Harper’s Index
Estimated value of U.S. economic growth lost due to the global credit crisis : $2,000,000,000,000 (see page 35)
Portion of U.S. subprime mortgage buyers since 2003 who might have qualified for a prime mortgage : 3/5
Number of times that speakers at the Republican National Convention said the word “economy” : 31
Number of times they referred to President Bush by name : 1
Minimum number of reporters who traveled to Wasilla, Alaska, in the two weeks following Sarah Palin’s selection as VP : 90
Estimated number of votes that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement swung to Barack Obama’s primary campaign : 1,015,559
Amount that corporate donors to both conventions have spent lobbying Congress since 2005 : $1,316,151,129
Minimum amount the U.S. government has paid contractors in the Middle East since 2003 : $8,200,000,000
Total value of federal small-business contracts obtained by Blackwater between 2005 and 2007 : $110,000,000
Percentage of former terrorist groups worldwide that stopped operating because of military force used against them : 7
Percentage that stopped because they had achieved their stated goals : 10
Percentage of Afghans who say they would support a coalition government that included the Taliban : 54
Chances that an Israeli Arab says he or she would rather live in Israel than anywhere else : 3 in 4
Average number of religions practiced in each world nation : 32
Estimated number in Papua New Guinea, which has the most : 648
Percentage of U.S. doctors who think God has the power to cure a fatally injured patient : 20
Chance that a U.S. conservative today believes church leaders should be involved in politics : 1 in 2
Chances in 2004 : 7 in 10
Percentage of Americans in 2006 who were “not at all” confident that President Bush had won reelection “fair and square” : 32
Minimum number of Brazilians running for political office this year under the name “Obama” : 5
Date on which the U.S. must leave its only South American military installation, by order of Ecuador, its host : 11/12/09
Date on which Playgirl magazine will become an online-only publication : 11/18/08
Amount that Paris Hilton’s parents have donated to John McCain’s campaign : $4,600
Amount the co-founder of the gay dating website Manhunt has : $2,300
Number of registered users on AshleyMadison.com, a site for people who “want to explore the new infidelity” : 2,540,000
Number of scenes of or references to sex between a married couple shown during an average week of NBC programming : 1
Number showing or referencing adultery or sex with minors, respectively : 1, 1
Chances that a U.S. woman who gives birth is unmarried at the time : 2 in 5
Minimum number of children in the United States who have at least one parent in the country illegally : 5,100,000
Average number of new federal crimes that Congress creates each year : 56
Chance that a 411 call in the United States is handled by a federal prisoner : 1 in 136
Number of marijuana plants found under cultivation inside Miami’s Mall of the Americas in August : 360
Average number of hours per week that an American and a Chinese person, respectively, spend shopping : 4, 10
Number of the 77 applications to protest during the Beijing Olympics this summer that were denied : 1
Number that were withdrawn by the petitioners or suspended for incorrect paperwork : 76
Number of South Koreans pardoned by the country’s president on August 15 : 341,864
Total votes cast online last fall to decide which Thanksgiving turkeys President Bush should pardon : 27,726
Margin by which U.S. dog owners favor John McCain over Barack Obama : 43–34
Margin by which Americans would rather watch football with Obama than with McCain : 50–47
Number of free tattoos of Obama’s face given out so far by a body artist in Moore, Oklahoma : 300
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
The Idiots Who Rule America
By Chris Hedges
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.
“Their inability to see the human as anything more than interest driven made it impossible for them to imagine an actively organized pool of disinterest called the public good,” said the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul, whose books “The Unconscious Civilization” and “Voltaire’s Bastards” excoriates our oligarchic elites. “It is as if the Industrial Revolution had caused a severe mental trauma, one that still reaches out and extinguishes the memory of certain people. For them, modern history begins from a big explosion—the Industrial Revolution. This is a standard ideological approach: a star crosses the sky, a meteor explodes, and history begins anew.”
Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.
Link to con.
By Chris Hedges
Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.
“Their inability to see the human as anything more than interest driven made it impossible for them to imagine an actively organized pool of disinterest called the public good,” said the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul, whose books “The Unconscious Civilization” and “Voltaire’s Bastards” excoriates our oligarchic elites. “It is as if the Industrial Revolution had caused a severe mental trauma, one that still reaches out and extinguishes the memory of certain people. For them, modern history begins from a big explosion—the Industrial Revolution. This is a standard ideological approach: a star crosses the sky, a meteor explodes, and history begins anew.”
Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.
Link to con.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Is Dennis Kucinich the only person in Congress asking about Wall Street's $70 billion bonus pool?
Chris in Paris
You have got to be kidding. Where's Waxman? Where's Schumer? Where's Dodd? I like all of them but really, quit sitting on the sidelines here and show some leadership. I can't think of any industry out there who needed $700 billion (and lots more) from taxpayers and still handed out billions in bonuses. Sorry folks, but Wall Street failed and there's only coal in the stocking this year. Wall Street more than made up for this in recent years by cashing in on trash so to ask American taxpayers (and now European) to fund Wall Street's lifestyle even more is asking for too much.
We all know that the $250 billion for Wall Street banks is only a down payment. C'mon, Europe alone is putting up closer to $3 trillion and it's obvious that if we weren't in the middle of an election, we would not have this drip, drip, drip and would have seen a similar number. It's coming, that much is certain. Only yesterday Bernanke went public with a request for more Wall Street help. It's un-patriotic for Wall Street to squeeze American taxpayers like this and the day we reward so handsomely for failure is the day we ought to just scrap the entire system and start over. How pathetic.
Link
Chris in Paris
You have got to be kidding. Where's Waxman? Where's Schumer? Where's Dodd? I like all of them but really, quit sitting on the sidelines here and show some leadership. I can't think of any industry out there who needed $700 billion (and lots more) from taxpayers and still handed out billions in bonuses. Sorry folks, but Wall Street failed and there's only coal in the stocking this year. Wall Street more than made up for this in recent years by cashing in on trash so to ask American taxpayers (and now European) to fund Wall Street's lifestyle even more is asking for too much.
We all know that the $250 billion for Wall Street banks is only a down payment. C'mon, Europe alone is putting up closer to $3 trillion and it's obvious that if we weren't in the middle of an election, we would not have this drip, drip, drip and would have seen a similar number. It's coming, that much is certain. Only yesterday Bernanke went public with a request for more Wall Street help. It's un-patriotic for Wall Street to squeeze American taxpayers like this and the day we reward so handsomely for failure is the day we ought to just scrap the entire system and start over. How pathetic.
Link
Monday, October 20, 2008
A Trip to America's Most Toxic Place
Inside Hanford
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
The outback of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington State is called the T-Farm. It’s a rolling expanse of high desert sloping toward the last untamed reaches of the Columbia River. The “T” stands for tanks—huge single-hulled containers buried some fifty feet beneath basalt volcanic rock and sand holding, the lethal detritus of Hanford’s fifty-year run as the nation’s H-bomb factory.
Those tanks had an expected lifespan of thirty-five years; the radioactive gumbo inside them has a half-life of 250,000 years. Dozens of those tanks have now started to corrode and leak, releasing the most toxic material on earth—plutonium and uranium-contaminated sludge and liquid—on an inexorable path toward the Columbia River, the world’s most productive salmon fishery and the source of irrigation water for the farms and orchards of the Inland Empire, centered on Spokane in eastern Washington.
Internal documents from the Department of Energy and various private contractors working at Hanford reveal that at least one million gallons of radioactive sludge have already leaked out of at least sixty-seven different tanks. Those tanks and others continue to leak and, according to these sources, the leaks are getting much larger.
One internal report shows the results from a borehole drilled into the ground between two of Hanford’s largest tanks. Using gamma spectrometry, geologists detected a fifty-fold increase in contamination between 1996 and 2002. The leak from those tanks, and perhaps an underground pipeline, was described as “insignificant” a decade ago. Six years later that radioactive dribble had swelled up into a “continuous plume” of highly radioactive Cesium-137.
Link to con.
Inside Hanford
By JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
The outback of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington State is called the T-Farm. It’s a rolling expanse of high desert sloping toward the last untamed reaches of the Columbia River. The “T” stands for tanks—huge single-hulled containers buried some fifty feet beneath basalt volcanic rock and sand holding, the lethal detritus of Hanford’s fifty-year run as the nation’s H-bomb factory.
Those tanks had an expected lifespan of thirty-five years; the radioactive gumbo inside them has a half-life of 250,000 years. Dozens of those tanks have now started to corrode and leak, releasing the most toxic material on earth—plutonium and uranium-contaminated sludge and liquid—on an inexorable path toward the Columbia River, the world’s most productive salmon fishery and the source of irrigation water for the farms and orchards of the Inland Empire, centered on Spokane in eastern Washington.
Internal documents from the Department of Energy and various private contractors working at Hanford reveal that at least one million gallons of radioactive sludge have already leaked out of at least sixty-seven different tanks. Those tanks and others continue to leak and, according to these sources, the leaks are getting much larger.
One internal report shows the results from a borehole drilled into the ground between two of Hanford’s largest tanks. Using gamma spectrometry, geologists detected a fifty-fold increase in contamination between 1996 and 2002. The leak from those tanks, and perhaps an underground pipeline, was described as “insignificant” a decade ago. Six years later that radioactive dribble had swelled up into a “continuous plume” of highly radioactive Cesium-137.
Link to con.
Powell's Finest Moment
What is remarkable to me about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press was its sincerity and the form of its reasoning. He addressed issues, not personalities. He engaged in analysis, not demonization. After the Rove years of Goebbels-like propaganda, guilt by association, and innuendo, Powell's appearance brought fresh air into the nation's living rooms the way flinging the windows open in March for spring cleaning does.
Powell brings a great deal of credibility to this discussion. He gave money to the McCain campaign last year and is a lifelong Republican. Although he had a very bad experience with the Bush administration, there is no reason to think that experience would color his view of McCain (who was also badly used by Bush).
Powell presents his argument as a series of reasoned conclusions:
1. There were questions about Obama's mettle-- his experience and his judgment. What we have seen of him in this long and difficult political campaign has laid those questions to rest.
2. The two candidates' reaction to the financial crisis tells in Obama's favor. McCain behaved erratically and inconsistently, giving the impression that he did not know what exactly to do and perhaps that he did not even grasp the nature of the problems.
3. McCain's choice of Palin showed a lack of judgment. She clearly is not ready to be president, which is the only real job a vice president has. Since McCain picked her, that is a demerit for his campaign.
Link to con.
What is remarkable to me about Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press was its sincerity and the form of its reasoning. He addressed issues, not personalities. He engaged in analysis, not demonization. After the Rove years of Goebbels-like propaganda, guilt by association, and innuendo, Powell's appearance brought fresh air into the nation's living rooms the way flinging the windows open in March for spring cleaning does.
Powell brings a great deal of credibility to this discussion. He gave money to the McCain campaign last year and is a lifelong Republican. Although he had a very bad experience with the Bush administration, there is no reason to think that experience would color his view of McCain (who was also badly used by Bush).
Powell presents his argument as a series of reasoned conclusions:
1. There were questions about Obama's mettle-- his experience and his judgment. What we have seen of him in this long and difficult political campaign has laid those questions to rest.
2. The two candidates' reaction to the financial crisis tells in Obama's favor. McCain behaved erratically and inconsistently, giving the impression that he did not know what exactly to do and perhaps that he did not even grasp the nature of the problems.
3. McCain's choice of Palin showed a lack of judgment. She clearly is not ready to be president, which is the only real job a vice president has. Since McCain picked her, that is a demerit for his campaign.
Link to con.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Dirty tricks designed to mislead Texas voters have been spreading across the state, and many Obama supporters are getting incorrect information about the voting process.
Bogus claims about voting machines are spreading via email chains -- and in one reported case, even broadcast on a Houston radio station -- that could have a huge impact on voter turn out on Election Day.
Here is the truth that every Texan should know: If you vote a straight Democratic Ticket you will cast your ballot for Barack.
But Texans are not alone -- voters in key neighboring battleground states like New Mexico, Colorado, and Missouri are receiving deceitful automated phone messages and mailers from the McCain campaign spreading vile lies about Barack Obama.
We can't let dirty tricks and bad information sway this election. We need Texans to step up and spread the truth to other voters -- not just here at home, but also in our neighboring states.
Will you stand up for the truth and make a short weekend trip to a key battleground state?
No one is certain who's behind this latest attempt to influence the election and scare Obama supporters away from the polls on November 4th. But the intent is clear: to steal votes away from Barack and other great Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.
We can be sure that shameless tactics like these will intensify over the next 16 days.
That's why your help is crucial to making sure that every voter knows the truth about Barack Obama and the change we need in this country.
Forward this email to your friends and family in Texas, then sign up to spread the truth to other voters:
http://tx.barackobama.com/DriveForChange
There is so much at stake in this election. Together, we can make sure that everyone casts their vote for change on November 4th.
Bogus claims about voting machines are spreading via email chains -- and in one reported case, even broadcast on a Houston radio station -- that could have a huge impact on voter turn out on Election Day.
Here is the truth that every Texan should know: If you vote a straight Democratic Ticket you will cast your ballot for Barack.
But Texans are not alone -- voters in key neighboring battleground states like New Mexico, Colorado, and Missouri are receiving deceitful automated phone messages and mailers from the McCain campaign spreading vile lies about Barack Obama.
We can't let dirty tricks and bad information sway this election. We need Texans to step up and spread the truth to other voters -- not just here at home, but also in our neighboring states.
Will you stand up for the truth and make a short weekend trip to a key battleground state?
No one is certain who's behind this latest attempt to influence the election and scare Obama supporters away from the polls on November 4th. But the intent is clear: to steal votes away from Barack and other great Democratic candidates up and down the ticket.
We can be sure that shameless tactics like these will intensify over the next 16 days.
That's why your help is crucial to making sure that every voter knows the truth about Barack Obama and the change we need in this country.
Forward this email to your friends and family in Texas, then sign up to spread the truth to other voters:
http://tx.barackobama.com/DriveForChange
There is so much at stake in this election. Together, we can make sure that everyone casts their vote for change on November 4th.
Friday, October 17, 2008
When Greed is Rewarded
Government of Thieves
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Just as the Bush regime’s wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base. The US taxpayers will be left with the interest payments in perpetuity (or inflation if the Fed monetizes the debt), and the number of Wall Street billionaires will grow. As for the US and European governments’ purchases of bank shares, that is just a cover for funneling public money into private hands.
The explanations that have been given for the crisis and its bailout are opaque. The US Treasury estimates that as few as 7% of the mortgages are bad. Why then do the US, UK, Germany, and France need to pour more than $2.1 trillion of public money into private financial institutions?
If, as the government tells us, the crisis stems from subprime mortgage defaults reducing the interest payments to the holders of mortgage backed securities, thus driving down their values and threatening the solvency of the institutions that hold them, why isn’t the bailout money used to address the problem at its source? If the bailout money was used to refinance troubled mortgages and to pay off foreclosed mortgages, the mortgage backed securities would be made whole, and it would be unnecessary to pour huge sums of public money into banks. Instead, the bailout money is being used to inject capital into financial institutions and to purchase from them troubled financial instruments.
Link to con.
Government of Thieves
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Just as the Bush regime’s wars have been used to pour billions of dollars into the pockets of its military-security donor base, the Paulson bailout looks like a Bush regime scheme to incur $700 billion in new public debt in order to transfer the money into the coffers of its financial donor base. The US taxpayers will be left with the interest payments in perpetuity (or inflation if the Fed monetizes the debt), and the number of Wall Street billionaires will grow. As for the US and European governments’ purchases of bank shares, that is just a cover for funneling public money into private hands.
The explanations that have been given for the crisis and its bailout are opaque. The US Treasury estimates that as few as 7% of the mortgages are bad. Why then do the US, UK, Germany, and France need to pour more than $2.1 trillion of public money into private financial institutions?
If, as the government tells us, the crisis stems from subprime mortgage defaults reducing the interest payments to the holders of mortgage backed securities, thus driving down their values and threatening the solvency of the institutions that hold them, why isn’t the bailout money used to address the problem at its source? If the bailout money was used to refinance troubled mortgages and to pay off foreclosed mortgages, the mortgage backed securities would be made whole, and it would be unnecessary to pour huge sums of public money into banks. Instead, the bailout money is being used to inject capital into financial institutions and to purchase from them troubled financial instruments.
Link to con.
The Charmed LIves of the Crony Capitalists
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout
By PAM MARTENS
In 1897, when 8-year old Virginia O’Hanlon posed her Santa Claus query to the New York Sun, she received a heart-warming editorial response reassuring her that “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist….”
Today, we hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse. Worse still, the money is doled out to the very same individuals who leveraged their institutions to casino status.
Americans are correctly outraged at the spectacle of U.S. crony capitalism crashing stock and bond markets around the globe while simultaneously watching the poster boys of crony capitalism on Monday, October 13, 2008 march up the granite steps of the United States Treasury building in their Armani shoes and heist a fresh $125 Billion of taxpayer dough in broad daylight.
The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s, $700 billion bailout plan to buy up distressed mortgage assets has spun off its own $250 billion subsidiary plan (skipping that pesky detail called taxation with representation) to inject $125 billion in equity capital into 9 of the biggest commercial and investment banks in the country. Another $125 billion may possibly go to smaller regional banks and thrifts, assuming they will sign on to the deal.
Link to con.
How the Banksters are Making a Killing Off the Bailout
By PAM MARTENS
In 1897, when 8-year old Virginia O’Hanlon posed her Santa Claus query to the New York Sun, she received a heart-warming editorial response reassuring her that “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist….”
Today, we hand our 8 year olds a $13 trillion national debt while our Congress hands Wall Street banksters the national purse without so much as a hearing to determine the cause of the debt collapse. Worse still, the money is doled out to the very same individuals who leveraged their institutions to casino status.
Americans are correctly outraged at the spectacle of U.S. crony capitalism crashing stock and bond markets around the globe while simultaneously watching the poster boys of crony capitalism on Monday, October 13, 2008 march up the granite steps of the United States Treasury building in their Armani shoes and heist a fresh $125 Billion of taxpayer dough in broad daylight.
The U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson’s, $700 billion bailout plan to buy up distressed mortgage assets has spun off its own $250 billion subsidiary plan (skipping that pesky detail called taxation with representation) to inject $125 billion in equity capital into 9 of the biggest commercial and investment banks in the country. Another $125 billion may possibly go to smaller regional banks and thrifts, assuming they will sign on to the deal.
Link to con.
Let’s Get Fiscal
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation.
Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.
Link to con.
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
The Dow is surging! No, it’s plunging! No, it’s surging! No, it’s ...
Nevermind. While the manic-depressive stock market is dominating the headlines, the more important story is the grim news coming in about the real economy. It’s now clear that rescuing the banks is just the beginning: the nonfinancial economy is also in desperate need of help.
And to provide that help, we’re going to have to put some prejudices aside. It’s politically fashionable to rant against government spending and demand fiscal responsibility. But right now, increased government spending is just what the doctor ordered, and concerns about the budget deficit should be put on hold.
Before I get there, let’s talk about the economic situation.
Just this week, we learned that retail sales have fallen off a cliff, and so has industrial production. Unemployment claims are at steep-recession levels, and the Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is falling at the fastest pace in almost 20 years. All signs point to an economic slump that will be nasty, brutish — and long.
Link to con.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Great Reagan Pyramid Scheme Comes Crashing Down
The Republican Party that Nixon invented melded the moneyed classes of the Northeast with the white evangelicals of the South. This odd couple went on to simultaneously steal from and oppress the rest of us. The moneyed classes were happy to let the New Puritans impose their stringent morality, since they could always just buy any licentiousness they wanted, regardless of the law. And the New Puritans were so consumed with cultural issues such as homosexuality, abortion, school prayer and (yes) fighting school desegregation that they were happy to let the northeastern Money Men waltz off with a lion's share of the country's resources, consigning most Americans to stagnant wages and increasing debt. The Reagan revolution consolidated this alliance and brought some conservative Catholic workers into it.
These domestic policies at home were complemented by wars and belligerence abroad, which further took the eye of the public off the epochal bank robbery being conducted by the American neo-Medicis, and which were a useful way of throwing billions in government tax revenue to the military-industrial complex, which in turn funded the think tanks and reelection campaigns of the right wing politicians. The Reagan fascination with private armies and funding anti-communist death squads contributed mightily to the creation of al-Qaeda, blowback from which fuelled even bigger Pentagon budgets, spiralling upward and feeding on itself. Terrorism is much better than Communism as a bogey man, since you can just intimate that there are a handful of dangerous people out there somewhere, and force the public to pay over $1 trillion to combat them. In fact, of course, less US interventionism abroad would create less blowback, and genuine threats are better addressed through good police work by multilingual FBI agents than by a $700 billion Pentagon budget.
Link to con.
The Republican Party that Nixon invented melded the moneyed classes of the Northeast with the white evangelicals of the South. This odd couple went on to simultaneously steal from and oppress the rest of us. The moneyed classes were happy to let the New Puritans impose their stringent morality, since they could always just buy any licentiousness they wanted, regardless of the law. And the New Puritans were so consumed with cultural issues such as homosexuality, abortion, school prayer and (yes) fighting school desegregation that they were happy to let the northeastern Money Men waltz off with a lion's share of the country's resources, consigning most Americans to stagnant wages and increasing debt. The Reagan revolution consolidated this alliance and brought some conservative Catholic workers into it.
These domestic policies at home were complemented by wars and belligerence abroad, which further took the eye of the public off the epochal bank robbery being conducted by the American neo-Medicis, and which were a useful way of throwing billions in government tax revenue to the military-industrial complex, which in turn funded the think tanks and reelection campaigns of the right wing politicians. The Reagan fascination with private armies and funding anti-communist death squads contributed mightily to the creation of al-Qaeda, blowback from which fuelled even bigger Pentagon budgets, spiralling upward and feeding on itself. Terrorism is much better than Communism as a bogey man, since you can just intimate that there are a handful of dangerous people out there somewhere, and force the public to pay over $1 trillion to combat them. In fact, of course, less US interventionism abroad would create less blowback, and genuine threats are better addressed through good police work by multilingual FBI agents than by a $700 billion Pentagon budget.
Link to con.
With Goat, a Rancher Breaks Away From the Herd
By KIM SEVERSON, NY Times
BILL NIMAN is not the rancher he once was. Last year Mr. Niman walked away from the meat company he started in the 1970s with not much more than a handful of cattle and a political philosophy built on self-sufficiency.
Niman Ranch, which takes in annual sales of $85 million, was founded on the notion that the better an animal is treated, the better the meat will be. His beef was so good that in the early 1980s Alice Waters made it the first proper-noun meat on the menu at her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. His pigs, raised humanely by 600 family farms in Iowa, provide pork for the Chipotle chain’s carnitas. Niman Ranch bacon, hot dogs and sausage fill grocery cases around the country.
But Mr. Niman is no longer a part of the company. Angry and discouraged after prolonged battles with a new management team over money and animal protocols, he left in August 2007 with a modest severance check and a small amount of stock.
He can’t use his surname to sell meat, and he had to surrender the small herd of breeding cattle that lived on his ranch here, about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The cattle were direct descendants of the ones he tended back in the days of counterculture, not profit margin.
Link to con.
By KIM SEVERSON, NY Times
BILL NIMAN is not the rancher he once was. Last year Mr. Niman walked away from the meat company he started in the 1970s with not much more than a handful of cattle and a political philosophy built on self-sufficiency.
Niman Ranch, which takes in annual sales of $85 million, was founded on the notion that the better an animal is treated, the better the meat will be. His beef was so good that in the early 1980s Alice Waters made it the first proper-noun meat on the menu at her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse. His pigs, raised humanely by 600 family farms in Iowa, provide pork for the Chipotle chain’s carnitas. Niman Ranch bacon, hot dogs and sausage fill grocery cases around the country.
But Mr. Niman is no longer a part of the company. Angry and discouraged after prolonged battles with a new management team over money and animal protocols, he left in August 2007 with a modest severance check and a small amount of stock.
He can’t use his surname to sell meat, and he had to surrender the small herd of breeding cattle that lived on his ranch here, about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The cattle were direct descendants of the ones he tended back in the days of counterculture, not profit margin.
Link to con.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
As the Violence Soars, Mexico Signals It's Had Enough of America's Stupid War on Drugs
By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet.
Even on his most homicidal of days, Al Pacino's character in Scarface couldn't even approach the level of drug trafficking-related brutality bleeding down Mexico's streets. It is no longer unusual for the Mexican news media to report on yet another, freshly decapitated head stuck atop a fencepost or a metal spike, or a garbage bag filled with body parts, usually with a hand-scrawled note or placard attached. That amounts to a cartel's calling card, and it's usually delivered in the form of a warning to a rival cartel, or for the Mexican authorities to stay away and stop seizing their drugs. Other times, it's just a chilling placard intended to strike terror into the hearts of the people who come across the gory scene and the text: "Ha Ha Ha." To be sure that their message is heard, cartels are known to send regular text messages to newspaper reporters, place newspaper advertisements, or to even upload their own killing videos (sometimes accompanied by narco-corridos as background music) to YouTube.
Mexican drug cartels are, rather effectively, fighting the government's War on Drugs with their own War of Terror, often swelling their ranks (and combat/terror tactics) with former members of law enforcement. The Zetas, for instance, are members of former Mexican counter-narcotics squads (some with U.S.-assisted training under their belts), who have become the self-proclaimed and much-feared hit men of the Gulf cartel.
Link to con.
By Silja J.A. Talvi, AlterNet.
Even on his most homicidal of days, Al Pacino's character in Scarface couldn't even approach the level of drug trafficking-related brutality bleeding down Mexico's streets. It is no longer unusual for the Mexican news media to report on yet another, freshly decapitated head stuck atop a fencepost or a metal spike, or a garbage bag filled with body parts, usually with a hand-scrawled note or placard attached. That amounts to a cartel's calling card, and it's usually delivered in the form of a warning to a rival cartel, or for the Mexican authorities to stay away and stop seizing their drugs. Other times, it's just a chilling placard intended to strike terror into the hearts of the people who come across the gory scene and the text: "Ha Ha Ha." To be sure that their message is heard, cartels are known to send regular text messages to newspaper reporters, place newspaper advertisements, or to even upload their own killing videos (sometimes accompanied by narco-corridos as background music) to YouTube.
Mexican drug cartels are, rather effectively, fighting the government's War on Drugs with their own War of Terror, often swelling their ranks (and combat/terror tactics) with former members of law enforcement. The Zetas, for instance, are members of former Mexican counter-narcotics squads (some with U.S.-assisted training under their belts), who have become the self-proclaimed and much-feared hit men of the Gulf cartel.
Link to con.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Racism, Obama and the Fall of the American Economy
The Law of the Jungle
By FIDEL CASTRO
Trade, within a society and between countries, is the exchange of goods and services produced by human beings. The owners of the means of production appropriate the profits. As a class, they are the leaders of the capitalist state and they boast of fostering development and social wellbeing through market. This they worship as an infallible God.
In every country there is competition between the strongest and the weakest; the ones with more physical energy and better fed, those who learned how to read and write, who attended school and have more experience accumulated; the ones with more extensive social relations and more resources, and those within society who fail to have these advantages.
Now, as far as the countries is concerned, there are differences between those with a better climate and more arable land, more water and more natural resources in the area where they are located, when there are no more territories to conquer; the ones mastering technology, having greater development and handling unlimited media resources and those who, on the contrary, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes enormous differences between the rich and the poor nations.
It´s the law of the jungle.
Link to con.
The Law of the Jungle
By FIDEL CASTRO
Trade, within a society and between countries, is the exchange of goods and services produced by human beings. The owners of the means of production appropriate the profits. As a class, they are the leaders of the capitalist state and they boast of fostering development and social wellbeing through market. This they worship as an infallible God.
In every country there is competition between the strongest and the weakest; the ones with more physical energy and better fed, those who learned how to read and write, who attended school and have more experience accumulated; the ones with more extensive social relations and more resources, and those within society who fail to have these advantages.
Now, as far as the countries is concerned, there are differences between those with a better climate and more arable land, more water and more natural resources in the area where they are located, when there are no more territories to conquer; the ones mastering technology, having greater development and handling unlimited media resources and those who, on the contrary, do not enjoy any of these prerogatives. These are the sometimes enormous differences between the rich and the poor nations.
It´s the law of the jungle.
Link to con.
Journalists targeted in latest Mexico drug violence
A newspaper editor, a columnist, police officers, and bar patrons are among those killed in separate acts of violence this past week.
By David Montero
As drug-related violence continues to worsen across the border in Mexico, journalists are being increasingly targeted.
Mexico's widening war with drugs has claimed more than 3,000 lives this year alone. On Sunday, assailants opened fire on the US consulate in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, reports the Associated Press. Nobody was injured in that attack, but on Saturday gunmen killed six young men at a family party in the gang-plagued Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, reports AP.
Saturday night's mass shooting was the second in the border state of Chihuahua in less than a week. Just before midnight Thursday, gunmen opened fire in a bar in the city of Chihuahua, killing 11 people. The most recent violence underscores yet another frightening dimension in the violence: the targeting of journalists, the San Antonio Express reports.
Link to con.
A newspaper editor, a columnist, police officers, and bar patrons are among those killed in separate acts of violence this past week.
By David Montero
As drug-related violence continues to worsen across the border in Mexico, journalists are being increasingly targeted.
Mexico's widening war with drugs has claimed more than 3,000 lives this year alone. On Sunday, assailants opened fire on the US consulate in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, reports the Associated Press. Nobody was injured in that attack, but on Saturday gunmen killed six young men at a family party in the gang-plagued Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez, reports AP.
Saturday night's mass shooting was the second in the border state of Chihuahua in less than a week. Just before midnight Thursday, gunmen opened fire in a bar in the city of Chihuahua, killing 11 people. The most recent violence underscores yet another frightening dimension in the violence: the targeting of journalists, the San Antonio Express reports.
Link to con.
Religulous: Atheists Will Love Bill Maher's New Flick
Posted by DJK, Brave New Films
Finally, a movie for my people! That's right, I'm an atheist. In fact, I'm so much of an atheist that I don't even like the term. I think the default setting for humans is to not be religious — I might as well call myself a non-snake handler, non-scientologist, or a non-branch Davidian.
But enough about me. Religulous, directed by Borat director Larry Charles, follows Bill Maher as he travels the world questioning religious "experts" and believers about the inherent contradictions and accepted silliness that makes up the bulk of the world's "organized" religions. Maher is not an atheist — he just accepts that he does not know the answers to life's big spiritual questions, and that anyone who claims to know with absolute certainty what God or Allah wants or what happens when we die must be doubted to the utmost. Pretty hard to argue with that.
Maher has been talking about religion for his entire comedic career. At times, the movie feels a bit like watching his stand up being performed to an audience of one, whether it be a Jew for Jesus, a Muslim cleric, or an evangelical senator. Which is not a bad thing — there are big laughs in Religulous as Maher boldly challenges the many illogical, violent, farcical beliefs that form the foundation of most religions. Unlike Borat, Religulous uses a lot of stock footage and clips to punctuate its jokes, while also adding a welcome dose of infotainment. For example, who knew that the story of Jesus — with its virgin birth, 12 disciples and resurrection — is a variation of a tale that had been circulating the Middle East and the Mediterranean for decades?
Link to con.
Posted by DJK, Brave New Films
Finally, a movie for my people! That's right, I'm an atheist. In fact, I'm so much of an atheist that I don't even like the term. I think the default setting for humans is to not be religious — I might as well call myself a non-snake handler, non-scientologist, or a non-branch Davidian.
But enough about me. Religulous, directed by Borat director Larry Charles, follows Bill Maher as he travels the world questioning religious "experts" and believers about the inherent contradictions and accepted silliness that makes up the bulk of the world's "organized" religions. Maher is not an atheist — he just accepts that he does not know the answers to life's big spiritual questions, and that anyone who claims to know with absolute certainty what God or Allah wants or what happens when we die must be doubted to the utmost. Pretty hard to argue with that.
Maher has been talking about religion for his entire comedic career. At times, the movie feels a bit like watching his stand up being performed to an audience of one, whether it be a Jew for Jesus, a Muslim cleric, or an evangelical senator. Which is not a bad thing — there are big laughs in Religulous as Maher boldly challenges the many illogical, violent, farcical beliefs that form the foundation of most religions. Unlike Borat, Religulous uses a lot of stock footage and clips to punctuate its jokes, while also adding a welcome dose of infotainment. For example, who knew that the story of Jesus — with its virgin birth, 12 disciples and resurrection — is a variation of a tale that had been circulating the Middle East and the Mediterranean for decades?
Link to con.
The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama (he is not, at all, even close....just read the article)
By FRANK RICH, Ny Times
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him. Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Link to con.
By FRANK RICH, Ny Times
IF you think way back to the start of this marathon campaign, back when it seemed preposterous that any black man could be a serious presidential contender, then you remember the biggest fear about Barack Obama: a crazy person might take a shot at him. Some voters told reporters that they didn’t want Obama to run, let alone win, should his very presence unleash the demons who have stalked America from Lincoln to King. After consultation with Congress, Michael Chertoff, the homeland security secretary, gave Obama a Secret Service detail earlier than any presidential candidate in our history — in May 2007, some eight months before the first Democratic primaries.
“I’ve got the best protection in the world, so stop worrying,” Obama reassured his supporters. Eventually the country got conditioned to his appearing in large arenas without incident (though I confess that the first loud burst of fireworks at the end of his convention stadium speech gave me a start). In America, nothing does succeed like success. The fear receded.
Link to con.
Me, Myself & I
Hunter S. Thompson placed himself at the centre of every narrative he wrote and, along with the equally tawdry Andy Warhol, reinvented celebrity. Warhol was a starfucker who embraced the very celebrity Thompson - who was just a plain old fucker - would come to despise by the time he was outdrawing the candidates he was covering on the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign trail.
Inadvertently, Warhol and Thompson encouraged people to become so narcissistic we have gone from the 1970s Me Generation to the Me, Myself and I Generation. Today everybody wants to be famous. They just don't want to earn it. Today, armed with videocams and suffering from blog-lust, everybody's a pundit or porn star.
American culture represents a nihilistic west disappearing into a whirlpool of narcissism, sentimentality and moral emptiness. We have sold our souls for the freedom to shop and screw as and when we wish.
American Ideology: The Cult of Individualism
Bracing against the Marxist menace, America erected a powerful pantheon of ideas where the deities of Capital received frequent and fulsome tribute. Foremost among these deities was Individuality.
Link to con.
Hunter S. Thompson placed himself at the centre of every narrative he wrote and, along with the equally tawdry Andy Warhol, reinvented celebrity. Warhol was a starfucker who embraced the very celebrity Thompson - who was just a plain old fucker - would come to despise by the time he was outdrawing the candidates he was covering on the 1976 U.S. presidential campaign trail.
Inadvertently, Warhol and Thompson encouraged people to become so narcissistic we have gone from the 1970s Me Generation to the Me, Myself and I Generation. Today everybody wants to be famous. They just don't want to earn it. Today, armed with videocams and suffering from blog-lust, everybody's a pundit or porn star.
American culture represents a nihilistic west disappearing into a whirlpool of narcissism, sentimentality and moral emptiness. We have sold our souls for the freedom to shop and screw as and when we wish.
American Ideology: The Cult of Individualism
Bracing against the Marxist menace, America erected a powerful pantheon of ideas where the deities of Capital received frequent and fulsome tribute. Foremost among these deities was Individuality.
Link to con.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Mask Slips
By BOB HERBERT, Ny Times
The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot. For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.
Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.
Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.
Link to con.
By BOB HERBERT, Ny Times
The lesson for Americans suffused with anxiety and dread over the crackup of the financial markets is that the way you vote matters, that there are real-world consequences when you go into a voting booth and cast that ballot. For the nitwits who vote for the man or woman they’d most like to have over for dinner, or hang out at a barbecue with, I suggest you take a look at how well your 401(k) is doing, or how easy it will be to meet the mortgage this month, or whether the college fund you’ve been trying to build for your kids is as robust as you’d like it to be.
Voters in the George W. Bush era gave the Republican Party nearly complete control of the federal government. Now the financial markets are in turmoil, top government and corporate leaders are on the verge of panic and scholars are dusting off treatises that analyzed the causes of the Great Depression.
Mr. Bush was never viewed as a policy or intellectual heavyweight. But he seemed like a nicer guy to a lot of voters than Al Gore.
Link to con.
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