. The US would respond the same as would the UK and France. But by trying to prevent the overthrow of his country and his country from becoming another American puppet state, Gadaffi has been indicted. The International Criminal Court knows that it cannot indict the real perpetrators of crimes against humanity--Bush, Blair, Obama, and Sarkozy--but the court needs cases and accepts the victims that the West succeeds in demonizing.<br /> <br /> In our post-Orwellian times, everyone who resists or even criticizes the US is a criminal. For example, Washington considers Julian Assange and Bradley Manning to be criminals, because they made information available that exposed crimes committed by the US government. Anyone who even disagrees with Washington, is considered to be a “threat,” and Obama can have such “threats” assassinated or arrested as a “terrorist suspect” or as someone “providing aid and comfort to terrorists.” American conservatives and liberals, who once supported the US Constitution, are all in favor of shredding the Constitution in the interest of being “safe from terrorists.” They even accept such intrusions as porno-scans and sexual groping in order to be “safe” on air flights.<br /> <br /> The collapse of law is across the board. The Supreme Court decided that it is “free speech” for America to be ruled by corporations, not by law and certainly not by the people. On June 27, the US Supreme Court advanced the fascist state that the “conservative” court is creating with the ruling that Arizona cannot publicly fund election candidates in order to level the playing field currently unbalanced by corporate money. The “conservative” US Supreme Court considers public funding of candidates to be unconstitutional, but not the “free speech” funding by business interests who purchase the government in order to rule the country. The US Supreme Court has become a corporate functionary and legitimizes rule by corporations. Mussolini called this rule, imposed on Americans by the US Supreme Court, fascism.<br /> <br /> The Supreme Court also ruled on June 27 that California violated the US Constitution by banning the sale of violent video games to kids, despite evidence that the violent games trained the young to violent behavior. It is fine with the Supreme Court for soldiers, whose lives are on the line, to be prohibited under penalty of law from drinking beer before they are 21, but the idiot Court supports inculcating kids to be murderers, as long as it is in the interest of corporate profits, in the name of “free speech.”<br /> <br /> Amazing, isn’t it, that a court so concerned with ‘free speech” has not protected American war protesters from unconstitutional searches and arrests, or protected protesters from being attacked by police or herded into fenced-in areas distant from the object of protest.<br /> <br /> As the second decade of the 21st century opens, those who oppose US hegemony and the evil that emanates from Washington risk being declared to be “terrorists.” If they are American citizens, they can be assassinated. If they are foreign leaders, their country can be invaded. When captured, they can be executed, like Saddam Hussein, or sent off to the ICC, like the hapless Serbs, who tried to defend their country from being dismantled by the Americans.<br /> <br /> And the American sheeple think that they have “freedom and democracy.”<br /> <br /> Washington relies on fear to coverup its crimes. A majority of Americans now fear and hate Muslims, peoples about whom Americans know nothing but the racist propaganda which encourages Americans to believe that Muslims are hiding under their beds in order to murder them in their sleep.<br /> <br /> The neoconservatives, of course, are the purveyors of fear. The more fearful the sheeple, the more they seek safety in the neocon police state and the more they overlook Washington’s crimes of aggression against Muslims.<br /> <br /> Safety uber alles. That has become the motto of a once free and independent American people, who once were admired but today are despised.<br /> <br /> In America lawlessness is now complete. Women can have abortions, but if they have stillbirths, they are arrested for murder. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges">http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges</a><br /> <br /> Americans are such a terrified and abused people that a 95-year old woman dying from leukemia traveling to a last reunion with family members was forced to remove her adult diaper in order to clear airport security. <a href="http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/mother-41324-search-adult.html">http://www.nwfdailynews.com/news/mother-41324-search-adult.html</a> Only a population totally cowed would permit such abuses of human dignity. </span><p><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;">In a June 27 interview on National Public Radio, Ban Ki-moon, Washington’s South Korean puppet installed as the Secretary General of the United Nations, was unable to answer why the UN and the US tolerate the slaughter of unarmed civilians in Bahrain, but support the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Gadaffi for defending Libya against armed rebellion. Gadaffi has killed far fewer people than the US, UK, or the Saudis in Bahrain. Indeed, NATO and the Americans have killed more Libyans than has Gadaffi. The difference is that the US has a naval base in Bahrain, but not in Libya.<br /> <br /> There is nothing left of the American character. Only a people who have lost their soul could tolerate the evil that emanates from Washington.</span></p></div> </div> </div> <a style="float: right; text-decoration: none; margin-left: 10px;" title="Share on Google Buzz" target="_blank" href="http://www.google.com/reader/link?url=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28431.htm&srcUrl=http://intensedebate.com/&srcTitle=via+IntenseDebate&title=%C2%A0%C2%A0%20A%20World%20Overwhelmed%20By%20Western%20Hypocrisy%C2%A0%C2%A0%20:%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House:%20ICH"><img src="http://s.intensedebate.com/images/buzz.png" /> Buzz It</a><a style="text-decoration: none; float: right;" target="_blank" class="fb_share_button" href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28431.htm">Share</a><div style="display: block; margin: 15px 0pt;"><a href="http://www.addtoany.com/share_save#url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Farticle28431.htm%23IDCommentIDComment167833065&title=%C2%A0%C2%A0%20A%20World%20Overwhelmed%20By%20Western%20Hypocrisy%C2%A0%C2%A0%20%3A%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%C2%A0%20Information%20Clearing%20House%3A%20ICH&description=" class="a2a_dd"><img src="http://s7.addthis.com/static/btn/v2/lg-share-en.gif" border="0" height="16" width="125" /></a></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-32341621253232595512011-06-09T20:08:00.000-07:002011-06-09T20:11:47.198-07:00Key regulator: Speculators Driving Up the Price of Fuel, Grain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWf8PqKNhwresEPDUtDNtJ9CLDLL0XnnjnVkut5oODZsJi9rtQWsRdqzllA-AbPjRuB_KLxfBr8gRc-wzU2HHcjUDB6jR-ehhpi2d_829BWpxW4BU_9iNElLPnCxm2PXXZY27Qbs0Bybo/s1600/images.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWf8PqKNhwresEPDUtDNtJ9CLDLL0XnnjnVkut5oODZsJi9rtQWsRdqzllA-AbPjRuB_KLxfBr8gRc-wzU2HHcjUDB6jR-ehhpi2d_829BWpxW4BU_9iNElLPnCxm2PXXZY27Qbs0Bybo/s200/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5616423431452285394" border="0" /></a><br /><h1>Key regulator: Speculators Driving Up the Price of Fuel, Grain<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span></h1> <div id="story_body"> <div id="rrRegistraion"> <div id="registration"> <span id="nonmember"></span> <span class="loginLinksdesc"></span></div> </div> <div id="story_assets"> <h2>More on this Story</h2> <ul><li>Story | <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/01/14/82393/trading-commission-proposes-curbing.html">Trading commission proposes curbing speculation in oil prices</a></li><li>Story | <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/04/29/93170/in-another-wall-street-misdeed.html">In another Wall Street misdeed, Morgan Stanley settles oil-trading flap</a></li><li>Story | <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/03/02/109735/lack-of-information-not-lack-of.html">Lack of information, not lack of oil, driving price rise</a></li><li>Story | <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/04/21/112619/obama-orders-probe-to-find-whats.html">Obama orders probe to find what's driving up gas prices</a></li><li>On the Web | <a href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/economy">More McClatchy coverage of the nation's economic pain</a></li></ul></div> <h5 class="byline">By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers</h5> <p> WASHINGTON — In the sharpest criticism yet of excessive speculation in oil markets, the head of a key regulatory agency presented data Thursday showing that almost nine in 10 traders betting that oil prices would rise were financial speculators, not actual end-users of oil. </p> <p> Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler vowed during a New York speech that his agency soon will act "to guard against the burdens of excessive speculation." </p><p> He also said the CFTC will publish historical data later this month to show who's betting on oil prices. Those bets drive up the contract price of oil and are partly responsible for current high oil and gasoline prices. </p> <p> Futures markets allow airlines that buy jet fuel or cereal makers who that grain to hedge against the risk of changing prices by purchasing contracts for future delivery at a set price. A buyer and seller come together to determine a fair market value. But a growing number of experts now warn that excessive speculation in these markets has driven up prices to the speculators' profit and to the punishment of the public.</p><p> New data seem to confirm the trend. Gensler cited May 31 data that show end-users accounted for just 12 percent of the "long" positions in futures contracts for benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil. Long positions are bets that prices will rise in the future. That means that 88 percent of bets on price hikes for oil were held by financial players_ mainly Wall Street banks and hedge funds that invest for the ultra wealthy — not interests seeking to use the oil. </p><p> The trend was the same for wheat futures traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, Gensler said; there end-users represented just 10 percent of trades betting that prices would keep rising months out — or "long" positions. Wheat prices, like oil, have soared this year.</p><p> This May 31 data suggests that huge inflows of speculative money create a self-fulfilling prophecy that drives up commodity prices.</p><p> CFTC data also show that up to 80 percent of trading in key futures markets is either day trades or trading around the expiration of contracts, Gensler said. </p><p> "This means that only about 20 percent or less of the trading is done by traders who bring a longer-term perspective to the market on the price of the commodity," the CFTC chairman said. "We plan to publish historical data on directional position changes later this month on our website to enhance market transparency."</p><p> Gensler said a top priority is finalizing a rule to establish so-called position limits_ caps on how much of the market any one trader can capture — "a tool to curb or prevent excessive speculation that may burden interstate commerce," Gensler said. </p><p> Up until 2001, financial speculators faced caps on how much they could buy in futures markets. Those caps disappeared in 2001. A McClatchy investigation last month showed that participation ratios have flipped since then, with speculators now accounting for more than 70 percent of the oil futures market. On Thursday, Gensler said that number is up to 88 percent.</p><p> Gensler said that last year's Dodd-Frank Act gave the CFTC new authority to policy financial manipulation of commodity markets. "We will use the tools to be a more effective cop on the beat, to promote market integrity and to protect market participants," he vowed.</p><p> "It is essential to complete the task of implementing the aggregate position limits regime, congressionally mandated to guard against the burdens of excessive speculation," Gensler said.</p><p> Gensler warned that Republicans in Congress have tried to slash CFTC funding in a bid to thwart its new regulatory powers, and Wall Street firms are furiously lobbying to delay new rules. </p><p> Gensler said that the CFTC's mandate has been expanded seven-fold, and it needs more resources, not less, to do its job. "If the agency's funding does not grow — or worse, gets cut — we would be unable to enforce new rules" to protect the public, he said.</p><p> </p><p> In a Tuesday investment note, analysts at Wall Street research firm Oppenheimer & Co. said the OPEC oil cartel has put a number on how much speculators may be adding to the price of a barrel of oil.</p><p> "OPEC believes the current oil prices reflect $15-20 (per barrel) of risk premium attributed to financial speculation, which may be conservative," the Oppenheimer report said. Oil currently trades at about $100 a barrel. "Barring a severe economic recession, we believe oil prices will remain inflated unless oil speculation is effectively regulated."</p><p> Another McClatchy investigative report in May, based on secret State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks, showed how Saudi producers told the Bush administration they'd grant Washington's request to pump more oil in 2008 as prices hit record levels even though they lacked customers for the oil they already were pumping. Oil prices were soaring because of unbridled financial speculation, the Saudis insisted.</p><p> Not everyone blames speculators. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke used a Tuesday speech in Atlanta to insist that global demand for oil is outstripping supply and brings oil price volatility. Similarly, he said, droughts and production shortfalls have resulted in demand outstripping supply in many grains markets. </p><p> <strong></strong></p></div><br />Read more: <a style="color: #003399;" href="http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/09/115551/key-regulator-speculators-swamping.html#ixzz1Oq4XZgXQ">http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/06/09/115551/key-regulator-speculators-swamping.html#ixzz1Oq4XZgXQ</a>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5537958477222913346.post-71386924287279494002011-06-04T08:21:00.001-07:002011-06-04T08:21:35.556-07:00This is why the United States is doomed<h1 class="headline">This is why the United States is doomed</h1> <h3 class="deck">The GOP response to the jobs report: The Earth is flat and two plus two equals five </h3> <div class="byline clearfix"> <span>By <a href="http://www.salon.com/author/andrew_leonard/index.html">Andrew Leonard</a></span> <ul class="shareTools"><li><span></span><br /></li></ul> </div> <div class="story_preview" id="story_preview_mps2046103"> <div class="art l"> <img class="md_horiz" id="img_mps2046103" src="http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2011/06/03/this_why_the_united_states_is_doomed/md_horiz.jpg" alt="This is why the United States is doomed" /> <div class="credit">AP/Charles Dharapak</div> <div class="caption">Eric Cantor and John Boehner</div> </div> <p>The Hill reports the <a target="_blank" href="http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/801-economy/164627-house-gop-blames-white-house-over-spending-for-weak-job-growth">House Republican response</a> to Friday morning's <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/unemployment/index.html?story=/tech/htww/2011/06/03/may_jobs_report">distressing jobs report.</a></p> <p> </p><blockquote> <p>House Republicans pinned the blame for Friday's disappointing jobs report squarely on the White House, saying the Obama administration's "over-taxing, over-regulating and over-spending" has stifled economic growth.</p> <p>"One look at the jobs report should be enough to show the White House it's time to get serious about cutting spending and dealing with our ailing economy," Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said.</p> </blockquote> <p>How many blatant untruths can a Republican speaker of the House stuff into one sentence? Quite a few!</p> <p>1) President Obama has cut taxes. His stimulus bill included tax cuts for <a target="_blank" href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/us/politics/19taxes.html">95 percent of all American working families.</a> He signed off on the extension of the Bush tax cuts, while throwing in a new payroll tax cut for good measure.</p> <p>2) Over-regulating? Set aside, if you can, the fact that <em>under-regulation</em> clearly played a significant role in creating the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Let's just take a look at the two sectors of the economy that we might expect to have been affected by the two biggest signature pieces of legislation signed into law by Obama -- the Affordable Care Act and the Dodd-Frank bank reform act. According to this morning's jobs report, the healthcare sector has averaged 24,000 news jobs a month over the past year -- and accounted for almost a third of May's overall 54,000 gain. Meanwhile, Wall Street had its fourth <a target="_blank" href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/21/big-paydays-return-with-big-profits-at-wall-st-banks/">most profitable year ever in 2010.</a> If that's over-regulation, we need <em>more</em> of it!</p> </div> <div style="display: block;" class="story_full" id="story_full_mps2046103"> <p>3) Private economic forecasters, the kind of profit-minded companies that make their money by analyzing economic trends for business clients, generally agree that without Obama's stimulus spending, unemployment would be higher.</p> <p>We could raise other issues. We could ask: What changed between May and the previous six months in which job growth was relatively strong? But that would require examining actual facts about what is going on the world, like Japan's recession or high gas prices or declining government spending, particularly at the state level.</p> <p>I know, I know, it's not worth getting agitated when Washington politicians of either party spout blatant misrepresentations of reality. But as we accelerate towards a debt ceiling budget deal that is virtually guaranteed to accelerate negative economic trends, it does matter what House Republicans <em>say,</em> because it gives us a pretty darn good idea of what they're going <em>do.</em></p> </div> <div class="author_snippet"> <ul class="author_more relateds"><li class="shortBio"><a href="mailto:aleonard@salon.com">Andrew Leonard</a> is a staff writer at Salon. On Twitter, @koxinga21. More: <a href="http://www.salon.com/author/andrew_leonard/index.html">Andrew Leonard</a></li></ul> </div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17372513464432506543noreply@blogger.com0