How We Fuel Africa's Bloodiest War
What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources
By Johann Hari
The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't. The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.
Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.
I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 -year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.
I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."
Link to con.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Naomi Klein: Bailout = Bush's Final Pillage
By Naomi Klein, The Nation.
In the final days of the election, many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But that doesn't mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700 billion bailout out the door. At a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, Republican Senator Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. "How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?" Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bailout.
When European colonialists realized that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.
The Bush gang prefers bureaucratic instruments: "distressed asset" auctions and the "equity purchase program." But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese -- a final frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.
Link to con.
By Naomi Klein, The Nation.
In the final days of the election, many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But that doesn't mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700 billion bailout out the door. At a recent Senate Banking Committee hearing, Republican Senator Bob Corker was fixated on this task, and with a clear deadline in mind: inauguration. "How much of it do you think may be actually spent by January 20 or so?" Corker asked Neel Kashkari, the 35-year-old former banker in charge of the bailout.
When European colonialists realized that they had no choice but to hand over power to the indigenous citizens, they would often turn their attention to stripping the local treasury of its gold and grabbing valuable livestock. If they were really nasty, like the Portuguese in Mozambique in the mid-1970s, they poured concrete down the elevator shafts.
The Bush gang prefers bureaucratic instruments: "distressed asset" auctions and the "equity purchase program." But make no mistake: the goal is the same as it was for the defeated Portuguese -- a final frantic looting of the public wealth before they hand over the keys to the safe.
Link to con.
The Triumph of Ignorance
Why morons succeed in US politics.
By George Monbiot
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)
Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said “there you go again”(2). His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.
Link to con.
Why morons succeed in US politics.
By George Monbiot
How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)
Like most people on this side of the Atlantic I have spent my adult life mystified by American politics. The US has the world’s best universities and attracts the world’s finest minds. It dominates discoveries in science and medicine. Its wealth and power depend on the application of knowledge. Yet, uniquely among the developed nations (with the possible exception of Australia), learning is a grave political disadvantage.
There have been exceptions over the past century: Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Clinton tempered their intellectualism with the common touch and survived; but Adlai Stevenson, Al Gore and John Kerry were successfully tarred by their opponents as members of a cerebral elite (as if this were not a qualification for the presidency). Perhaps the defining moment in the collapse of intelligent politics was Ronald Reagan’s response to Jimmy Carter during the 1980 presidential debate. Carter - stumbling a little, using long words - carefully enumerated the benefits of national health insurance. Reagan smiled and said “there you go again”(2). His own health programme would have appalled most Americans, had he explained it as carefully as Carter had done, but he had found a formula for avoiding tough political issues and making his opponents look like wonks.
Link to con.
GM sugar beet: Trick or treat?
Sugar from GM sugar beets will soon be unlabeled and widespread
Posted by Lisa J. Bunin
The scariest thing next Halloween might not be the monsters, zombies or witches trolling our streets -- it might be the candy. Those colorful, tin-foil-wrapped Hershey's kisses and dark chocolate pumpkins could contain sugar extracted and processed from the roots of genetically modified sugar beets.
Sugar in Halloween candy comes from several sources, including sugar beets. But this year, farmers are planting Monsanto's Roundup-Ready GM sugar beets for sale to food producers for the first time. This beet is genetically engineered to survive multiple, direct applications of the weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. What's particularly appalling about the approval of this GM sugar beet is that at the time of its approval, Monsanto convinced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase the glyphosate residues allowed on sugar beetroots by an astounding 5,000 percent. This opens up the possibility for excessive pesticide spraying on GM sugar beets. Now that's scary news for our precious ghosts and goblins!
So how would you know if the treats you bought contained GM sugar? The short answer: You wouldn't. That's because sugar from GM beets like all other GM foods would not be labeled.
Link to con.
Sugar from GM sugar beets will soon be unlabeled and widespread
Posted by Lisa J. Bunin
The scariest thing next Halloween might not be the monsters, zombies or witches trolling our streets -- it might be the candy. Those colorful, tin-foil-wrapped Hershey's kisses and dark chocolate pumpkins could contain sugar extracted and processed from the roots of genetically modified sugar beets.
Sugar in Halloween candy comes from several sources, including sugar beets. But this year, farmers are planting Monsanto's Roundup-Ready GM sugar beets for sale to food producers for the first time. This beet is genetically engineered to survive multiple, direct applications of the weed killer, Roundup, and its active ingredient, glyphosate. What's particularly appalling about the approval of this GM sugar beet is that at the time of its approval, Monsanto convinced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to increase the glyphosate residues allowed on sugar beetroots by an astounding 5,000 percent. This opens up the possibility for excessive pesticide spraying on GM sugar beets. Now that's scary news for our precious ghosts and goblins!
So how would you know if the treats you bought contained GM sugar? The short answer: You wouldn't. That's because sugar from GM beets like all other GM foods would not be labeled.
Link to con.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Adventures in Bottomfeeding: Bill Ayers and the Pinochet Rationale
by Pamela Troy
As I’ve observed, every now and then I like to put on my scuba suit and mask, strap on a hefty supply of oxygen, and dive down, down, down into the depths of the right-wing blogosphere – Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, the comments sections of various wing-nut blogs, etc. Sometimes I’ll encounter a truly appalling argument, and, after a couple of tentative pokes with my trident, carry it back up to the surface to show everybody.
“Ewwwwwwww!” I’ll exclaim. “Look what I found!”
The problem is, a few years or even a few months later, I’ll be out in the sunlight, the wind in my hair, enjoying a good healthy sail over the surface of the American media, when suddenly my rudder will hit something. I’ll stop, investigate and discover that the one-eyed, slimy, tentacled, half rotten fishy smelling monster I’d grossed everybody out with in the past is now doing backstrokes in broad daylight across the offline media and being seriously discussed by Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs or even Wolf Blitzer.
My latest foray into the depths has brought up a truly funny and grotesque specimen, once again via the wonderful people at Sadlyno. It seems that Bob Owens, AKA Confederate Yankee, conducted an interview with “Weathermen insider/FBI informant Larry Grathwohl” now posted on Pajamasmedia as “Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution,” in which reference is made to the following excerpt from a 1982 documentary (which seems to be listed nowhere on IMDB) No Place to Hide:
Link to con.
by Pamela Troy
As I’ve observed, every now and then I like to put on my scuba suit and mask, strap on a hefty supply of oxygen, and dive down, down, down into the depths of the right-wing blogosphere – Free Republic, Little Green Footballs, the comments sections of various wing-nut blogs, etc. Sometimes I’ll encounter a truly appalling argument, and, after a couple of tentative pokes with my trident, carry it back up to the surface to show everybody.
“Ewwwwwwww!” I’ll exclaim. “Look what I found!”
The problem is, a few years or even a few months later, I’ll be out in the sunlight, the wind in my hair, enjoying a good healthy sail over the surface of the American media, when suddenly my rudder will hit something. I’ll stop, investigate and discover that the one-eyed, slimy, tentacled, half rotten fishy smelling monster I’d grossed everybody out with in the past is now doing backstrokes in broad daylight across the offline media and being seriously discussed by Sean Hannity or Lou Dobbs or even Wolf Blitzer.
My latest foray into the depths has brought up a truly funny and grotesque specimen, once again via the wonderful people at Sadlyno. It seems that Bob Owens, AKA Confederate Yankee, conducted an interview with “Weathermen insider/FBI informant Larry Grathwohl” now posted on Pajamasmedia as “Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution,” in which reference is made to the following excerpt from a 1982 documentary (which seems to be listed nowhere on IMDB) No Place to Hide:
Link to con.
A soccer team gives hope to refugees in Italy
The émigrés, many of whom fled persecution in their own lands, form the country’s first professional team made up entirely of refugees.
By Lorenzo Tondo
Karim, an Afghan with a powerful kick, passes the soccer ball to Mamadi, who is streaking up the sidelines. Mamadi, from Guinea, dribbles left and then deftly lunges toward the goal, where his Iraqi teammate, Akar, shadows him, waiting for a pass. Awote, a talented midfielder from Sudan, races up from behind. Mamadi feints left. He boots the ball – and scores.
This game, underway on an ashy patch of earth on the edge of Rome, sounds like it could be part of a United Nations soccer league. But it is actually being played by a single team – the Liberi Nantes Football Club, Italy’s first professional soccer team made up entirely of refugees.
To get here, many of these players braved harrowing journeys. Most fled persecution in their homelands. All have escaped either prison, war, or poverty.
Mamadi, Akar, and Karim are not their real names. These players will never end up with their pictures on trading cards. Authorities in their countries believe they are dead – and if they knew the truth, it would put their families at home in danger.
Link to con.
The émigrés, many of whom fled persecution in their own lands, form the country’s first professional team made up entirely of refugees.
By Lorenzo Tondo
Karim, an Afghan with a powerful kick, passes the soccer ball to Mamadi, who is streaking up the sidelines. Mamadi, from Guinea, dribbles left and then deftly lunges toward the goal, where his Iraqi teammate, Akar, shadows him, waiting for a pass. Awote, a talented midfielder from Sudan, races up from behind. Mamadi feints left. He boots the ball – and scores.
This game, underway on an ashy patch of earth on the edge of Rome, sounds like it could be part of a United Nations soccer league. But it is actually being played by a single team – the Liberi Nantes Football Club, Italy’s first professional soccer team made up entirely of refugees.
To get here, many of these players braved harrowing journeys. Most fled persecution in their homelands. All have escaped either prison, war, or poverty.
Mamadi, Akar, and Karim are not their real names. These players will never end up with their pictures on trading cards. Authorities in their countries believe they are dead – and if they knew the truth, it would put their families at home in danger.
Link to con.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
The End of the American Road
The New Neo-Con Reality
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
--Bush White House aide explaining the New Reality
The New American Century lasted a decade. Financial crisis and defeated objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Georgia brought the neoconservative project for American world hegemony crashing to a close in the autumn of 2008.
The neocons used September 11, 2001, as a “new Pearl Harbor” to give power precedence over law domestically and internationally. The executive branch no longer had to obey federal statutes, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or honor international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions. An asserted “terrorist threat” to national security became the cloak which hid US imperial interests as the Bush Regime set about dismantling US civil liberties and the existing order of international law constructed by previous governments during the post-war era.
Perhaps the neoconservative project for world hegemony would have lasted a bit longer had the neocons possessed intellectual competence.
On the war front, the incompetent neocons predicted that the Iraq war would be a six-week cakewalk, whose $70 billion cost would be paid out of Iraqi oil revenues. President Bush fired White House economist Larry Lindsey for estimating that the war would cost $200 billion. The current estimate by experts is that the Iraq war has cost American taxpayers between two and three trillion dollars. And the six-week war is now the six-year war.
Link to con.
The New Neo-Con Reality
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
--Bush White House aide explaining the New Reality
The New American Century lasted a decade. Financial crisis and defeated objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Georgia brought the neoconservative project for American world hegemony crashing to a close in the autumn of 2008.
The neocons used September 11, 2001, as a “new Pearl Harbor” to give power precedence over law domestically and internationally. The executive branch no longer had to obey federal statutes, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or honor international treaties, such as the Geneva Conventions. An asserted “terrorist threat” to national security became the cloak which hid US imperial interests as the Bush Regime set about dismantling US civil liberties and the existing order of international law constructed by previous governments during the post-war era.
Perhaps the neoconservative project for world hegemony would have lasted a bit longer had the neocons possessed intellectual competence.
On the war front, the incompetent neocons predicted that the Iraq war would be a six-week cakewalk, whose $70 billion cost would be paid out of Iraqi oil revenues. President Bush fired White House economist Larry Lindsey for estimating that the war would cost $200 billion. The current estimate by experts is that the Iraq war has cost American taxpayers between two and three trillion dollars. And the six-week war is now the six-year war.
Link to con.
On the Demonization of Redistribution of Wealth
Author: J Crowley
It’s strange to me how so many Americans get so easily lured into this trap, along the campaign trail, of caring so much about how much money about three percent of the population makes that they lose sight of the importance of the quality of their own lives.
First, let’s address the subject in question, and then we’ll get to the obsession with “redistribution of wealth” as some kind of ideological profanity.
There’s something very wrong with the fact that Person A is paid maybe $12,000 a year to successfully flip hamburgers while Person B is paid $58,500,000 a year (at least for the first year) to unsuccessfully run AIG, to the point of nearly destroying the American economy. I’m sure we can all agree about the problem with paying executives large amounts regardless of performance. Where our paths may diverge, however, if you subscribe to laissez-faire and trickle-down economics, is that I see something tremendously wrong with Person B receiving 4,875 times the yearly income of Person A regardless of whether they’re not running the business into the ground.
No one could credibly argue that Person B is doing 4,875 times the work as Person A. Granted, it’s more stressful a job in certain ways, and one’s decisions regarding the direction of a company will have much greater an impact than deciding how much salt to put on the fries when you take them out of the deep fryer, but the difference certainly isn’t enough to warrant that much of a pay disparity. Surely those decision-making skills aren’t equivalent to the mind power of thousands of people.
Link to con.
Author: J Crowley
It’s strange to me how so many Americans get so easily lured into this trap, along the campaign trail, of caring so much about how much money about three percent of the population makes that they lose sight of the importance of the quality of their own lives.
First, let’s address the subject in question, and then we’ll get to the obsession with “redistribution of wealth” as some kind of ideological profanity.
There’s something very wrong with the fact that Person A is paid maybe $12,000 a year to successfully flip hamburgers while Person B is paid $58,500,000 a year (at least for the first year) to unsuccessfully run AIG, to the point of nearly destroying the American economy. I’m sure we can all agree about the problem with paying executives large amounts regardless of performance. Where our paths may diverge, however, if you subscribe to laissez-faire and trickle-down economics, is that I see something tremendously wrong with Person B receiving 4,875 times the yearly income of Person A regardless of whether they’re not running the business into the ground.
No one could credibly argue that Person B is doing 4,875 times the work as Person A. Granted, it’s more stressful a job in certain ways, and one’s decisions regarding the direction of a company will have much greater an impact than deciding how much salt to put on the fries when you take them out of the deep fryer, but the difference certainly isn’t enough to warrant that much of a pay disparity. Surely those decision-making skills aren’t equivalent to the mind power of thousands of people.
Link to con.
Bio Lab in Galveston Raises Concerns
By JAMES C. McKINLEY JR, NY Times
Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world. How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.
“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”
Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.
Built atop concrete pylons driven 120 feet into the ground, the seven-floor laboratory was designed to stand up to 140-mile-an-hour winds. Its backup generators and high-security laboratories are 30 feet above sea level.
Link to con.
By JAMES C. McKINLEY JR, NY Times
Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world. How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.
“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”
Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.
Built atop concrete pylons driven 120 feet into the ground, the seven-floor laboratory was designed to stand up to 140-mile-an-hour winds. Its backup generators and high-security laboratories are 30 feet above sea level.
Link to con.
(Check out the table!)
Obama's Tax Plan Could Cost Oprah $25 Million
by Julian Sancton
We’ve all heard the simple versions of the candidates’ tax plans: Obama will be cutting taxes for 95 percent of working Americans, and McCain will be slicing them across the board. But now that this election is turning out to be more about the economy than ever, stupid, we decided to find out what this will mean for all segments of society, not just Joe the Plumber.
The results may surprise you. The average plumber (based on statistics from the Tax Policy Center) can expect to pay $752 less in taxes under Obama than he would under McCain. Meanwhile, we now understand why Bill O’Reilly has been working so hard to defeat the Democrat: he stands to lose $940,000 a year. But what about Oprah Winfrey? The pro-Obama überhost could pay $25 million more if her candidate wins than she would if he lost.
Link to con.
Obama's Tax Plan Could Cost Oprah $25 Million
by Julian Sancton
We’ve all heard the simple versions of the candidates’ tax plans: Obama will be cutting taxes for 95 percent of working Americans, and McCain will be slicing them across the board. But now that this election is turning out to be more about the economy than ever, stupid, we decided to find out what this will mean for all segments of society, not just Joe the Plumber.
The results may surprise you. The average plumber (based on statistics from the Tax Policy Center) can expect to pay $752 less in taxes under Obama than he would under McCain. Meanwhile, we now understand why Bill O’Reilly has been working so hard to defeat the Democrat: he stands to lose $940,000 a year. But what about Oprah Winfrey? The pro-Obama überhost could pay $25 million more if her candidate wins than she would if he lost.
Link to con.
The End of International Law?
posted by Robert Dreyfuss
A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine -- the one that Sarah Palin couldn't name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats -- this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in "hot pursuit" of anyone it doesn't like.
They're already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?
Let's take Pakistan first. Though a nominal ally, Pakistan has been the subject of at least nineteen aerial attacks by CIA-controlled drone aircraft, killing scores of Pakistanis and some Afghans in tribal areas controlled by pro-Taliban forces. The New York Times listed, and mapped, all nineteen such attacks in a recent piece describing Predator attacks across the Afghan border, all since August. The Times notes that inside the government, the U.S.Special Operations command and other advocates are pushing for a more aggressive use of such units, including efforts to kidnap and interrogate suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Though President Bush signed an order in July allowing U.S. commando teams to move into Pakistan itself, with or without Islamabad's permission, such raids have occurred only once, on September 3.
The U.S. raid into Syria on October 26 similarly trampled on Syria's sovereignty without so much as a fare-thee-well. Though the Pentagon initially denied that the raid involved helicopters and on-the-ground commando presence, that's exactly what happened. The attack reportedly killed Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih, an Iraqi facilitator who smuggled foreign fighters into Iraq through Syria. The Washington Post was ecstatic, writing in an editorial:
Link to con.
posted by Robert Dreyfuss
A parallel new Bush doctrine is emerging, in the last days of the soon-to-be-ancien regime, and it needs to be strangled in its crib. Like the original Bush doctrine -- the one that Sarah Palin couldn't name, which called for preventive military action against emerging threats -- this one also casts international law aside by insisting that the United States has an inherent right to cross international borders in "hot pursuit" of anyone it doesn't like.
They're already applying it to Pakistan, and this week Syria was the target. Is Iran next?
Let's take Pakistan first. Though a nominal ally, Pakistan has been the subject of at least nineteen aerial attacks by CIA-controlled drone aircraft, killing scores of Pakistanis and some Afghans in tribal areas controlled by pro-Taliban forces. The New York Times listed, and mapped, all nineteen such attacks in a recent piece describing Predator attacks across the Afghan border, all since August. The Times notes that inside the government, the U.S.Special Operations command and other advocates are pushing for a more aggressive use of such units, including efforts to kidnap and interrogate suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders. Though President Bush signed an order in July allowing U.S. commando teams to move into Pakistan itself, with or without Islamabad's permission, such raids have occurred only once, on September 3.
The U.S. raid into Syria on October 26 similarly trampled on Syria's sovereignty without so much as a fare-thee-well. Though the Pentagon initially denied that the raid involved helicopters and on-the-ground commando presence, that's exactly what happened. The attack reportedly killed Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidih, an Iraqi facilitator who smuggled foreign fighters into Iraq through Syria. The Washington Post was ecstatic, writing in an editorial:
Link to con.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Populism Arising—but Will It Be the Killer Kind?
By Chris Hedges
The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.
I watched these competing populism's flicker Thursday night at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., when I moderated a debate between independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin. The two candidates come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Nader, in essence, is a democratic socialist in the mold of Eugene Debs or Norman Thomas. Baldwin, a founder and minister at the Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla., is an evangelical, right-wing populist.
The Story of Bob the Rancher
Is Ranching Sustainable?
By GEORGE WUERTHNER
I hear often from livestock proponents that ranching is an economically sustainable use of western rangelands. Unfortunately many interested in conservation also believe this myth, and it has unfortunate public policy implications. As University of Montana economist Tom Power has noted, most people have a rear view mirror of their local and regional economies. They almost never know what is happening in the present and their ability to predict the future is even less accurate.
Ranching is doomed in the West by rising land values. Ranching, like all agriculture, persists on marginal land—lands that can’t provide a higher monetary return doing something else—usually real estate development. When land prices rise to the point that one cannot reasonably be expected to return sufficient profit to pay a mortgage on such property running cows, growing wheat or whatever, it signals the end of that industry—even though it may take a long time for the industry to completely disappear from the regional landscape. It is this long lingering death that fools people into believing ranching is sustainable.
With regards to ranching in the West, land values have already marginalized the industry. Few are buying ranches in the West to raise cows, or at least to make a profit raising cows. Today’s ranch purchaser is usually an amenity buyer who is more interested in seeing elk and catching trout than returning a profit from a livestock operation. For instance one recent study of ranching in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem found that most new ranch owners had earned their fortunes in other business endeavors. The ranch was a vacation home—a trophy to signal success—rather than a viable livestock operation. In many cases, if a cattle operation persists, it’s a tax write off rather than a source of income. Traditional ranching in the West is on life support and dying.
Link to con.
Is Ranching Sustainable?
By GEORGE WUERTHNER
I hear often from livestock proponents that ranching is an economically sustainable use of western rangelands. Unfortunately many interested in conservation also believe this myth, and it has unfortunate public policy implications. As University of Montana economist Tom Power has noted, most people have a rear view mirror of their local and regional economies. They almost never know what is happening in the present and their ability to predict the future is even less accurate.
Ranching is doomed in the West by rising land values. Ranching, like all agriculture, persists on marginal land—lands that can’t provide a higher monetary return doing something else—usually real estate development. When land prices rise to the point that one cannot reasonably be expected to return sufficient profit to pay a mortgage on such property running cows, growing wheat or whatever, it signals the end of that industry—even though it may take a long time for the industry to completely disappear from the regional landscape. It is this long lingering death that fools people into believing ranching is sustainable.
With regards to ranching in the West, land values have already marginalized the industry. Few are buying ranches in the West to raise cows, or at least to make a profit raising cows. Today’s ranch purchaser is usually an amenity buyer who is more interested in seeing elk and catching trout than returning a profit from a livestock operation. For instance one recent study of ranching in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem found that most new ranch owners had earned their fortunes in other business endeavors. The ranch was a vacation home—a trophy to signal success—rather than a viable livestock operation. In many cases, if a cattle operation persists, it’s a tax write off rather than a source of income. Traditional ranching in the West is on life support and dying.
Link to con.
Change, or more of the same?
From Pravda. Ru
In a recent article for the Miami Herald, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts discussed two “still-classified” government memos that not only revealed how the United States government, under George W. Bush, authorized and engaged in the use of torture, but also how Bush himself blatantly lied to the American people about this reality.
The memos, written in 2003 and 2004, were designed to alleviate the concerns of then-CIA director George Tenet that agents might be criminally prosecuted for torturing “high value” terrorism suspects. Yet two years later, George W. Bush was telling the American people, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it-and I will not authorize it.”
Pitts made two other compelling points in this article. The first was that the corporate-controlled media largely ignored the revelations in these memos, a development that, while disturbing, is certainly not surprising given the plethora of so-called “news” channels that favor sensationalism and superficiality over substance.
Link to con.
From Pravda. Ru
In a recent article for the Miami Herald, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Leonard Pitts discussed two “still-classified” government memos that not only revealed how the United States government, under George W. Bush, authorized and engaged in the use of torture, but also how Bush himself blatantly lied to the American people about this reality.
The memos, written in 2003 and 2004, were designed to alleviate the concerns of then-CIA director George Tenet that agents might be criminally prosecuted for torturing “high value” terrorism suspects. Yet two years later, George W. Bush was telling the American people, “The United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values. I have not authorized it-and I will not authorize it.”
Pitts made two other compelling points in this article. The first was that the corporate-controlled media largely ignored the revelations in these memos, a development that, while disturbing, is certainly not surprising given the plethora of so-called “news” channels that favor sensationalism and superficiality over substance.
Link to con.
US Raid in Syria: A Tactic to Provoke Iran?
by max blunt
The Syrian incursion is an exemplar of the strongest possibility, one that is built into our occupation of Iraq. As we've said from the beginning here at Antiwar.com, the war cannot be contained within the borders of Iraq. It is bound to spill over – providing a convenient pretext to expand and escalate the conflict, and draw in Iran.
Despite all the blustering and threats delivered by Israeli and American government officials, a direct attack on Iranian territory has always been the least likely possible avenue to a war against the mullahs. If and when it comes, the confrontation between Washington/Tel Aviv and Tehran will be sparked by an attack on an Iranian proxy.
Hezbollah has proved pretty much impervious, however, and much too strong militarily. That leaves only Syria – the weakest link in Iran's regional alliance. Just this past May, the Syrians signed a mutual defense pact with the Iranian government: any action against Syria will call Tehran's bluff.
Link to con.
by max blunt
The Syrian incursion is an exemplar of the strongest possibility, one that is built into our occupation of Iraq. As we've said from the beginning here at Antiwar.com, the war cannot be contained within the borders of Iraq. It is bound to spill over – providing a convenient pretext to expand and escalate the conflict, and draw in Iran.
Despite all the blustering and threats delivered by Israeli and American government officials, a direct attack on Iranian territory has always been the least likely possible avenue to a war against the mullahs. If and when it comes, the confrontation between Washington/Tel Aviv and Tehran will be sparked by an attack on an Iranian proxy.
Hezbollah has proved pretty much impervious, however, and much too strong militarily. That leaves only Syria – the weakest link in Iran's regional alliance. Just this past May, the Syrians signed a mutual defense pact with the Iranian government: any action against Syria will call Tehran's bluff.
Link to con.
Monday, October 27, 2008
The Widening Gyre
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
And the gyre continues to widen in new and scary ways. Even as Mr. Paulson and his counterparts in other countries moved to rescue the banks, fresh disasters mounted on other fronts.
Some of these disasters were more or less anticipated. Economists have wondered for some time why hedge funds weren’t suffering more amid the financial carnage. They need wonder no longer: investors are pulling their money out of these funds, forcing fund managers to raise cash with fire sales of stocks and other assets.
The really shocking thing, however, is the way the crisis is spreading to emerging markets — countries like Russia, Korea and Brazil.
Link to con.
By PAUL KRUGMAN, NY Times
Economic data rarely inspire poetic thoughts. But as I was contemplating the latest set of numbers, I realized that I had William Butler Yeats running through my head: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer; / Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”
The widening gyre, in this case, would be the feedback loops (so much for poetry) causing the financial crisis to spin ever further out of control. The hapless falconer would, I guess, be Henry Paulson, the Treasury secretary.
And the gyre continues to widen in new and scary ways. Even as Mr. Paulson and his counterparts in other countries moved to rescue the banks, fresh disasters mounted on other fronts.
Some of these disasters were more or less anticipated. Economists have wondered for some time why hedge funds weren’t suffering more amid the financial carnage. They need wonder no longer: investors are pulling their money out of these funds, forcing fund managers to raise cash with fire sales of stocks and other assets.
The really shocking thing, however, is the way the crisis is spreading to emerging markets — countries like Russia, Korea and Brazil.
Link to con.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Block the Vote
Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.
This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."
Link to con.
Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?
ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. & GREG PALAST
These days, the old west rail hub of Las Vegas, New Mexico, is little more than a dusty economic dead zone amid a boneyard of bare mesas. In national elections, the town overwhelmingly votes Democratic: More than 80 percent of all residents are Hispanic, and one in four lives below the poverty line. On February 5th, the day of the Super Tuesday caucus, a school-bus driver named Paul Maez arrived at his local polling station to cast his ballot. To his surprise, Maez found that his name had vanished from the list of registered voters, thanks to a statewide effort to deter fraudulent voting. For Maez, the shock was especially acute: He is the supervisor of elections in Las Vegas.
Maez was not alone in being denied his right to vote. On Super Tuesday, one in nine Democrats who tried to cast ballots in New Mexico found their names missing from the registration lists. The numbers were even higher in precincts like Las Vegas, where nearly 20 percent of the county's voters were absent from the rolls. With their status in limbo, the voters were forced to cast "provisional" ballots, which can be reviewed and discarded by election officials without explanation. On Super Tuesday, more than half of all provisional ballots cast were thrown out statewide.
This November, what happened to Maez will happen to hundreds of thousands of voters across the country. In state after state, Republican operatives — the party's elite commandos of bare-knuckle politics — are wielding new federal legislation to systematically disenfranchise Democrats. If this year's race is as close as the past two elections, the GOP's nationwide campaign could be large enough to determine the presidency in November. "I don't think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to the GOP in half a dozen states."
Link to con.
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Organic farming 'could feed Africa'
Traditional practices increase yield by 128 per cent in east Africa, says UN
By Daniel Howden in Nairobi
Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades, according to a major study from the United Nations to be presented today.
New evidence suggests that organic practices – derided by some as a Western lifestyle fad – are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa's small farmers who remain among the poorest people on earth. The head of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report "indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed".
The "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s – when the production of food caught and surpassed the needs of the global population for the first time – largely bypassed Africa. Whereas each person today has 25 per cent more food on average than they did in 1960, in Africa they have 10 per cent less.
A combination of increasing population, decreasing rainfall and soil fertility and a surge in food prices has left Africa uniquely vulnerable to famine. Climate change is expected to make a bad situation worse by increasing the frequency of droughts and floods.
Link to con.
Traditional practices increase yield by 128 per cent in east Africa, says UN
By Daniel Howden in Nairobi
Organic farming offers Africa the best chance of breaking the cycle of poverty and malnutrition it has been locked in for decades, according to a major study from the United Nations to be presented today.
New evidence suggests that organic practices – derided by some as a Western lifestyle fad – are delivering sharp increases in yields, improvements in the soil and a boost in the income of Africa's small farmers who remain among the poorest people on earth. The head of the UN's Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said the report "indicates that the potential contribution of organic farming to feeding the world maybe far higher than many had supposed".
The "green revolution" in agriculture in the 1960s – when the production of food caught and surpassed the needs of the global population for the first time – largely bypassed Africa. Whereas each person today has 25 per cent more food on average than they did in 1960, in Africa they have 10 per cent less.
A combination of increasing population, decreasing rainfall and soil fertility and a surge in food prices has left Africa uniquely vulnerable to famine. Climate change is expected to make a bad situation worse by increasing the frequency of droughts and floods.
Link to con.
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