Civilization Ends with a Shutdown of Human Concern.

Are We There Already?

Published on Tuesday, October 30, 2007 by The Guardian/

A powerful novel’s vision of a dystopian future shines a cold light on the dreadful consequences of our universal apathy

by George Monbiot

A few weeks ago I read what I believe is the most important environmental book ever written. It is not Silent Spring, Small Is Beautiful or even Walden. It contains no graphs, no tables, no facts, figures, warnings, predictions or even arguments. Nor does it carry a single dreary sentence, which, sadly, distinguishes it from most environmental literature. It is a novel, first published a year ago, and it will change the way you see the world.

Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road considers what would happen if the world lost its biosphere, and the only living creatures were humans, hunting for food among the dead wood and soot. Some years before the action begins, the protagonist hears the last birds passing over, “their half-muted crankings miles above where they circled the earth as senselessly as insects trooping the rim of a bowl”. McCarthy makes no claim that this is likely to occur, but merely speculates about the consequences.

All pre-existing social codes soon collapse and are replaced with organized butchery, then chaotic, blundering horror. What else are the survivors to do? The only remaining resource is human. It is hard to see how this could happen during humanity’s time on earth, even by means of the nuclear winter McCarthy proposes. But his thought experiment exposes the one terrible fact to which our technological hubris blinds us: our dependence on biological production remains absolute. Civilization is just a russeting on the skin of the biosphere, never immune from being rubbed against the sleeve of environmental change. Six weeks after finishing The Road, I remain haunted by it.

So when I read the UN’s new report on the state of the planet over the weekend, my mind kept snagging on a handful of figures. There were some bright spots - lead has been removed from petrol almost everywhere and sulphur emissions have been reduced in most rich nations - and plenty of gloom. But the issue that stopped me was production.

Crop production has improved over the past 20 years (from 1.8 tons per hectare in the 1980s to 2.5 tons today), but it has not kept up with population. “World cereal production per person peaked in the 1980s, and has since slowly decreased”. There will be roughly 9 billion people by 2050: feeding them and meeting the millennium development goal on hunger [halving the proportion of hungry people] would require a doubling of world food production. Unless we cut waste, overeating, biofuels and the consumption of meat, total demand for cereal crops could rise to three times the current level.

There are two limiting factors. One, mentioned only in passing in the report, is phosphate: it is not clear where future reserves might lie. The more immediate problem is water. “Meeting the millennium development goal on hunger will require doubling of water use by crops by 2050.” Where will it come from? “Water scarcity is already acute in many regions, and farming already takes the lion’s share of water withdrawn from streams and groundwater.” Ten per cent of the world’s major rivers no longer reach the sea all year round.

Buried on page 148, I found this statement. “If present trends continue, 1.8 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity by 2025, and two-thirds of the world population could be subject to water stress.” Wastage and deforestation are partly to blame, but the biggest cause of the coming droughts is climate change. Rainfall will decline most in the places in greatest need of water. So how, unless we engineer a sudden decline in carbon emissions, are we going to feed the world? How, in many countries, will we prevent the social collapse that failure will cause?

The stone drops into the pond and a second later it is smooth again. You will turn the page and carry on with your life. Last week we learned that climate change could eliminate half the world’s species; that 25 primate species are already slipping into extinction; that biological repositories of carbon are beginning to release it, decades ahead of schedule. But everyone is watching and waiting for everyone else to move. The unspoken universal thought is this: “If it were really so serious, surely someone would do something?”

On Saturday, for some light relief from the UN report (who says that environmentalists don’t know how to make whoopee?), I went to a meeting of roads protesters in Birmingham. They had come from all over the country, and between them they were contesting 18 new schemes: a fraction of the road projects the British government is now planning. The improvements to the climate change bill that Hilary Benn, the environment secretary, announced yesterday were welcome. But in every major energy sector - aviation, transport, power generation, house building, coal mining, oil exploration - the government is promoting policies that will increase emissions. How will it make the 60% cut that the bill enforces?

No one knows, but the probable answer is contained in the bill’s great get-out clause: carbon trading. If the government can’t achieve a 60% cut in the UK, it will pay other countries to do it on our behalf. But trading works only if the total global reduction we are trying to achieve is a small one. To prevent runaway climate change, we must cut the greater part — possibly almost all — of the world’s current emissions. Most of the nations with which the UK will trade will have to make major cuts of their own, on top of those they sell to us. Before long we will have to buy our credits from Mars and Jupiter. The only certain means of preventing runaway climate change is to cut emissions here and now.

Who will persuade us to act? However strong the opposition parties’ policies appear to be, they cannot be sustained unless the voters move behind them. We won’t be prompted by the media. The BBC drops Planet Relief for fear of breaching its impartiality guidelines: heaven forbid that it should come out against mass death. But it broadcasts a program - Top Gear - that puts a match to its guidelines every week, and now looks about as pertinent as the Black and White Minstrel Show.

The schedules are crammed with shows urging us to travel further, drive faster, build bigger, buy more, yet none of them are deemed to offend the rules, which really means that they don’t offend the interests of business or the pampered sensibilities of the Aga class. The media, driven by fear and advertising, are hopelessly biased towards the consumer economy and against the biosphere.

It seems to me that we are already pushing other people ahead of us down The Road. As the biosphere shrinks, McCarthy describes the collapse of the protagonist’s core beliefs. I sense that this might be happening already: that a hardening of interests, a shutting down of concern, is taking place among the people of the rich world. If this is true, we do not need to wait for the forests to burn or food supplies to shrivel before we decide that civilization is in trouble.

George Monbiot is the author of the best selling books The Age of Consent: a manifesto for a new world order and Captive State: the corporate takeover of Britain. He writes a weekly column for the Guardian newspaper. Monbiot.com

© 2007 The Guardian

Arson suspect killed, another arrested

Police in San Bernardino shoot an Arizona man who fled after being spotted near the Cal State campus। In a separate incident, a Hesperia man is in custody.

By Hector Becerra and Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
October 25, 2007

Amid worries of new blazes adding to the firestorm already afflicting the region, a man in Hesperia has been arrested on suspicion of arson, and police reported shooting and killing another arson suspect after chasing him out of scrub behind Cal State San Bernardino.

Law enforcement officials said today that they didn't know whether either of the men had started any of the more than a dozen large fires that have devastated Southern California in recent days, including the nearby Lake Arrowhead blaze. The brush fire in Hesperia was quickly extinguished by residents.

-	SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRES - COMPLETE COVERAGE

Investigators have said that at least two of the huge wildfires, one in Orange County and the other in Temecula, were the work of arsonists.

The confrontation that ended in the shooting death started about 6 p.m. Tuesday when San Bernardino university police spotted a man in a rural area of flood channels and scrub near the campus. University police tried to detain the man, but he got into his car and fled, authorities said. When he began to ram officers' vehicle, they shot him.

The suspect is described as a 27-year-old man with a home address in Arizona. Sheriff's investigators will search his impounded pickup truck pending a search warrant, Lt. Scott Patterson of the San Bernardino Police Department said this afternoon.

No additional information, including his identity will be released until Thursday.

"We don't know whether he was an arsonist," Patterson said. "What was related by the Cal State police was that they tried to contact him as a suspicious person in a brush area. Things being how they are, there was a suspicion that he could be an arsonist."

The area near the campus had been affected by the massive Old Fire of 2003, Patterson said, adding that "it's very fire-prone. It's an area that would be very devastated if a fire were to start there."

San Bernardino police joined campus authorities in pursuit of the suspect. He drove north on Waterman Avenue and up a dirt fire road into the foothills. When officers tried to take him into custody, he began to batter officers' vehicles with car, Patterson said. Officers shot and killed him.

"Both agencies' officers fired," said University Police Chief Jimmie Brown, who added that it was not known who fired the fatal shot. "But right now, we don't know too much more."

The shooting is being investigated by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, which is routine for officer-involved shootings.

About three hours later in Hesperia, a man was seen by a female motorist squatting along the side of Highway 173 just south of Arrowhead Lake Road. Sheriff's officials say John Alfred Rund, 48, of Hesperia had just started a fire along the flat, isolated, scrubby road.

The woman called police, and Highway Patrol and sheriff's deputies were soon looking for the suspect, who witnesses said took off on a Honda motorcycle, wearing a red-and-white-striped helmet.

Four residents grabbed shovels and put out the fire with clods of dirt, said sheriff's spokesperson Jodi Miller.

A CHP helicopter, using infrared equipment, caught sight of Rund on his motorcycle, Miller said. Along with CHP officers, sheriff's deputies found and arrested him at a home along Highway 173 near Highway 138, she said.

He was being held on $750,000 bail on suspicion of arson and is to appear in court tomorrow in Victorville.

"He has not been connected in any way so far with any fire up on the hill," Miller said. "We don't know at this point what started that fire."

Weekly News Tidbits

Warmer Autumn Evenings Dulls Foliage

Fans of New England's Fall colors have been repeatedly let down the last few years. The culprit? Global Warming. Who saw this coming?

2004 was "mediocre, 2005 was terrible, 2006 was pretty bad although it was spotty. This year, we're seeing that same spottiness...The leaves fall off without ever becoming orange or yellow or red. They just go from green to brown," said Barry Rock, a forestry professor at the University of New Hampshire.

"It's nothing like it used to be," said University of Vermont plant biologist Tom Vogelmann, a Vermont native.

"I don't have a sense that the colors are off, but the timing is definitely off," said Scott Cowger, owner and innkeeper at the Maple Hill Farm Bed & Breakfast Inn at Hallowell, Maine.

People in Northampton, Mass., are still waiting on fall color. If foliage-viewing is the goal, "I wouldn't send anybody down this way yet," Autumn Inn desk clerk Mary Pelis said this past week.

A.P. News

Death Calling - on Your Cell Phone

Using a mobile phone for more than 10 years increases the risk of getting brain cancer, according to the most comprehensive study of the risks yet published.

The scientists who conducted the research say using a mobile for just an hour every working day during that period is enough to increase the risk – and that the international standard used to protect users from the radiation emitted is "not safe" and "needs to be revised".

They conclude that "caution is needed in the use of mobile phones" and believe children, who are especially vulnerable, should be discouraged from using them at all.

Cancers take at least 10 years – and normally much longer – to develop but, as mobile phones have spread so recently and rapidly, relatively few people have been using them that long.

The scientists conclude: "Results from present studies on use of mobile phones for more than 10 years give a consistent pattern of an increased risk for acoustic neuroma and glioma." They add that "an increased risk for other types of brain tumours cannot be ruled out".

They have also carried out the only study into the effects of the long-term use of cordless phones, and found this also increased both kinds of tumours. Their research suggests that using a mobile or cordless phone for just 2,000 hours – less than an hour every working day for 10 years – is enough to augment the risk.

The danger may be even greater than the new study suggests for, as Professor Mild says, 10 years is the "minimum" period needed by cancers to develop. As they normally take much longer, very many more would be likely to strike long-term users after 15, 20 or 30 years – which leads some to fear that an epidemic of the disease could develop in the coming decades, particularly among today's young people.

He said he uses a mobile phone as little as possible, and urges others to use hands-free equipment and make only short calls, reserving longer ones for landlines. He also said that mobiles should not be given to children, whose thinner skulls and developing nervous systems make them particularly vulnerable.

In the meantime, the scientists want a revision of the emission standard for mobiles and other sources of radiation, which they describe as "inappropriate" and "not safe". The international standard is designed merely to prevent harmful heating of living tissue or induced electrical currents in the body – and does not take the risk of getting cancer into account.

Professors Lennart Hansen and Kjell Hansson Mild serve on the international BioInitiative Working Group of leading scientists and public health experts, which this summer produced a report warning that the standard was "thousands of times too lenient".

The BioInitiative report added: "It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that some adverse health effects occur at far lower levels of exposure... some at several thousand times below the existing safety limits." It also warned that unless this is corrected there could be "public health problems of a global nature".

the Independent

More Combat Veterans Speak Against the Occupation of Iraq

A dozen officers who served in Iraq have issued a statement calling for the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq.

Their article was published in the Washington Post. Here are excerpts:

The Real Iraq We Knew

...As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we’ve seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it’s like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it’s time to get out.

What does Iraq look like on the ground? It’s certainly far from being a modern, self-sustaining country. Many roads, bridges, schools and hospitals are in deplorable condition. Fewer people have access to drinking water or sewage systems than before the war. And Baghdad is averaging less than eight hours of electricity a day.

...U.S. forces, responsible for too many objectives and too much “battle space,” are vulnerable targets. The sad inevitability of a protracted draw-down is further escalation of attacks — on U.S. troops, civilian leaders and advisory teams. They would also no doubt get caught in the crossfire of the imminent Iraqi civil war.

...There is one way we might be able to succeed in Iraq. To continue an operation of this intensity and duration, we would have to abandon our volunteer military for compulsory service. Short of that, our best option is to leave Iraq immediately. A scaled withdrawal will not prevent a civil war, and it will spend more blood and treasure on a losing proposition.

America, it has been five years. It’s time to make a choice.

This column was written by 12 former Army captains: Jason Blindauer served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Elizabeth Bostwick served in Salah Ad Din and An Najaf in 2004. Jeffrey Bouldin served in Al Anbar, Baghdad and Ninevah in 2006. Jason Bugajski served in Diyala in 2004. Anton Kemps served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Kristy (Luken) McCormick served in Ninevah in 2003. Luis Carlos Montalván served in Anbar, Baghdad and Nineveh in 2003 and 2005. William Murphy served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Josh Rizzo served in Baghdad in 2006. William “Jamie” Ruehl served in Nineveh in 2004. Gregg Tharp served in Babil and Baghdad in 2003 and 2005. Gary Williams served in Baghdad in 2003.

The Washington Post

Top U.S. Military Commander Reins in "Crazies" over Iran

WASHINGTON - The George W. Bush administration’s shift from the military option of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran’s role in Iraq but by the explicit opposition of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to an unprovoked attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The Joint Chiefs were joined in opposition to a strike on Iran by Admiral William Fallon, CENTCOM commander. Pentagon contacts have also said that Fallon made his opposition to war against Iran clear to the White House.

Although he did not specifically refer to the Joint Chiefs, Fallon also suggested that other military leaders were opposing a strike against Iran, saying, “There are several of us who are trying to put the crazies back in the box,” according to the same source.

But the issue of what evidence of Iranian complicity would be adequate to justify such a strike evidently remains a matter of debate within the administration. British forces in southern Iraq patrolled the border very aggressively for six months last year to find evidence of Iranian involvement in supplying weapons to Iraqi guerrillas but found nothing.

After several months of trying to establish specific links between Iraqis suspected of trafficking in weapons to a specific Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard contact, the U.S. command has not claimed a single case of such a link. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the U.S. commander for southern Iraq, where most of the Shiite militias operate, admitted in a Jul. 6 briefing that his troops had not captured “anybody that we can tie to Iran”.

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is known to be closely allied with Vice-President Dick Cheney on Iran policy, has betrayed impatience with a policy that depends on obtaining proof of Iranian complicity in attacks. On Jun. 11 he called for “strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”

Lieberman repeated that position on Jul. 2, but thus far it has not prevailed.

Inter Press Service

Supporting the Troops

Today's post is about the continuing occupation of Iraq by the US military.

These are excerpts from several films about American soldiers and the people of Iraq, from the Guerrilla News Network. They are Quicktime videos.

The link on the title will take you to the film's homepage, the link in the text will take you to the trailer.

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The War Tapes

In March 2004, just as the insurgency strengthened, several members of a New Hampshire National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, carrying digital video cameras. The War Tapes is the movie they made with director Deborah Scranton and a team of award-winning filmmakers. It’s the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves on the front lines in Iraq. The soldiers were not picked by casting agents or movie producers. They selected themselves. Ten soldiers from Charlie Company carried cameras on IED-riddled roads and into combat—and into their own internal conversations. They learned how to choose and tell their stories in constant instant message conversations with Director Scranton. They filmed under unbelievable conditions. The unit was based at LSA Anaconda in the deadly Sunni Triangle, under constant threat of ambush and IED attacks. They traveled, as a unit, 1.4 million miles during their tour, and lived through over 1,200 combat operations and 250 direct enemy engagements.



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the Ground Truth



The Ground Truth: The Human Cost of War is a work in progress produced and directed by Patricia Foulkrod and in association with Operation Truth, an non-profit organization created by Iraq veteran Paul Rieckhoff. This film is our soldiers’ perspective of the Iraq War, and how they are being treated upon returning home. It goes beyond the war stories to look underneath our American tradition of engaging in war and then abandoning the warrior.


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When I Came Home



When I Came Home is a documentary which follows the lives and struggles of several homeless veterans, including those who have recently returned home from the war in Iraq. The film examines the factors which led over 150,000 Vietnam veterans from the battlefield to the street and asks the question: Will what happened to Vietnam veterans happen to a new generation of soldiers? The film also focuses on the veteran-led movement which is fighting to end this national disgrace.



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Occupation: Dreamland



Occupation: Dreamland is an unflinchingly candid portrait of a squad of American soldiers deployed in the doomed Iraq city of Falluja during the winter of 2004. A collective study of the soldiers unfolds as they patrol an environment of low-intensity conflict creeping steadily towards catastrophe. Through the squads activities Occupation: Dreamland provides a vital glimpse into the last days of Falluja. The film documents the city’s waning stability before a final series of military assaults began in the spring of 2004 that effectively destroyed it.



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BattleGround


BattleGround is an intensely emotional journey that challenges the orthodoxies of Left and Right, capturing the humanity that exists behind the headline-grabbing images of carnage and sectarian strife. Calling it a “movingly human and many-sided portrait of the war,” the New York Times Magazine singled out BattleGround from other Iraq war documentaries as “more the exception than the rule.” It a critical film for anyone who wants to understand the powerful forces that are sucking America deeper and deeper into a Middle Eastern quagmire.

A New Cold War?

An F-15C Eagle from the 12th Fighter Squadron at Elmendorf Air Force Base flies next to a Russian Tu-95 Bear Bomber during a Russian exercise Sept. 28, which brought the Bear near the west coast of Alaska. The Eagle took off as part of North American Aerospace Defense Command’s reaction to this training opportunity provided by the Russian 137th Air Army.



Possibly the biggest, under-reported story of this year has been the beginnings of a new Cold War between the US and Russia.

There are currently three obvious signs of growing tensions between the nations:
* Russia is building a Nuclear Reactor for the Iranian Government - which both Israel and President Bush find offensive
* Russia and Iran are talking to their neighbors to ask their co-operation in preventing an attack against Iran
* Russian Bombers have resumed flying near US airspace.

Report from Sky News

Russian warplanes staged at least seven exercises outside US airspace near Alaska this summer and each time US or Canadian fighter jets were dispatched to escort them, US military officials have said.

At least five exercises by the Russian Tu-95 Bear heavy bombers have taken place off Alaska's Aleutian Islands and other historic Cold War outposts, such as Cape Lisburne and St. Lawrence Island, according to NORAD records.

All occurred beyond the 12-mile boundary that constitutes US airspace and have involved two to six aircraft. Each time, Russia alerted the US through reports in Russian news agencies.

The bombers have been met by fighter jets, usually F-15s.

President Vladimir Putin announced in August that Russia was resuming long-range bomber flights over the Pacific, Atlantic and Arctic oceans for the first time since the break up of the Soviet Union.

He also suggested Moscow and Tehran should have a veto on Western plans for new pipelines to carry oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea, using routes that would bypass Russian soil and break the Kremlin’s monopoly on energy deliveries from the region.

And as I write this, Putin is in Tehran, where a summit meeting of the nations bordering the Caspian Sea is being held.



From AP news:

Putin came to Tehran for a summit of the five nations bordering the Caspian, but his visit was aimed more at strengthening efforts to blunt U.S. economic and military ties in the area.

“We are saying that no (Caspian) nations should offer their territory to outside powers for aggression or any military action against any of the Caspian states,” Putin said.

The five national leaders at the summit later signed a declaration that included a similar statement — an apparent reflection of Iranian fears that the United States could use Azerbaijan’s territory as a staging ground for military strikes in Iran.

Yet Putin refused to set a date for completing Iran’s first nuclear reactor, trying to avoid an outright show of support for Iran’s defiance over its nuclear program.

Putin strongly warned outside powers against use of force in the region, a clear reference to the United States, which many in Iran fear will attack over the West’s suspicions that the Iranians are secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Here in the US, several candidates in the Presidential race are talking tough about Iran, once again showing disregard for the general sense of the public that the occupation of Iraq has been a horrific blunder, and that military action against Iran would only exacerbate the situation.



Meanwhile, there is very little reported on people speaking out against the possibility of an attack against Iran. Not only are the candidates who speak against such actions not covered by the mainstream press, but the few people with experience with international affairs who speak out are also not given much attention.

Daniel Ellsberg has been vocal in his opposition to the Bush administration's saber-rattling.

The 76-year-old activist gained notoriety during the Vietnam War when he released the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times and other newspapers, detailing internal U.S. policy decisions regarding that war and its escalation.

Ellsberg said in the last few weeks he has begun to think a coup has occurred in the presidency of George Bush, which he characterized as a “rogue administration.”

He said that if a new 9/11 terrorist attack happens in the United States, the president would not hesitate to suspend and dismantle the Constitution and that hundreds of thousands of Middle Easterners and dissidents could end up in detention camps. “I think we’re in danger - we’re in a crisis,” he said.

Ellsberg pointed to actions taken by Bush that he said violate the law, including endorsing warrantless surveillance and lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. At the same time, he was quick to chastise the Democrats in Congress, saying that by going along with Bush’s war they’ve failed their duty to uphold the Constitution.

He said the Senate resolution passed (in September) declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is an invitation for Bush to declare war on Iran.

Published by Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, Pennsylvania)
Ellsberg Calls for Actions to Prevent War with Iran
by Michael Yoder

But, according to published reports in Europe, Bush has already begun preparations for military action against Iran.

...on Sept. 16, a bombshell was dropped from Paris. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, issued a blunt statement that France must be prepared for a war with Iran. Although Prime Minister François Fillon later tried to water down the remarks, the message was clear. And no one could forget President Nicholas Sarkozy's recent visit with the Bushes at Kennebunkport. Following his return to Paris, Sarkozy, according to source reports, started sending notes to various European capitals, that the message he had received from Bush was that war with Iran was inevitable.

The French intelligence leak-sheet, {Le Canard enchainé), lent credence to Kouchner's remarks, reporting that the war against Iran is ready to go. It quotes a former CIA official who said that Israeli officers were lobbying the Pentagon and White House for a military intervention. In addition, {Le Canard} reported that Antonov jets had been leased in Ukraine and Belarus to transport US military hardware from military bases in Iraq, Central Asia, and Djibouti to the Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean. The same source also signaled the arrival of stealth bombers to Qatari bases, reinforcing the armada there.

Kouchner's remarks provoked a storm of justified criticism from those quarters seeking to avoid war, including Russia and China.

The Iran War is on the Front Burner
By Muriel Mirak-Weissbach

Unlike the invasion of Iraq (against the regime of someone the international community - particularly his neighbors - regarded with suspicion, and who was largely blamed for toying with oil prices), an attack against Iran could escalate.

Though it is doubtful that either Russia or China would offer direct military support for Iran, they could retaliate through economic means. Russia is in good shape to pressure European nations to take a tough stand against the US, as it supplies much of Europe's oil supply. China has so many US dollars in reserve, it could cause a severe devaluation of the dollar by dumping them on the international banking market.

This could be a pivotal moment in US history. Bush has already done much to undermine the US economy and gotten us involved in a military occupation that has no benefit for our security and is costing us billions of dollars, thousands of lives and the respect of people around the world.

An attack against Iran could quickly spin out of control, with consequences we cannot forsee, including the possibility an end to constitutional rule of law in the United States.

Weekly News Review

I intend to make this a regular feature of my blog. I’ll offer my thoughts on some of the events of the past week.

A note of explanation about the election coverage:

I’ll largely focus on the Republican candidates for President, since they likely will steal the ’08 election, the way they did for Bush. The Democrat’s nominee, therefore, is largely irrelevant. That’s what happens to a Representative Republic when the people snooze – they lose. What are you gonna do about it? I didn’t think so.

Let’s Beat Up the Sick Kids!


Conservatives are partying heartily after defeating the popular and successful State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). You can see the ecstatic look on neocon faces as they attacked young, brain-damaged car accident victim Graeme Frost.

The child was severely injured in an auto accident, and without the SCHIP program, would have died a slow, painful death. Which is just fine, the neocons believe. After all, it’s his parent’s fault that he didn’t have insurance.

After Frost was featured in ads speaking in favor of SCHIP, a smear campaign was launched against his parents for recklessly wasting their income on food and shelter for their family, leaving them with no money for health insurance companies. The right-wing attack was apparently launched from the offices of influential Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), by a member of his staff.

Republican Candidates Bash Sick Kids, Too – They Don’t Vote!


After President Bush cold-heartedly shot down the bill that would have extended and expanded the SCHIP program that provides healthcare for uninsured children, the leading GOP candidates squealed in glee.

While still not demanding that the pure, young flesh be stripped from poor children’s bones for their dinners, all agreed that the money required for the program would be better used by awarding more contracts to Blackwater – recipient of a new $92 Million contract this week.

Despite the President’s falling popularity and the widespread support for SCHIP, this is an issue — like the Iraq war, North Korea’s nuclear program, the management of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, two consecutive fraudulent Presidential elections, a runaway trade deficit, a dollar rapidly losing value, corruption rampant in the Department of Justice, a phony energy crises, rising oil prices, human rights abuses, the accelerating climate crises, to name a few — where the candidates are cautiously optimistic. Unlike their relationship to the President on many, many contentious issues. The four leading candidates are praising the veto. While sucking up to the President’s wealthy supporters, they are afraid to be too closely associated with Bush.

In the case of the SCHIP, the front-runners are closer to Bush than on other issues, despite the controversy over the veto. None of the Republican candidates have expressed any concern over illegal efforts to prevent Blacks from voting, for instance, as this is not an issue Republican voters think is important. It is unlikely that Bush could have pulled off his seizure of the White House or held it four years later without such suppression of the Black vote, and it is unlikely the next Republican President will, either.

Giuliani Campaign: Out-Bushing Bush


Rudy Giuliani seems to be the darling of the neoconservatives.

By selling himself as the candidate most likely to keep the U.S. safe if he were installed into the White House by a flood of campaign donations and voter fraud as the heir to the neocon political juggernaut that twice forced President Bush into office, the former NYC mayor is saying what the neocons love to hear. More war. Maybe another one. Maybe another two.

Among programs favored by one of Giuliani’s top advisors would be racial profiling of Muslim Americans. Though the Giuliani camp has not spoken in favor of concentration camps for Muslims in the U.S., an aide has said that the interment of Japanese Americans during WW II was not so bad, really.

As far as war against Iran goes, Giuliani recently said "I believe the United States and our allies should deliver a very clear message to Iran, very clear, very sober, very serious..."

What to do with Bush on 2008 campaign trail?


Do Republicans want President Bush's support on the campaign trail?

The answer is a surprising “Yes.” However there is a certain amount of caution in their approach. At a recent GOP conference, last weekend the candidates largely avoided mentioning Bush and instead conjured the spirit of conservative icon Ronald Reagan. Which is surprising, considering the number of his staff and administration who wound up in prison or in the Bush family’s administrations, or both.

"Let's face it, you've basically got a president who is radioactive," according to political expert Norman Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute.

Ron Kaufman, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney's campaign, said the eventual candidate will absolutely need Bush’s fund-raising acumen.

By standing by the President’s incompetent bungling of the economy and the occupation of Iraq, Republican candidates are taking a risk. The GOP’s unity behind Bush cost them majorities in both houses of Congress in the mid-term elections of ’06.

Even with widespread use of electronic voting machines, there is a limit to how many elections Republicans can rig next year. Or so one likes to think.

Limbaugh Launches Radio Campaign of Hate Against Iraq Combat Vets


The ink had scarcely dried on a resolution passed by the US Congress condemning the First Amendment rights of American citizens when a chance for redemption came their way.

Large-butted radio iconoclast Rush Limbaugh characterized Iraq combat veterans as “The phony soldiers” for criticizing the horribly mismanaged occupation. This continues the neoconservative tradition of loud-mouthed cowards speaking out in favor of war, when they have never served in the Armed Forces or been in combat themselves.

Past targets of such slanders against Veterans have included US Senator Max Cleland, who lost two legs and an arm in combat, US Senator John Kerry who was awarded both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star, and ex-Marine US Rep. John Murtha, also wounded in action. During the '04 Republican National Convention that renominated Bush for President, Republican conventioneers mocked all Veterans who have ever been injured in combat by wearing purple bandaids.

After making the cowardly attack on soldiers who – according to neocons – are fighting to defend our country and our way of life, Limbaugh’s followers have been denouncing combat Vets, harassing them when they appear in public, and making anonymous death-threats against them.

In this instance, though, politicians and the mainstream media have stood behind Limbaugh’s rather voluminous rear-end and even praised him for his efforts to speak his wretchedly twisted mind.

Breast Cancer Awareness.

The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on "donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammogram in exchange for advertising.


Breast Cancer Awareness.

News Briefs - October

News Briefs

I do the News Briefs section for the Portland Alliance newspaper. Once the new issue is out, I’ll post them here. These are the October entries as I originally submitted them.

Damned if you do

A key Sunni sheik who fought against al Qaeda militants in Iraq was assassinated Thursday by a roadside bomb, officials said.

The bomb struck a convoy carrying Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha and his security detail, a Ramadi police official and an Interior Ministry official said.

At least two of the sheik's bodyguards were killed and five other escorts were wounded in the afternoon attack.

Abu Reesha, 39, was head of the Anbar Salvation Council -- also known as the Anbar Awakening -- a coalition of tribes that has been working to counter al Qaeda in Sunni-dominated Anbar province.

- CNN

Damned if you don't

Two soldiers who wrote of their skepticism about the war in Iraq in an Op-ed article that appeared in the New York Times on Aug. 19 were killed in Bagdad on (Sept. 10th). They died when the five-ton vehicle they in which they were riding overturned.

The victims, Staff Sgt. Yance T. Grat, 26 and Sgt. Omar Mora, 28, were among the authors of "The War as We Saw It," in which they expressed doubts about reports of progress.

"As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and and social unrest we see every day," the soldiers wrote.

While the seven soldiers were composing their article, one of them - Staff Sgt. Jeremy A. Murphy, was shot in the head. The other authors were Buddhika Jayamaha, an Army specialist, and Sgts. Wesley D. Smith, Jeremy Roebuck and Edward Sandmeier.

-- from NY Times (Spet. 13)

Say you love Jesus. That’s an order!

A military watchdog organization filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday against the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and a US Army major, on behalf of an Army soldier stationed in Iraq। The suit charges that the First Amendment Rights of Jeremy Hall -an Army specialist currently on active duty in Speicher, Iraq - were violated beginning last Thanksgiving when, because of his atheist beliefs, he declined to participate in a Christian prayer ceremony commemorating the holiday.

Moreover, the complaint alleges that on August 7, when Hall received permission by an Army chaplain to organize a meeting of other soldiers who shared his atheist beliefs, his supervisor, Army Major Paul Welborne, broke up the gathering and threatened to retaliate against the soldier by charging him with violating violating the Uniform
Code of Military Justice। “During the course of the meeting, defendant Welborne confronted the attendees, disrupted the meeting and interfered with plaintiff Hall’s and the other attendees’ rights to discuss topics of their interests,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit seeks an injunction against Welborne from further engaging in behavior “that has the effect of establishing compulsory religious practices” and asks that Defense Secretary Robert Gates prevent Welborne from interfering with Hall’s free speech rights.
Weinstein has been waging a one-man war against the DoD for its blatant disregard of the Constitution। He is also an Air Force veteran and a graduate of the Air Force Academy.

Since he launched the non-profit Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) nearly two years ago, Weinstein said he has been contacted by more than 5,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers to convert to Christianity।

A Pentagon spokesman said he could not comment on the lawsuit because he has not yet seen it.
-- TruthOut.org


Dark Days for Blackwater

Government ministers (Sept। 18) backed the Iraqi Interior Ministry's decision to shut down Blackwater USA's operations in Iraq after the American security firm was involved in a Baghdad firefight that authorities say killed at least eight civilians.

The ministers also stressed the need to ensure foreign security firms operate within Iraqi laws, according to a statement from spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh। "We do need them to respect the law and the regulation here in Iraq," Al-Dabbagh said.

Iraqi authorities have been concerned about private security firms and have complained about shootings by private military contractors -- four of them involving Blackwater, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service।

Courts in Iraq do not have the authority to bring contractors to trial, the CRS report states.
More than 25,000 employees of private security firms are working in Iraq, guarding reconstruction workers and government officials।

"(Secretary of State Condoleezza) Rice assured (Prime Minister Nuri) al-Maliki in this evening's call that the United States will take immediate action to show their determination that such acts will not be repeated," the Iraqi statement said. It was unclear whether she was speaking of the incident itself or the Iraqi government’s response to it.

BLACKWATER USA
• Founded in 1997 by former Navy SEAL Erik Prince
• Based in Moyock, North Carolina
• One of three private security firms contracted by the U।S। State Department
to protect its personnel in Iraq
• Many personnel are former military and law enforcement workers
• Holds at least $800 million in government contracts for its work in Iraq
• Employs an estimated 1,000 people across Iraq
-- Sources: CNN, The Associated Press

The people in Jena are fighting for justice

The trouble started under “the white tree” in front of Jena High School. The “white tree” is where the white students, 80% of the student body, would always sit during school breaks.

In September 2006, a black student at Jena high school asked permission from school administrators to sit under the “white tree.” School officials advised them to sit wherever they wanted. They did.

The next day, three nooses, in the school colors, were hanging from the “white tree.” The message was clear. “Those nooses meant the KKK, they meant ‘Niggers, we’re going to kill you, we’re going to hang you till you die,’” Casteptla Bailey, mom of one of the students, told the London Observer.

The Jena high school principal found that three white students were responsible and recommended expulsion. The white superintendent of schools over-ruled the principal and gave the students a three day suspension saying that the nooses were just a youthful stunt. “Adolescents play pranks,” the superintendent told the Chicago Tribune, “I don’t think it was a threat against anybody.”

The African-American community was hurt and upset. “Hanging those nooses was a hate crime, plain and simple,” according to Tracy Bowens, mother of students at Jena High.

But blacks in this area of Louisiana have little political power. The ten person all-male government of the parish has one African-American member. The nine member all-male school board has one African American member. (A phone caller to the local school board trying to find out the racial makeup of the school board was told there was one “colored” member of the board). There is one black police officer in Jena and two black public school teachers.

Jena, with a population of less than 3000, is the largest town in and parish (county) seat of LaSalle Parish, Louisiana. There are about 350 African Americans in the town. LaSalle has a population of just over 14,000 people - 12% African-American.

This is solid Bush and David Duke Country - GWB won LaSalle Parish 4 to 1 in the last two elections; Duke carried a majority of the white vote when he ran for Governor of Louisiana. Families earn about 60% of the national average. The Census Bureau reports that less than 10% of the businesses in LaSalle Parish are black owned.

Jena is the site of the infamous Juvenile Correctional Center for Youth that was forced to close its doors in 2000, only two years after opening, due to widespread brutality and racism including the choking of juveniles by guards after the youth met with a lawyer. The U.S. Department of Justice sued the private prison amid complaints that guards paid inmates to fight each other and laughed when teens tried to commit suicide.

Black students decided to resist and organized a sit-in under the “white tree” at the school to protest the light suspensions given to the noose-hanging white students.

The white District Attorney then came to Jena High with law enforcement officers to address a school assembly. According to testimony in a later motion in court, the DA reportedly threatened the black protesting students saying that if they didn't stop making a fuss about this "innocent prank… I can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen." The school was put on lockdown for the rest of the week.

Racial tensions remained high throughout the fall.

On the night of Thursday November 30, 2006, a still unsolved fire burned down the main academic building of Jena High School.

On Friday night, December 1, a black student who showed up at a white party was beaten by whites. On Saturday, December 2, a young white man pulled out a shotgun in a confrontation with young black men at the Gotta Go convenience store outside Jena before the men wrestled it away from him. The black men who took the shotgun away were later arrested, no charges were filed against the white man.

On Monday, December 4, at Jena High, a white student – who allegedly had been making racial taunts, including calling African American students “niggers” while supporting the students who hung the nooses and who beat up the black student at the off-campus party – was knocked down, punched and kicked by black students. The white victim was taken to the hospital treated and released. He attended a social function that evening.

Six black Jena students were arrested and charged with attempted second degree murder. All six were expelled from school.

The six charged were: 17-year-old Robert Bailey Junior whose bail was set at $138,000; 17-year-old Theo Shaw - bail $130,000; 18-year-old Carwin Jones – bail $100,000; 17-year-old Bryant Purvis – bail $70,000; 16 year old Mychal Bell, a sophomore in high school who was charged as an adult and for whom bail was set at $90,000; and a still unidentified minor.

Many of the young men, who came to be known as the Jena 6, stayed in jail for months. Few families could afford bond or private attorneys.

Mychal Bell remained in jail from December 2006 until his trial because his family was unable to post the $90,000 bond. Theo Shaw has also remained in jail. Several of the other defendants remained in jail for months until their families could raise sufficient money to put up bonds.

The Chicago Tribune wrote a powerful story headlined “Racial Demons Rear Heads.” The London Observer wrote: “Jena is gaining national notoriety as an example of the new ‘stealth’ racism, showing how lightly sleep the demons of racial prejudice in America’s Deep South, even in the year that a black man, Barak Obama, is a serious candidate for the White House.” The British Broadcasting Company aired a TV special report “Race Hate in Louisiana 2007.”

The Jena 6 and their families were put under substantial pressure to plead guilty. Mychal Bell was reported to have been leaning towards pleading guilty right up until his trial when he decided he would not plead guilty to a felony.

When it finally came, the trial of Mychal Bell was swift. Bell was represented by an appointed public defender.

On the morning of the trial, the DA reduced the charges from attempted second degree murder to second degree aggravated battery and conspiracy. Aggravated battery in Louisiana law demands the attack be with a dangerous weapon. The dangerous weapon? The prosecutor was allowed to argue to the jury that the tennis shoes worn by Bell could be considered a dangerous weapon used by “the gang of black boys” who beat the white victim.

Most shocking of all, when the pool of potential jurors was summoned, fifty people appeared – every single one white.

The LaSalle Parish clerk defended the all white group to the Alexandria Louisiana Town Talk newspaper saying that the jury pool was selected by computer. “The venire [panel of prospective jurors] is color blind. The idea is for the list to truly reflect the racial makeup of the community, but the system does not take race into factor.” Officials said they had summoned 150 people, but these were the only people who showed up.

The all-white jury which was finally chosen included two people friendly with the District Attorney, a relative of one of the witnesses and several others who were friends of prosecution witnesses.

Bell’s parents, Melissa Bell and Marcus Jones, were not even allowed to attend the trial despite their objections, because they were listed as potential witnesses. The white victim, though a witness, was allowed to stay in the courtroom. The parents, who had been widely quoted in the media as critics of the process, were also told they could no longer speak to the media as long as the trial was in session. Marcus Jones had told the media “It’s all about those nooses” and declared the charges racially motivated.

Other supporters who planned a demonstration in support of Bell were ordered by the court not to do so near the courthouse or anywhere the judge would see them.

The prosecutor called 17 witnesses - eleven white students, three white teachers, and two white nurses. Some said they saw Bell kick the victim, others said they did not see him do anything. The white victim testified that he did not know if Bell hit him or not.

The Chicago Tribune reported the public defender did not challenge the all-white jury pool, put on no evidence and called no witnesses. The public defender told the Alexandria Town talk after resting his case without calling any witnesses that he knew he would be second-guessed by many but was confident that the jury would return a verdict of not guilty. “I don’t believe race is an issue in this trial…I think I have a fair and impartial jury…”

The jury deliberated for less than three hours and found Mychal Bell guilty on the maximum possible charges of aggravated second degree battery and conspiracy. He faces up to a maximum of 22 years in prison.

The public defender told the press afterwards, “I feel I put on the best defense that I could.” Responding to criticism of not putting on any witnesses, the attorney said “why open the door for further accusations? I did the best I could for my client, Mychal Bell.”

At a rally in front of the courthouse the next day, Alan Bean, a Texas minister and leader of the Friends of Justice, said “I have seen a lot of trials in my time. And I have never seen a more distressing miscarriage of justice than what happened in LaSalle Parish yesterday.” Khadijah Rashad of Lafayette Louisiana described the trial as a “modern day lynching.”

Tory Pegram with the Louisiana ACLU has been working with the parents for months. “People know if they don't demand equal treatment now, they will never get it. People's jobs and livelihoods have been threatened for attending Jena 6 Defense meetings, but people are willing to risk that. One person told me: ‘We have to convince more people to come rally with us.....What's the worst that could happen? They fire us from our jobs? We have the worst jobs in the town anyway. They burn a cross on our lawns or burn down my house? All of that has happened to us before. We have to keep speaking out to make sure it doesn't happen to us again, or our children will never be safe.’"

Whites in the community were adamant that there is no racism. "We don't have a problem,” according to one. Other locals told the media "We all get along," and "most blacks are happy with the way things are." One person even said "We don't have many problems with our blacks."

Melvin Worthington, the lone African American school board member in LaSalle Parish said it all could have been avoided. “There’s no doubt about it,” he told the Chicago Tribune, “whites and blacks are treated differently here. The white kids should have gotten more punishment for hanging those nooses. If they had, all the stuff that followed could have been avoided.”

Hebert McCoy, a relative of one of the youths who has been trying to raise money for bail and lawyers, challenged people everywhere at the end of the rally when he said “You better get out of your houses. You better come out and defend your children…because they are incarcerating them by the thousands. Jena’s not the beginning, but Jena has crossed the line. Justice is not right when you put on the wrong charges and then convict. I believe in justice. I believe in the point of law. I believe in accepting the punishment if I’m guilty. If I’m guilty, convict me and punishment, but if I’m innocent, no justice…” and the crowd joined with him and shouted “no peace!”

What happened to the white guys? The white victim of the beating was later arrested for bringing a hunting rifle loaded with 13 bullets onto the high school campus and released on $5000 bond. The white man who beat up the black youth at the off-campus party was arrested and charged with simple battery. The white students who hung up the nooses in the “white tree” were never charged.

The people in Jena are fighting for justice and they need legal and financial help. Since the arrests, a group of family members have been holding well-attended meetings, and have created a defense fund – the Jena 6 Defense Committee. They have received support from the NAACP, the Louisiana ACLU and Friends of Justice. People interested in supporting can contact:

the Jena 6 Defense Committee, PO Box 2798, Jena, LA 71342 jena6defense@gmail.com;

Friends of Justice, 507 North Donley Avenue, Tulia, TX 79088 www.fojtulia.org;

or the ACLU of Louisiana, PO Box 56157, New Orleans, LA 70156 www.laaclu.org or 417.350.0536.

What is next? The rest of the Jena 6 await similar trials. Theodore Shaw is due to go on trial shortly. Mychal Bell is scheduled to be sentenced July 31. If he gets the maximum sentence he will not be out of prison until he is nearly 40.

By Bill Quigley. Bill is a human rights lawyer and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. You can reach him at Quigley@loyno.edu Audrey Stewart contributed to this article.

This article originally appeared on the Znet website.

Who benefits from financial crises?

By freeman

[This blog from August 14, 2007 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web.]

The crash of the finance market represents an assets transfer from the poor and the middle class to the ruling elite. More than an assets regrouping occurs. This is also not merely the result of incapability and inadequate foresight. Quite the contrary! The fall was well planned and consciously executed. A criminal corruption on the highest planes of the economic and political system is at the heart of the assets transfer. In retrospect, we can look back to the "savings and loan" debacle that in its time was the greatest theft in the history of the world. Today the amount of the assets stolen from the American people and the whole world is incredible. It makes the S & L scandal look like the simple breaking of a piggy bank.

In the press, we hear continuously of banks and hedge funds that endured losses from sub prime mortgages. Astonishingly these reports assume the losses resulted from a "natural" market downswing or a narrowing credit cycle. The inconceivable profits that were earlier generated and who made them are not reported. The beneficiaries were the big banks operating worldwide with their derivative creations outside all control and supervision and their managers who made obscene profits in the last years. Even the most enlightened financial analysts describe this financial "coup d'etat" as an unintended consequence of "market forces."

The spectacular mortgage bubble was actually intended, planned and constructed by the leaders of the financial system. They created "leverage" from a "genuine" dollar, 100 virtual dollars and thus a complete house of cards that had nothing to do with reality and now collapse. When the Internet- and Telecom bubble burst and Enron went bankrupt, people all over the world lost their jobs and their life savings. Nevertheless the economy remained "brisk" since the artificially created mortgage bubble financed the "western" lifestyle based on ever-greater debts. Thus America could continue consuming with the rest of the world producing for America.

Financial analysts and the media want to persuade us the Dow Jones Index had hit an all-time high and follows a "necessary" correction. The value of the Dow is actually considerably lower than in the year 2000 when measured by real values. The dollar has lost much value since 2000 and a huge inflation has occurred. Although the Dow is nominally higher, all the investors who invested their assets in Dow stocks are actually much poorer now than in 2000. When the Dow is converted in euros, 30% of its value has been lost in the last 7 years. If one converts it in milk, the Dow buys 35% less milk. It buys 40% less wheat and corn, 50% less gold, 55% less silver, 70% less oil, 80% less copper and 90% less uranium. The list could go on endlessly.

When the Dow Jones Index is compared with the price of some article today over against its price in 2000 whether real estate, cars, consumer goods, education or insurance, then a loss is clearly manifest. When Wall Street claims a growth of over 15% in the 7 years to 14,000 points, one must not fall in the trap[ and belief it. This is like a magician diverting us with a movement so what he does with the other hand is not noticed.

Over all the years, the value of money and assets invested in shares fell considerably. People have become much poorer. The money migrated from the common people on the street into the pockets of the elite. All the savings of the working class for provisions and pensions invested in funds, shares and other securities were regularly plundered by the vultures. We all have been defrauded.

The United States skids into an economic collapse and drags the whole world to the abyss. The train consisting of fraud, theft and willful deceit by the national and global financial system is derailed. Many think an accident happened caused by incompetence of the institutions and stupid consumers. This financial disaster in personal and state over-indebtedness was consciously brought about by the financial system to realize incredible profits. The middle class is dying out because the banks bled them white. For them, debts are "obscenely profitable."

With cheap money, people were enticed to a debt nightmare with the prospect that the endlessly rising real estate market would save them if necessary. Now where the market collapses and they must sell off their assets dirt cheap, they are left with nothing. This trap was laid for them, calculated exactly and cooked up diabolically. The people were encouraged to make debts although a repayment was clearly impossible. The taxpayer should now iron this out through rescue operations. In a super net of deceit, the trap is built and the people grope and eke out an idiotic living. At the end, the people pay the bill.

All this is not incompetence. It is a putsch of the financial elite based on corruption and greed that are the main reasons for the financial disaster. Every few decades, the real owners of the world arrange an economic crisis to steal the assets of the people. This happened in the 1920s and 1930s and is regularly repeated. The rich emerged from these crises even richer. Now this is happening again. The rich know the day of reckoning will come but they want to be far away with their bellies full when it breaks.

As the perpetrators behind the savings and loan swindle profited on the way up and on the way down, predatory capitalists will win on both sides from the sub prime catastrophe. Long ago the largest investment banks secretly founded a consortium in which they created the LCDX Index to protect against the current market loss with the promise of a bundle of money if things go downhill. As a proverb says, the bank always wins!

The Federal Reserve Bank, the central bank of the US, neither belongs to the "nation" nor has any "reserves." It is as little federal as the Federal Express. In this private institution, the shareholders are completely unknown. No one knows who owns the central bank of the US. It is an inscrutably complex group of big banks and private persons who really hold all the strings. Like most central banks of the world, it creates money out of thin air through the minimum reserve system that is covered by absolutely nothing.

Since the 1970s, the US has backed out of gold backing for the dollar. Since then, the dollar has been only worthless paper gaining its worth from a belief and an illusion. The whole thing is an air bubble, a gigantic fraud, since they are only numbers in a computer system. When a central bank pumps 1 billion in the money market, then some person is given a one and 9 zeros on the screen and the money is simply there like magic.

This is what happens with the money "lent" by a bank to its borrowers. Only lay persons think there is a heap of money in a vault somewhere that was filled by depositors and that this money is lent out. That is a naïve fairy tale. With a credit, a sum is simply assigned to an account of nothingness. The credit policy and security for credit produced the money. Since a credit actually generated the money, there would be no money any more if all the debts were paid back. This may not happen. Therefore the mountain of debts arises. The money for the interests must come from somewhere.

This creation of money from thin air with interests and compound interests only functions with a constantly expanding inflationary money supply system. The engineers of the "global casino" must invent constantly new, ever more absurd and more speculative working models to keep the roulette wheel rolling. We all know nothing can become endlessly greater. Some time or other this façade will not be supportive any longer and then the whole thing will collapse. We may now be in such a situation. The end of maximum expansion, the shipwreck of the empire of debts is underway.

The policy of the Federal Reserve Bank and the other central banks is to bring about crises to reshuffle assets to the elite. They have accomplished this. Nearly 4 million Americans have already lost their jobs through outsourcing abroad. The country has a debt mountain of $3 trillion and foreign investors hold $4.5 trillion in securities and assets. While the Fed carries out its economic strategy, the Bush administration deploys the military all over the world to wage a global war to conquer resources. These are two wheels on the same axle.

The goal is maintaining control over the global economic system seizing the remaining energy resources in Eurasia and the Middle East and integrating potential rivals in the US-led economic model, either through persuasion or through extortion led by the US Federal Reserve. Both parties of Congress confess the principle of the permanent US global hegemony. No difference exists. The world has to serve as a dumb slave for America. Basta (enough).

All the central banks of the world have injected the incredible sum of $325 billion into the financial system within a few days. All our money is now made available to rescue the swindlers and con men. With this financial injection, the head of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke steers the dollar to a hyper-inflation. In doing this, he meets halfway the supporters of Dick Cheney with their completely mad aggression even including a war with Iran in the illusion of thereby escaping the military defeats in Iraq and Afghanistan and the death agony of the dollar.

The manifest crisis will probably magnify all the deceit, corruption and self-service which most people will find incomprehensible. Day after day we will hear reports about concealed losses, false accounting, inflated assets, claims not on the balance sheets, valuation discrepancies, uncontrolled offshore branches, phantom profits, insider trading, plundering of firms right before bankruptcy by the owners and management to the disadvantage of employees, suppliers and taxpayers and so on.

The financial Armageddon can create a world of wars, chaos, lawlessness, hunger, thirst, homelessness, mass migrations and people with nothing left to lose who will do anything to survive. This situation with masses of troublemakers and immigrants will be an unacceptable threat to security and therefore necessitate the introduction of martial law with great numbers of people in prison camps. The people in the "first world" will be confronted with unusual things like legal, financial and security restrictions, entrance gates and jails.

The people who underrate the dangers in the future and do not take precautions will stand there without a penny। Then people will have to creative. Tangible assets like gold and other exchangeable objects will be very important. Skills will be sought that are useful for oneself and others and assure the future. In a word, the party is over. If you read these words, you are one of the few people who know what this means.

Bush Administration Funds Iraqi Insurgents

Below is another reposting of an article I stumbled across.

In addition to losing 200,000 assault rifles, and something like a billion dollars in cash in one incident, the Bush administration has admitted to paying "protection money" to insurgents in Iraq.

Iraqi insurgents taking cut of U.S. rebuilding money

By Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers Mon Aug 27, 11:44 AM ET

BAGHDAD — Iraq's deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they've extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.

The payments, in return for the insurgents' allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.

A fresh round of rebuilding spurred by the U.S. military's recent alliance with some Anbar tribes— 200 new projects are scheduled— provides another opportunity for militant groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq to siphon off more U.S. money, contractors and politicians warn.

"Now we're back to the same old story in Anbar. The Americans are handing out contracts and jobs to terrorists, bandits and gangsters," said Sheik Ali Hatem Ali Suleiman , the deputy leader of the Dulaim, the largest and most powerful tribe in Anbar. He was involved in several U.S. rebuilding contracts in the early days of the war, but is now a harsh critic of the U.S. presence.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined to provide anyone to discuss the allegations. An embassy spokesman, Noah Miller , said in an e-mailed statement that, "in terms of contracting practices, we have checks and balances in our contract awarding system to prevent any irregularities from occurring. Each contracted company is responsible for providing security for the project."

Providing that security is the source of the extortion, Iraqi contractors say. A U.S. company with a reconstruction contract hires an Iraqi sub-contractor to haul supplies along insurgent-ridden roads. The Iraqi contractor sets his price at up to four times the going rate because he'll be forced to give 50 percent or more to gun-toting insurgents who demand cash payments in exchange for the supply convoys' safe passage.

One Iraqi official said the arrangement makes sense for insurgents. By granting safe passage to a truck loaded with $10,000 in goods, they receive a "protection fee" that can buy more weapons and vehicles. Sometimes the insurgents take the goods, too.

"The violence in Iraq has developed a political economy of its own that sustains it and keeps some of these terrorist groups afloat," said Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh , who recently asked the U.S.-led coalition to match the Iraqi government's pledge of $230 million for Anbar projects.

Despite several devastating U.S. military offensives to rout insurgents, the militants - or, in some cases, tribes with insurgent connections - still control the supply routes of the province, making reconstruction all but impossible without their protection.

One senior Iraqi politician with personal knowledge of the contracting system said the insurgents also use their cuts to pay border police in Syria "to look the other way" as they smuggle weapons and foot soldiers into Iraq .

"Every contractor in Anbar who works for the U.S. military and survives for more than a month is paying the insurgency," the politician said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "The contracts are inflated, all of them. The insurgents get half."

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said he was aware of the "insurgent tax" that U.S.-allied contractors are forced to pay in Anbar, though he said it wasn't clear how much money was going to militant groups and how much to opportunistic tribesmen operating on their own.

"It's part of a taxation they put on trucks through all these territories, but it's very difficult to establish if it's going directly to insurgents," Zebari said.

As of July, the U.S. government had completed 3,300 projects in Anbar with a total value of $363 million , the U.S. embassy said. Another 250 projects with a total price tag of $353 million are under way.

Saleh, the deputy prime minister, said dealing with such huge amounts of money in such a volatile place means corruption is inevitable and that some projects cost far more than they should. But despite qualms, he believes the effort is worth it.

"I'm a realist," he said. "When I look at my options, will I have a 100 percent clean process? No. But will this force me to hold back? Absolutely not."

Suleiman, the Dulaimi sheikh and onetime U.S. ally, speaks more bitterly. Sitting in his Baghdad office, he displayed a stack of photos and status updates for projects that included two schools, a clinic and a water purification center. The photos showed crumbling, half-finished structures surrounded by overgrown weeds and patchworks of electrical wires. He blamed such failures on "the terrorists" who work under the noses of U.S. and Iraqi officials.

"Those responsible for these projects had to give money to al Qaida. Frankly, gunmen control contracting in Anbar," he said. "Even now, the thefts are unbelievable, and I have no idea where those millions are going."

None of the Iraqi contractors agreed to speak on the record - they risk losing future U.S. contracts and face retaliation from insurgent groups. Some of the Iraqis interviewed remain in Fallujah or Ramadi on the U.S. payroll; others had fled to Arab countries and Europe after they deemed the business too risky.

"I put it right in my contracts as a line item for 'logistics and security,'" said one Iraqi contractor who is still working for a major American company with several long-term projects in Anbar. "The Americans think you're hiring a security company, but how you execute it is something else entirely. This is how it's been working since Day 1."

One Iraqi contractor who is working on an American-funded rebuilding project in the provincial capital of Ramadi said he faced two choices when he wanted to bring in a crane, heavy machinery and workers from Baghdad : either hire a private security company to escort the supplies for up to $6,000 a truck, or pay off locals with insurgent connections.

He chose the latter, and got $120,000 for a U.S. contract he estimates to be worth no more than $20,000 . The contractor asked that specific details of the project not be disclosed for fear he'll be identified and lose the job.

"The insurgents always remind us they're there," the contractor said. "Sometimes they hijack a truck or kidnap a driver and then we pay and, if we're lucky, we get our goods returned. It's just to make sure we know how it works.

"Insurgents control the roads," he added. "Americans don't control the roads - and everything from Syria and Jordan goes through there."

Another Iraqi contractor with several U.S. rebuilding contracts said he's been trying to avoid paying off insurgents by strengthening his relationship with reputable tribal leaders in Anbar.

In one contract for a major U.S. company, the contractor said, he gave cash payments to tribal leaders and trusted them to buy the goods in Anbar instead of having to pay insurgents to bring the goods in from Baghdad . He said the tribesmen took photos as proof that they used the money properly and had to hide the supplies in their homes for fear insurgents would find out they'd been left out of the deal.

The contractor said such scenarios are extremely rare and very dangerous. More typical, he said, was a recent order he took to haul gravel to U.S. bases in Anbar.

"If I do it in the Green Zone, it's just putting gravel in Hesco bags and it would be about $16,000 ," the contractor said. "But they needed it for Ramadi and Fallujah . I submitted an invoice for $120,000 and I'd say about $100,000 of that went to the mujahideen," as Iraqis sometimes call Sunni insurgents.

An Iraqi who used to work as an interpreter for Titan Corp. , the U.S. company that supplies local interpreters to U.S. forces in Iraq , said he witnessed countless incidents of insurgents shaking down contractors during the two years he spent as a translator in the "Engineering Operations Room" on a U.S. military base in Anbar. The man, a Fallujah native who has since fled to the United Arab Emirates , spoke on condition of anonymity because he hasn't ruled out returning to Iraq now that Anbar construction is on the upswing.

He said he was stunned when, from early 2004 to his departure in summer 2006, a parade of sheikhs with known insurgent connections were awarded contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The interpreter said that on several occasions contractors pleaded with American officials for protection and told them that gunmen were shaking them down for large sums of cash.

In a project to rebuild Dam Street in Fallujah , the interpreter said, insurgents forced the local contractor to pay for protection on three or four separate occasions. Work would stop for a few days until the contractor paid up. In the end, the interpreter said, the contractor grew so terrified that he walked off the unfinished project and fled Iraq .

On another project for a water treatment plant in the insurgent stronghold of Zoba, the interpreter said, the local contractor was summoned to meet with militant leaders who threatened his life if he didn't give them at least half the contract's value.

Fawzi Hariri , a member of the Iraqi cabinet and head of the government's Anbar Reconstruction Committee, said some U.S. rebuilding funds "absolutely" have gone into insurgents' pockets. The exception is where construction sites were guarded around-the-clock by U.S. or Iraqi troops.

"If you're on your own, you certainly would have to pay somebody," Hariri said.

Hariri said the Iraqi government's Anbar committee checks contractors' permits and references, withholds payment until the work is reviewed and only hires workers who are familiar enough with Anbar's deep-rooted tribes to arrange for security. On the parallel U.S. reconstruction effort, however, American contracting officials rarely consult their Iraqi counterparts about how much they spent or who was paid on specific projects.

"The Americans are accountable only to themselves," Hariri said. "It's their money."

( Leila Fadel and McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent Mohammed al Dulaimy contributed to this article.)