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Archive: POLITICS

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The Fed Sinks The Dollar

Against the recommendations of most economists and even the Financial Times of London, the Federal Reserve Board yesterday cut its discount rate by yet another quarter-point, to just 2%. Ostensibly, the intention is to try and spur economic “recovery” – as if a cut in the interest rates would do this. At first glance this seems to reflect the Fed’s ideology that manipulating the interest alone can expand or contract the economy – as if it is like a balloon, with its structure is pre-printed on it, to be inflated or deflated at will to control the level of activity.

This simplistic philosophy was a hallmark of the Greenspan era. Changing the interest rate alone meant that the Fed didn’t have to “think,” didn’t have to regulate markets, raise reserve requirements on bank loans to fuel the asset-price inflation that the Fed confused with real “wealth creation.” It didn’t have to regulate subprime lending or rain in widespread financial fraud. All it had to do was raise interest rates when this gave banks an opportunity to charge more and increase their earnings – or cut interest rates to lower cost of bank borrowing from the Fed.

But surely not even the ideologically hide-bound Federal Reserve can still imagine that a structural problem – the looming depression from the Fed’s favoritism to the banking sector promoting de-industrialization of the economy – can be solved by lowering interest rates yet again. While the Fed lowers its rate for lending to banks, these banks have not been passing on the rate cuts to their customers. Credit card rates are going up, and entire Christmas trees of penalties are further increasing banks’ rake-off. Mortgage rates remain high, so that real estate markets remain in the doldrums. The banks simply are not lending.

What they are doing is speculating, above all against the dollar. They thus are emulating what Japanese banks did after that nation’s financial bubble burst in 1990. Japan’s banks became the most active players in the international “carry” trade: borrowing at very low interest rates in a weak currency (the yen after 1990, the dollar today) to lend to high-interest borrowers, preferably with strong or at least stable currencies (such as to Iceland before it became so debt-ridden that its currency began to collapse last year; and today, the to European borrowers in euros).

So fiat US credit is being directed to Europe. US banks create or borrow credit at 2%, and lend it out at 6% or more – and get a speculative foreign-currency gain as the euro continues to rise against the dollar.

The aim evidently the same as it was in Japan after 1990. Many banks are nearly insolvent as a result of the b ad real estate loans on their balance sheets. To rescue them (so that it is not necessary to nationalize them, as England recently had to do with Northern Trust) is to help banks “earn their way out of debt” – by making profitable loans.

But bank lending and profitability has become decoupled from the economy at large. Banks are not lending to finance tangible capital investment and new hiring. Helping them thus does not help pull the US economy out of the deepening depression. (A recession is short and is followed by recovery. Today’s looming economic depression is headed toward a widespread forfeiture and transfer of property from debtors to creditors.)

The ultimate effect is to inflate the power of finance, credit and real estate relative to labor’s wages and industrial capital. This is not a way to encourage new tangible investment. It is just the opposite of Keynesianism. Rather than signaling “euthanasia of the rentier,” it is empowering finance and applying euthanasia to labor and industry.

Read the full article by Michael Hudson, former Wall Street economist specializing in the balance of payments and real estate at the Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase & Co.).

See post directly below for further comment along these lines...

(via Mr. Fish)

UPDATE:

Also see this article by Charles Derber and Yale Magrass at Boston.com

and this Op-Ed by Rosa Brooks in the LA Times

Obama, Wright, and Us

Many of you will be suprised by, and some won't like the thrust of this post. But given the recent events relating to Obama and Rev. Wright, I think that it is extremely important to make the following two points:

Based on all of the available evidence, Obama is not only not a savior, but, if elected, he is not at all likely to be a "transformational" President, either. He may be the best of three bad options, but I think that it's time that we stop fooling ourselves about the extent to which he is actually likely to change the status quo.

Secondly, the mainstream media, including the increasingly impotent PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer, cannot be trusted to provide serious, or fairly balanced views. It is controlled by conservative corporations, is bottom-line driven, and in spite of it's disastrous complicity in the selling of the Iraq war, there is little evidence of any real reform.

I link these two points because of Obama's "denouciation" of Wright, and how the MSM has handled it. The dishonesty of both is breathtaking, and, as Dennis Perrin points out below, plenty of white liberals remain in denial.

You gotta love white liberals. They really are a special bunch. Just ask them – they'll be more than happy to confirm the fact.

Their squirming and hand-wringing over Jeremiah Wright's recent performances (running from softly-stated analysis to celebrity impressions and regional accents) has been quite a sight to see, and quite predictable as well, since white liberals find it hard to damn the nation state they believe is, under the countless mass graves, morally driven, if imperfect. Touring the various liblogs yesterday and this morning, I found much of this baby talk in evidence, proving yet again that if the Dems capture the White House, nothing will really change, save for the soaring rhetoric.

Of the various manias on display, Digby's fantasy musings took the rancid cake. The beloved liblogger slipped on her space goggles and typed "Reverend Wright called into question the entire premise of Obama's campaign, a campaign built on changing the very nature of politics, when he said, 'he did what politicians do.'" How dare Wright point to plain reality while the most important election ever since the last most important election ever hangs in the balance! Obama caters to mainstream political mythology in order to win votes? That's lunacy! Any sane person knows that Obama's "changing the very nature of politics," right before our eyes. If you doubt this, move to Gaza and await the new dawn. It should arrive no later than, say, August of next year.

Digs wasn't the only lib throwing spitballs at Wright; nor was she alone in denouncing Wright's "egomania" and "self-aggrandizement" (some added that Wright "envies" Obama's success, and thus wants to tear him down, because, you know how certain brothers get when another begins to rise). These epithets are swiftly employed when liberals sense that their worldview is being challenged. Ralph Nader was and remains a selfish egomaniac, while Al Gore just wanted to serve his country. Jeremiah Wright borders on the sociopathic, while Obama and Hillary are merely exploring ways to save this great nation. And of course, there's nothing egomaniacal about liberal bloggers and commentators sliming Wright while telling Obama what he must do and when he needs to do it. They're simply humble patriots, heads held high under fluttering flags, doing their bit for the US of A.

Another popular liberal tactic of late has been to equate Wright with the likes of John Hagee and Pat Robertson. Why won't the Democratic-hating media grill John McCain for his ties to outspoken religious cranks! they squeal, pale fists banging their laptops. I can't speak for the MSM, but the last time I looked, Wright denounces American terror and imperialism, while Hagee and Robertson excuse and defend the same. Indeed, for all of his theatrical flourishes, Wright attacks what is actually going on, while cataloguing what actually happened. Hagee and Robertson spin the violence and bigotry into something they consider beautiful and holy. On this front, American liberals are much closer to Hagee and Robertson's view of America than they are to Wright's, which explains much of their frenzied assaults on the man. When pushed, liberals sing the National Anthem faster and with more gusto than their reactionary cousins. Don't ever question their patriotism!

Listening to black talk radio yesterday was like entering a parallel universe. Rev. Wright's comments were not controversial, nor were any of the hosts and callers surprised by white people's reactions. Some actually pitied whites for being so deluded about the country they dominate. And nearly everyone predicted that Obama would denounce and distance himself from Wright, as that was the only political choice he could make. They weren't happy about that, but they accepted it as part of the American deal, and nearly all whom I heard intend to vote for Obama in the general election (assuming Hillary finally sinks). I don't know if Wright's concept of white brains versus black brains has any scientific merit, but the difference was sparkling clear to me yesterday. Then again, I'm extremely solipsistic.

Dennis' blog

Beyond the Euphrates began for us the land of mirage and danger, the sands where one helplessly sank, and the roads which ended in nothing. The slightest reversal would have resulted in a jolt to our prestige giving rise to all kinds of catastrophe; the problem was not only to conquer but to conquer again and again, perpetually; our forces would be drained off in the attempt.

– Emperor Hadrian AD 117-138

via Sam Smith's Undernews

Governments Lie, Corporate Media Repeats

Do you remember the hullabaloo over the Iranian capture and detention of 15 British sailors a few months back? Here's what our illustrious leader had to say about it at the time (in a WAPO article):

President Bush on Saturday condemned Iran's seizure of 15 British sailors and marines as "inexcusable behavior" and demanded that the "hostages" be released, weighing in for the first time as the situation escalates into a sustained confrontation with Tehran.

Bush said the sailors had been operating legally in Iraqi territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, as the British have insisted

Needless to say, this sort of reaction was parroted throughout the U.S. and Britain in the mainstream media. Now, take a look at what Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to the Central Republic of Uzbekistan from 2002-04, and also former head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1989-92, had to say at the time of the incident:

The British Government has published a map showing the coordinates of the incident, well within an Iran/Iraq maritime border. The mainstream media and even the blogosphere has bought this hook, line and sinker. But there are two colossal problems. A) The Iran/Iraq maritime boundary shown on the British government map does not exist. It has been drawn up by the British Government. Only Iraq and Iran can agree their bilateral boundary, and they never have done this in the Gulf, only inside the Shatt because there it is the land border too. This published boundary is a fake with no legal force.

B) Accepting the British coordinates for the position of both HMS Cornwall and the incident, both were closer to Iranian land than Iraqi land. Go on, print out the map and measure it. Which underlines the point that the British produced border is not a reliable one.None of which changes the fact that the Iranians, having made their point, should have handed back the captives immediately. I pray they do so before this thing spirals out of control. But by producing a fake map of the Iran/Iraq boundary, notably unfavourable to Iran, we can only harden the Iranian position.

Now some of you may recall, as I have quoted Murray several times in the past, that he was essentially forced out of the foreign service in Britain because he had helped expose terrible human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. Luckily for those of us who look beyond the mainstream media for honest reporting, Murray continues to speak out on his site. But back to the thrust of this post. Guess who was accurate in their assessment of the incident? Today's London Times has your answer:

Fifteen British sailors and Marines were seized by Iran in internationally disputed waters and not in Iraq’s maritime territory as Parliament was told, according to new official documents released to The Times.

The Britons were seized because the US-led coalition designated a sea boundary for Iran’s territorial waters without telling the Iranians where it was, internal Ministry of Defence briefing papers reveal.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act detail for the first time the blunders last spring that led to what an all-party committee of MPs came to describe as a “national embarrassment”.

The captured 14 men and one woman were paraded on Iranian TV for a fortnight before being freed a year ago by a smiling President Ahmadinejad, who gave them new suits and bags of presents.

Newly released Ministry of Defence documents state that:

— The arrests took place in waters that are not internationally agreed as Iraqi;

— The coalition unilaterally designated a dividing line between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Gulf without telling Iran where it was;

— The Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ coastal protection vessels were crossing this invisible line at a rate of three times a week; It was the British who apparently raised their weapons first before the Iranian gunboats came alongside;

This isn't just some intellectual "gotcha" game. It is not far-fetched to imagine that a U.S. attack on Iran could easily have been ignited by this kind of intentional deception. It's outrageous, and the very least you can do is to help to insure that McCain is not elected in November. Spread the word, and vote!

Read the full article in The Times (U.K.)

Say "No" to Clinton: Yet Another Reason

While I certainly don'y deny that in the sad context of American politics, all candidates – including Obama – are under intense pressure to use questionable (to put it kindly) tactics during their campaigns. But there are rather obvious matters of degree, and the Clinton campaign has consistently gone over the line which most would consider reasonable. Here's a perfect example, courtesy of Anonymous Liberal:

The Clinton campaign and its (few remaining) allies in the blogosphere are trying to make a big deal out of the fact that Obama conceded in a speech today that McCain would be a better president than George W. Bush. The fact that Obama would say such a thing--even in a speech otherwise very critical of McCain-- is supposedly a sign of Obama's poor message discipline and weakness as a candidate. Wasting no time, the Clinton campaign pounced:

"Sen. Obama said today that John McCain would be better for the country than George Bush. Now, Sen. McCain is a real American patriot who has served our country with distinction, but Sen. McCain would follow the same failed policies that have been so wrong for our country the last seven years.

"Sen. McCain thinks it is okay to keep our troops in Iraq for the next 100 years. Is that better than George Bush?

"Sen. McCain will continue the failed economic policies of George Bush that have brought us deficit and increasing debt. Is that better than George Bush?

"Sen. McCain does not have a health care plan that will cover every American. In fact, we will have more and more uninsured Americans. Is that better than George Bush?

"Sen. McCain has no plans to end the housing foreclosure crisis or cut the cost of gas at the pump. Is that better than George Bush?

"We need a nominee who will take on John McCain, not cheer on John McCain, and I will be that nominee."

This exchange beautifully illustrates the difference between Clinton and Obama. There is a not a single person in Hillary Clinton's campaign (including the candidate herself) who honestly believes that Obama was "cheering on John McCain." That's such a self-evidently disingenuous statement that literally everyone can see right through it. Yet the Clinton campaign still clearly thinks it's the strategically correct thing to say under the circumstances, and Hillary Clinton has no qualms about saying it publicly.

Contrast that with Obama, who was merely conceding a point that virtually everyone--including nearly every Democratic and Independent voter--already believes is true, i.e., that it would be very, very hard for McCain to be as bad a president as George W. Bush. Obama loses nothing by conceding this point. Indeed, conceding it makes him look more honest and trustworthy.

How The Rich Starve The World

World cereal stocks are at an all-time low, food-aid programmes have run out of money and millions face starvation. Yet wealthy countries persist with plans to use grain for petrol. Plus Iain Macwhirter on how food prices are rocketing

The irony is extraordinary. At a time when world leaders are expressing grave concern about diminishing food stocks and a coming global food crisis, our government brings into force measures to increase the use of biofuels - a policy that will further increase food prices, and further worsen the plight of the world's poor.

What biofuels do is undeniable: they take food out of the mouths of starving people and divert them to be burned as fuel in the car engines of the world's rich consumers. This is, in the words of the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, nothing less than a "crime against humanity". It is a crime the UK government seems determined to play its part in abetting. The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), introduced on 15 April, mandates petrol retailers to mix 2.5 per cent biofuels into fuel sold to motorists. This will rise to 5.75 per cent by 2010, in line with European Union policy.

The message could not have been clearer if the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, had personally put a torch to a pyre of corn and rice in Parliament Square: even as you take to the streets to protest your empty bellies and hungry children, we will burn your food in our cars. The UK is not uniquely implicated in this scandal: the EU, the United States, India, Brazil and China all have targets to increase biofuels use. But a look at the raw data confirms today's dire situation. According to the World Bank, global maize production increased by 51 million tonnes between 2004 and 2007. During that time, biofuels use in the US alone (mostly ethanol) rose by 50 million tonnes, soaking up almost the entire global increase.

Next year, the use of US corn for ethanol is forecast to rise to 114 million tonnes - nearly a third of the whole projected US crop. American cars now burn enough corn to cover all the import needs of the 82 nations classed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) as "low-income food-deficit countries". There could scarcely be a better way to starve the poor.

More from Mark Lynas in The New Statesman

Exposed: the great GM crops myth

Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.

The study – carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt – has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.

Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research – reported in the journal Better Crops – because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had "noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions". He added: "People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'"

He grew a Monsanto GM soybean and an almost identical conventional variety in the same field. The modified crop produced only 70 bushels of grain per acre, compared with 77 bushels from the non-GM one.

The GM crop – engineered to resist Monsanto's own weedkiller, Roundup – recovered only when he added extra manganese, leading to suggestions that the modification hindered the crop's take-up of the essential element from the soil. Even with the addition it brought the GM soya's yield to equal that of the conventional one, rather than surpassing it.

The new study confirms earlier research at the University of Nebraska, which found that another Monsanto GM soya produced 6 per cent less than its closest conventional relative, and 11 per cent less than the best non-GM soya available.

Oh, and where do you think that I found this little gem of an article? A British paper, of course. Read on in The Independent (U.K.)

UPDATE! Your corporate media at work! Here's a front page story, published in the NY Times on the very same day as the above article:

Soaring food prices and global grain shortages are bringing new pressures on governments, food companies and consumers to relax their longstanding resistance to genetically engineered crops.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.

“We cannot afford it,” said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.

In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease.

Could it be more perfect?

The full article

McCain and the Myth of al-Qaeda in Iraq

Juan Cole deconstructs that myth, which, of course, has, with rare exceptions, been facilitated by, rather than challenged by the mainstream media:

I am quoted in this NYT piece today on John McCain's allegations that the US is fighting "al-Qaeda" in Iraq and that there is a danger of "al-Qaeda" taking over the country if the US leaves.

Those allegations don't make any sense. McCain contradicts himself because he sometimes warns that the Shiites or Iran will take over Iraq. He doesn't seem to realize that the US presided over the ascension to power in Iraq of pro-Iranian Shiite parties like Nuri al-Maliki's Islamic Mission Party and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim's Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq. So which is it? There is a danger that pro-Iranian Shiites will take over (which is anyway what we have engineered) or that al-Qaeda will? It is not as if they can coexist. Since the Shiites are 60 percent and by now well armed and trained, how could the 1 percent of the 17 percent of the country that is Sunni Arab and maybe supports Salafi radicalism hope to take over?

Even if McCain only means, as his campaign manager tried to suggest, that "al-Qaeda" could take over the Sunni Arab areas of Iraq, that doesn't make any sense either (McCain has actually alleged that al-Qaeda would take over the whole country.) The Salafi radicals have lost in al-Anbar Province. Diyala Province, one of the other three predominantly Sunni areas, is ruled by pro-Iranian Shiites. That leaves Salahuddin and Ninevah Provinces. Among the major military forces in Ninevah is the Kurdish Peshmerga, some of them integrated e.g. into the Mosul police force. Hint: The Kurds don't like "al-Qaeda", i.e. Salafi radicalism. Jalal Talabani is a socialist.

So the Shiites and the Kurds among the Iraqis, now more powerful than the Sunni Arabs, would never allow a radical Salafi mini-state in their midst. They would crush them. And substantial segments of the Iraqi Sunni population have already helped crush them.

Moreover, Shiite Iran, secular Turkey, Baathist Syria and monarchical Jordan would never put up with a Salafi radical mini-state on their borders. They would crush it. Jordan's secret police already appear to have played a role in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian terrorist who had his own "Monotheism and Holy War" organization that for PR purposes he at one point rechristened "al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia" (he actually never got along with Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri).

McCain's whole discourse on Iraq is just a typical rightwing Washington fantasy made up in order to get you to spend $15 billion a month on his friends in the military industrial complex and to get you to allow him to gut the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Cole's full piece can be read here

At Least There's Some Humor to be Salvaged

As you may have heard, ABC set a new (low) standard for network television during the recent debate between Clinton and Obama. The moderators, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, spent much of the alloted time asking trivial and inane questions – many of which had been asked and answered days or weeks ago – of Obama.

So in the wake of that debacle, Publius offers the following:

The Lincoln-Douglas debates, as conducted by ABC:

MR. GIBSON: So we're going to begin with opening statements, and we had a flip of the coin, and the brief opening statement first from Mr. Lincoln.

LINCOLN: Thank you very much, Charlie and George, and thanks to all in the audience and who are out there. I appear before you today for the purpose of discussing the leading political topics which now agitate the public mind.

We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m sorry to interrupt, but do you think Mr. Douglas loves America as much you do?

LINCOLN: Sure I do.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But who loves America more?

LINCOLN: I’d prefer to get on with my opening statement George.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If your love for America were eight apples, how many apples would Senator Douglas’s love be?

LINCOLN: Eight.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Proceed.

LINCOLN: In my opinion, slavery will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?

LINCOLN: When I was a boy in Illinois forty years ago, yes. I think he was a deacon.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you aware that he regularly called Kentucky “a land of swine and whores”?

LINCOLN: Sounds right -- his ex-wife was from Kentucky.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why did you remain in the church after hearing those statements?

LINCOLN: I was eight.

DOUGLAS: This is an important question George -- it's an issue that certainly will be raised in the fall.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you denounce him?

LINCOLN: I’d like to get back to the divided house if I may.

and there's more at Obsidian Wings

Good Faith, Indeed

During her last visit to the region on March 30th, Secretary Rice was able to announce a joint agreement of ‘concrete steps’ after her trilateral with Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Here is what it said on Palestinian freedom of movement in the West Bank:

Israel has pledged to reduce the impediments to access and movement in the West Bank. This will begin with the removal of about 50 roadblocks and immediate steps to upgrade checkpoints to reduce waiting time without sacrificing security.

The most credible and quoted source for keeping a tab on this is the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) of the UN. Their latest closure tally of all obstacles to Palestinian movement in the West Bank was 580—a quite stunning number for an area that is smaller than the state of Delaware (the 2nd smallest state in the US). That 580 number came before the latest commitment to improve things.

So, how’s it going?

Rather well actually—until that is, one checks the small print.

The IDF stated that it has removed 61 obstacles. It provided a list of those 61 to OCHA with the relevant GPS coordinates (the IDF knows that without the OCHA kosher certificate this will not be taken seriously, and yes, the IDF works with the UN). OCHA took the list and GPS coordinates and did what it does best—checked the reality on the ground.

OCHA gave an update briefing to some diplomats and others last week (partially reported in Haaretz)—it was off the record, but here are the findings: Of the 61 obstacles on the list, 44 had indeed been removed. Six were still in place and OCHA found no proof of the prior existence of the final 11 obstacles supposedly done away with. 44—not bad…except this—only 5 of those 44 were part of OCHA’s previous 580 count. How so? Well the other 39 were not considered to have been real obstacles of any relevance or significance to Palestinian movement in the first place—in fields or areas inaccessible to Palestinians or of no real affect.

There is a phrase in English for this, for what has happened so far in implementing the latest commitments on obstacle removal—it is called being done up like a kipper…

I can think of some other, more direct euphemisms. And good luck finding this sort of reporting in the mainstream media.

If you want straight talk about the Middle East, Daniel Levy is one to count on.

Mr. Fish's Catch of the Day

21st Century Warfare

John Robb, whose insights probably could have saved billions of dollars and many thousands of lives had Cheney and Rumsfeld, et al, not been so arrogant and ignorant, expounds clearly on the nature of modern warfare:

TINKERING NETWORKS AND DIY ROCKETS

The history of the dominant technologies of 21st Century warfare won't spend much time on the complex and expensive systems developed by US defense contractors. Instead, the focus will be on the innovations that are derived from open tinkering networks of amateur inventors. The reasons for this include:

• Higher levels novelty production. Diverse and open networks of amateur hackers, tinkerers, and inventors can pursue more paths of discovery and development simultaneously than large, expensive, and linear development efforts. The importance of this will increase as Moore's Law, which measures the level of computing power available to the average user, increasingly shifts to the vertical (remember, this is an exponential curve). See open decision making for more.

• More platform leverage. Open development has access to all the global platform has to offer from services to systems to knowledge. In short, the more open and globally networked you are, the better you can take advantage of this leverage.

• Faster adoption. The delta between development and widespread adoption of innovations that work will increasingly shrink due to widespread sharing. This is in contrast to the closed and tightly controlled process of deployment seen in traditional defense systems acquisition.

DIY ROCKETS

We can see an early example of this trend in weapons development with the IED (improvised explosive device) which has migrated from a tactical device to an operational (operational art is between tactics and strategy) weapon. Another weapon that may follow a similar path of development is the DIY (do it yourself) rocket. Although it is early days, the writing is on the wall. DIY rockets are inexpensive ($500 to $2000 currently). Easy to store and quick to launch (they require less set-up time than IEDs). In terms of effects, they convey the message (despite the current inaccuracy) that no place is safe for civilian supporters of a war effort. It can also be used to destroy economic activity in affected areas.

Read on at Robb's Global Guerrillas website

Rarely Seen, but No Less Awful

A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world's largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States."

Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash." When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.

The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land.

Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the "North Pacific gyre" – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.

He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. "Every time I came on deck, there was trash floating by," he said in an interview. "How could we have fouled such a huge area? How could this go on for a week?"

Mr Moore, the heir to a family fortune from the oil industry, subsequently sold his business interests and became an environmental activist. He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade.

More from The Independent (U.K.)

What to Make of Recent events in Iraq?

When it comes to Iraq, reporters appear intent on omitting or fabricating news.

The latest battles in Basra, Iraq's second largest city and a vital oil seaport, furnished ample instances of misleading and manipulative practice in corporate journalism today. One commonly used tactic is to describe events using self-styled or "official" terminology, which deliberately confuses the reader by giving no real indication or analysis of what is actually happening.

Regardless of the outcome of the fighting that commenced upon the Iraqi army's march to Basra 24 March, and which proved disastrous for Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, we have been repeatedly "informed" of highly questionable assumptions. Most prominent amongst them is that the "firebrand" and "radical" Moqtada Al-Sadr -- leader of the millions-strong Shia Sadr Movement -- led a group of "renegades", "thugs" and "criminals" to terrorise the strategically important city. Naturally, Al-Maliki is portrayed as the exact opposite of Al-Sadr. When the former descended on Basra with his 40,000-strong US- trained and equipped legions, we were circuitously told that the long-awaited move was cause for celebration. The media also suggested we had no reason to doubt Al-Maliki's intentions when he promised to restore "law and order" and "cleanse" the city, or to question his determination when he described the Basra crusade as "a fight to the end". If anyone was still unsure of Al-Maliki's noble objectives they could be reassured by the Bush administration's repeated verbal backings, one of which described the Basra battle as "a defining moment".

Indeed.

Reporters parroted such assumptions with little scrutiny. Even thorough journalists seemed oblivious to the known facts: that the Iraqi army largely consists of Shia militias affiliated with a major US ally in Iraq, Abdul-Aziz Al-Hakim and his Supreme Islamic Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI); that the SCIRI's Al-Badr militias have rained terror on the Iraqi people -- mostly Sunnis, but increasingly Shias as well -- for years; that the Sadr movement and SCIRI are in fierce contest for control of Iraq's southern provinces, and that the US allies are losing ground quickly to the Sadr Movement, which might cost them the upcoming provincial elections scheduled for October 1, 2008; that the US wanted to see the defeat and demise of Sadr supporters before that crucial date because a victory for Sadr is tantamount to the collapse of the entire American project predicated on the need to privatise Iraqi oil and bring about a "soft" partitioning of the country.

Continue reading Ramzy Baroud's penetrating analysis at his indepensible website

Dick Cavett on the Petraeus & Crocker Show

Once again it is time to bid aloha to that sober team of mirthless entertainers, Petraeus & Crocker.

It’s hard to imagine where you could find another pair of such sleep-inducing performers.

I can’t look at Petraeus — his uniform ornamented like a Christmas tree with honors, medals and ribbons — without thinking of the great Mort Sahl at the peak of his brilliance. He talked about meeting General Westmoreland in the Vietnam days. Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge — and memory — of such things, recited the lengthy list (”Distinguished Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign” and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general’s sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, “Very impressive!” Adding, “If you’re twelve.”

(As speakers, both Petraeus and Crocker are guilty of unbearable sesquipedalianism, a word wickedly inflicted on me by my English-teaching mother. It’s one of those words that is what it says. From the Latin, literally “using foot-and-a-half-long words.” We all learned the word for words that sound like what they say — like “click” or “pop” or “boom” or “hiss” — but I’m sure the mercifully defunct Famous Writers School surely forbade using the “sesqui” word and “onomatopeia” in the same paragraph. (You can have fun with both of them at your next cocktail party.)

But back to our story. Never in this breathing world have I seen a person clog up and erode his speaking — as distinct from his reading — with more “uhs,” “ers” and “ums” than poor Crocker. Surely he has never seen himself talking: “Uh, that is uh, a, uh, matter that we, er, um, uh are carefully, uh, considering.” (Not a parody, an actual Crocker sentence. And not even the worst.)

Read Cavett's full piece in the NY Times

You really Can't Make This Stuff Up (Part XXIV)

A country that tunes its television sets to the Super Bowl or the World Series in numbers that dwarf any presidential debate is probably healthier in its outlook and more sensible in its priorities than one in which C-SPAN would outdraw ESPN.

– David Broder, the "Dean" of American political journalists

A Father remembered

I still vividly remember my father's face - wrinkled, apprehensive, warm - as he last wished me farewell fourteen years ago. He stood outside the rusty door of my family's home in a Gaza refugee camp wearing old yellow pyjamas and a seemingly ancient robe. As I hauled my one small suitcase into a taxi that would take me to an Israeli airport an hour away, my father stood still. I wished he would go back inside; it was cold and the soldiers could pop up at any moment. As my car moved on, my father eventually faded into the distance, along with the graveyard, the water tower and the camp. It never occurred to me that I would never see him again.

I think of my father now as he was that day. His tears and his frantic last words: "Do you have your money? Your passport? A jacket? Call me the moment you get there. Are you sure you have your passport? Just check, one last time"

My father was a man who always defied the notion that one can only be the outcome of his circumstance. Expelled from his village at the age of 10, running barefoot behind his parents, he was instantly transferred from the son of a landowning farmer to a penniless refugee in a blue tent provided by the United Nations in Gaza. Thus, his life of hunger, pain, homelessness, freedom-fighting, love, marriage and loss commenced.

The fact that he was the one chosen to quit school to help his father provide for his now tent-dwelling family was a huge source of stress for him. In a strange, unfamiliar land, his new role was going into neighboring villages and refugee camps to sell gum, aspirin and other small items. His legs were a testament to the many dog bites he obtained during these daily journeys. Later scars were from the shrapnel he acquired through war.

Read the rest of Ramzy Baroud's remembrance at Counterpunch

The Politicization of American Foreign Policy

Robert Parry, using information gleaned from a new book by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman, presents a fascinating connection between the CIA's loss of a moral focus, and the increasingly perverse (and destructive) U.S. foreign policy during the past 25 years. One of the most chilling aspects of the analysis is the apparent leading role that Robert Gates, the current U.S. Secretary of Defense, played in this disastrous turn. That would be the very same Robert Gates who is almost invariably seen by politicians of all stripes – and obviously the mainstream media – as a moderating influence in the current Administration.

Like the legendary Greek warrior – whose sea-nymph mother dipped him in protective waters except for his heel – the United States was blessed with institutional safeguards devised by wise Founders who translated lessons from the Age of Reason into a brilliant constitutional framework of checks and balances.

What the Founders did not anticipate, however, was how fragile truth could become in a modern age of excessive government secrecy, hired-gun public relations and big-money media. Sophisticated manipulation of information is what would do the Republic in.

That is the crucial lesson for understanding the arc of U.S. history over the past three decades. It is a central theme of a new book by former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman, Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

As a senior Kremlinologist in the CIA’s office of Soviet analysis, Goodman was on the front lines of the information war in the early 1980s when ideological right-wingers took control of the U.S. government under Ronald Reagan and began to gut the key institutions for assessing reality.

One of the target institutions was the national press corps, which came under sustained assault from the Right – with reporters facing accusations of disloyalty and “liberal bias” from both inside the Reagan administration and from well-financed right-wing attack groups. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History or Secrecy & Privilege.]

Another key institution on the Right’s radar scope was the CIA’s analytical division, which was responsible for supplying objective information about the world’s dangers to senior government officials.

I encourage you to read Parry's full piece at Consortium News

MLK

I'm happy to report that there are actually some interesting (i.e. not regurgitations of the usual superficial crap) pieces which have been written about Martin Luther King on this, the 40th anniversary of his death. Mike Marqusee offers a particularly refreshing view in The Guardian (U.K.):

It's testimony to the awkward power of Martin Luther King's life and work that so much effort has gone into sanitising his memory. Today he's commemorated as an apostle of social harmony, a hero in the triumphant march of American progress. But at the time of his death 40 years ago today, his increasingly radical challenge to war and poverty had made him deeply controversial, spied on and harassed by his government, feared and loathed by millions of Americans.

The civil rights movement's challenge to Jim Crow in the south had secured major advances, but had also exposed the intractability of American racism. Legal segregation had been destroyed, but economic inequality loomed larger than ever. Inner cities across the nation erupted in violence every summer between 1964 and 1967. The Black Power slogan signalled a new black nationalist consciousness among younger activists. The role of white people in the movement came under scrutiny and there were calls for black-only organisations.

Martin Luther King stood in the middle of this tempest, under pressure from militant youth on his left and cautious elders on his right. In 1967, his opposition to the war in Vietnam had been denounced by mainstream civil rights leaders and liberal opinion-makers, including The New York Times. While he agreed with the militants that the movement had to enter a new, more ambitious phase, he continued to advocate both non-violence and inter-racial alliances. "We don't enlist races in the movement. We enlist consciences. And anybody who wants to be free, and to make somebody else free, that's what we want."

In January 1968, King launched an inter-racial Poor People's Campaign. The idea was to bring black, white and brown poor people to Washington, where they would establish a tent city and camp out in front of Congress until either a job or a living income was guaranteed for all.

Increasingly, King identified the war in Vietnam as part of a global struggle against colonialism, and black inequality as a function of class inequalities that also affected many whites. Though he opposed the separatism espoused by black nationalists, he had his own view of what "integration" meant: "We are not interested in being integrated into this value structure." A "radical redistribution of economic power" was needed. "So often in America," he observed, "we have socialism for the rich and ragged free enterprise capitalism for the poor."

King's political direction alarmed the FBI, which planted stories in the press to discredit him as a "Communist" and link the Poor People's Campaign to violent plots against the government.

On March 18, he journeyed to the city of Memphis, on the Mississippi river, where for five weeks 1,300 black sanitation workers had been on strike for union recognition and a living wage. King was excited by the sometimes tense but creative coalition that had emerged in support of the strikers. Black churches, white-led trade unions, students and ghetto youth had kept up a succession of marches and protests, despite assaults and arrests by local police. (For an excellent account of the Memphis strike and King's last months, read Going Down Jericho Road by Michael Honey.)

"All labour has dignity," King told the strikers in Memphis. "It is a crime for people to live in this rich nation and receive starvation wages." He urged them to stay out till their demands were met. "Never forget that freedom is not something that is voluntarily given by the oppressor. It is something that must be demanded by the oppressed."

Marqusee's full piece

If you believe that James Earl Ray was King's assassin, think again

My brief take from a couple of years ago

Further perpective from Ron Jacobs

Another good take, from Kai Wright

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything seems seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness

– Justice William O. Douglas

How Not To Mince Words

In a recent speech Republican hopeful John McCain raised the somber spectre of what defeat in Iraq would do to that region, to America's morale, and to its standing in the world.

"I'd much rather lose a campaign than lose a war," McCain declared, to which Barry Crimmins responded, hey, "How about both?" You know, consider a two-fer. But don't go dangling the shroud of Vietnam before us.

McCain's emergency appeal to boys who are more afraid of losing than anything else in the world speaks to every clown who ever got in a fist fight at a slow-pitch softball game. The United States has already lost a lot more than a war it never should have started in the first place. Thanks to America's growing police state, we have lost our civil liberties. Thanks to America's practices of torture, illegal detention and extraordinary rendition, America has lost whatever good name it had in the world. Thanks to America's two-term fascist moron president, America has become an international punch-line. Thanks to the low, low prices of politicians, the American government has become a subsidiary of heartless, bloodless corporate scum. And thanks to that, the American military has become Hessians in service of that scum. Under the phony cover of "globalization" America's economic backbone has been filleted and shipped in sharp shards for use in impaling peasant populi around the world. This country is broke, its infrastructure is busted and its health in the exact same condition as the ethics of the insurance and pharmaceutical racketeers who value profiteering more than life. Why exactly should I give a shit WHEN we officially lose a war that was a lost cause the second it became a viable option?

And on a patriotic note, Crimmins also suggests a convenient spot where Time columnist Joe Klein can tuck his American flag pin for safekeeping.

Crimmins post (via James Wolcott)

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