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Dissident “threat” at all time high, despite MI5 “huge effort.”

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

By Brian Walker | The police assessment is, in fact, that the dissident threat is at an all-time high.” This is the theme of a major report by David McKittrick in today’s Independent. It follows up evidence given this week by the Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde to the Commons NI select committee.

McKittrick quotes:

MI5 and the Special Branches in both parts of Ireland pour huge effort and huge resources into combating the dissident republicans, with some success. Efforts to smuggle in weaponry through Lithuania and the Balkans have been thwarted.

This intertwining of high politics and low terrorism is something that concerns the authorities, who want to get the political show on the road. They already detect a new attitude towards the police, a senior officer reporting: “There is a huge wind of change out there. I have seen that in a number of investigations – there is a completely different response to police on the ground.”

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House of Lords minor amendment to the Counter-Terrorism Bill - removing your innocent DNA from Government databases

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

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Surveillance Overload

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

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US, Allies, Torture Kids in Iraqi Prisons

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

By Sherwood Ross

Since it invaded Iraq in 2003, the U.S. has detained thousands of juveniles—some of whom were tortured and sexually abused, according to published reports. Figures of the number of children behind bars vary. Some estimates put the number as high as 6,000.

While the criminal abuse of male prisoners at Abu Ghraib is well known, child and women prisoners held there have also been tortured and raped, according to Neil Mackay of Glasgow’s “Sunday Herald.” Abu Ghraib prison is located about 20 miles west of Baghdad.

Iraqi lawyer Sahar Yasiri, representing the Federation of Prisoners and Political Prisoners, said in a published interview there are more than 400,000 detainees in Iraq being held in 36 prisons and camps and that 95 percent of the 10,000 women among them have been raped. Children, he said, “suffer from torture, rape, (and) starvation” and do not know why they have been arrested. He added the children have been victims of “random” arrests “not based on any legal text.”

Former prisoner Thaar Salman Dawod in a witness statement said, “(I saw) two boys naked and they were cuffed together face to face and (a US soldier) was beating them and a group of guards were watching and taking pictures and there was three female soldiers laughing at the prisoners.”

Iraqi TV reporter, Suhaib Badr-Addin al-Baz, arrested while making a documentary and thrown into Abu Ghraib for 74 days, told Mackay he saw “hundreds” of children there. Al-Baz said he heard one 12-year-old girl crying, “They have undressed me. They have poured water over me.” He said he heard her whimpering daily.

Al-Baz also told of a 15-year-old boy “who was soaked repeatedly with hoses until he collapsed.” Amnesty International said ex-detainees reported boys as young as 10 are held at Abu Ghraib.

German TV reporter Thomas Reutter of “Report Mainz” quoted U.S. Army Sgt. Samuel Provance that interrogation specialists “poured water” over one 16-year-old Iraqi boy, drove him throughout a cold night, “smeared him with mud” and then showed him to his father, who was also in custody. Apparently, one tactic employed by the Bush regime is to elicit confessions from adults by dragging their abused children in front of them.

The Los Angeles Times as far back as August 26, 2004, reported U.S. military police at Abu Ghraib “used Army dogs to play a bizarre game in which they scared teenage detainees into defecating and urinating on themselves.”

And reporter Hersh told the American Civil Liberties Union convention he has seen videotapes of Iraqi boys that were sodomized, “and the worst part is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking.”

Jonathan Steele, wrote in the British “The Guardian” this past Sept. 9th, “Hundreds of children, some as young as nine, are being held in appalling conditions in Baghdad’s prisons, sleeping in sweltering temperatures in overcrowded cells, without working fans, no daily access to showers, and subject to frequent sexual abuse by guards, current and former prisoners say.” Sixteen-year-old Omar Ali told the “Guardian” he spent more than three years at Karkh juvenile prison sleeping with 75 boys to a cell that is just five by 10 meters, some of them on the floor. Omar told the paper guards often take boys to a separate room in the prison and rape them.

As the occupying authority in Iraq, the Bush administration cannot escape legal responsibility for the torture crimes of Iraqi jailers or for the deplorable conditions in the prisons they operate.

Raad Jamal, age 17, was taken from his Doura home by U.S. troops and turned over to the Iraqi Army’s Second regiment where Jamal said he was hung from the ceiling by ropes and beaten with electric cables.

Human Rights Watch(HRW) last June put the number of juveniles detained at 513. The grounds: they pose “imperative security risks.” In all, HRW estimates, since 2003, the U.S. has detained 2,400 children in Iraq, some as young as ten.

HRW said the children “are subject to interrogations, have no access to lawyers, and sometimes are held for more than a year without charge, in violation of the United States’ own regulations.” It said children “have very limited contact with their families.” HRW called upon the U.S. to “ensure that children it takes into custody are treated according to their status as children, and given prompt judicial review and access to independent monitors.” Apparently, this has not been the case.

Clarisa Bencomo, of HRW’s Children’s Rights Division said, “The vast majority of children detained in Iraq languish for months in U.S. military custody. The U.S. should provide these children with immediate access to lawyers and an independent judicial review of their detention.”

IRIN, the humanitarian news service, last year quoted Khalid Rabia of the Iraqi NGO Prisoners’ Association for Justice(PAJ), stating: “Children are being treated as adults in Iraqi prisons and our investigations have shown that they are being abused and tortured.” IRIN was refused permission to visit child prisoners.

Five boys between 13 and 17 accused of supporting insurgents and detained by the Iraqi army “showed signs of torture all over their bodies,” such as “cigarette burns over their legs,” she said.

One boy of 13 arrested in Afghanistan in 2002 was held in solitary for more than a year at Bagram and Guantanamo and made to stand in stress position and deprived of sleep. And 15-year-old Omar Khadr, a Canadian, was held in Guantanamo for two years without being allowed to see a lawyer or have contact with his family. Khadr has been held for a total of six years. According to the current “Catholic Worker,” Mohammed Jawad was 17 when captured in Afghanistan and was subjected to sleep deprivation at Gitmo day and night for two weeks. Every three hours jailers shackled and transfered him to another cell under a “frequent flier” program, forcing him to change cells 112 times.

Jawad’s defense lawyer Air Force Major David J.R. Frakt said the most likely reason Gitmo authorities tortured the youth (who had attempted suicide five months earlier) was “for sport, to teach him a lesson, perhaps to make an example of him to others.”

Officials from UNAMI, the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iran, said that children awaiting trial at severely overcrowded Tobchi prison, Baghdad, said they had been tortured and sexually abused while in custody in adult facilities prior to their transfer to Tobchi, and showed the marks to prove it. And at Karkh juvenile prison, children showed skin sores from lying on soggy mattresses in temperatures that average 112 during the day.

Former President Jimmy Carter wrote in “Our Endangered Values”(Simon & Schuster) that the Red Cross found after visiting six U.S. prisons “107 detainees under eighteen, some as young as eight years old.” And reporter Hersh, (who broke the Abu Ghraib torture scandal,) reported 800-900 Pakistani boys aged 13 to 15 in custody. President Carter wrote that the Red Cross, Amnesty International and the Pentagon “have gathered substantial testimony of torture of children, confirmed by soldiers who witnessed or participated in the abuse.”

In an effort to conceal conditions in its Iraqi compounds, the U.S. has closed them to human rights monitors such as AI, HRW, and the International Federation of Human Rights, says Ciara Gilmartin, the Security Council Program Coordinator at Global Policy Forum(GPF), a New York-based organization that seeks to strengthen international law.

GPF called for opening the Iraqi detention facilities “to national and international observers” and for establishing clear accountability for U.S. officers and contractors in charge of the prisons.

“The whole abusive system must be thoroughly overhauled or closed down,” Gilmartin said. “U.S. military and civilian leaders are not the only ones complicit in the abuse and lack of due process of Iraqi detainees. All who stay silent in the face of the Iraq gulag allow it to continue.”

In 2005, the AP reported from Geneva that UNICEF was “profoundly disturbed” by reports of abuse of children in Iraq prisons. “Any mistreatment, sexual abuse, exploitation or torture of children in detention is a violation of international law,” UNICEF spokesman Damien Peronnaz said.

According to a report by Felicity Arbuthnot published last June 9th in Global Research, the UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomarswarmy, said children are not allowed any outside lawyers and may be held hostage to force an adult family male to give himself up.

HRW said that as of February of this year the length of detention for children was more than 130 days and “some children have been detained for more than a year without charge or trial, in violation of the Coalition Provisional Authority memorandum on criminal procedures. Not surprisingly, “One of the biggest complaints (by Iraqis) is that the vast majority of (U.S.) detainees have not been charged with any crime,” David Enders writes in the October 27 issue of The Nation.

Although President Bush says he reads the Bible, the words about children Matthew ascribes to Jesus may not have sunk in and so are worthy of repeating: “Who so shall offend one of these little ones…it were better that a millstone was hanged about his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

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(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant and reporter that can be reached at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com Ross compiled this article from news sources he believes to be reliable and is particularly indebted to the Glasgow, Scotland, Sunday Herald.)

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Britain’s Digital Surveillance: Hiding from Her Majesty’s “Black Boxes”

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

By Christopher Parsons | http://www.christopher-parsons.com

There are plans to deploy ‘black boxes’ in UK ISPs’ networking hubs so that the government can capture and record every website that UK citizens visit. A similar operation is in full swing in the United States, where the NSA has hooked up their own ‘black boxes’ to American Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs) networks to capture ‘questionable content’ passing through these networks. Unlike the Americans, who only examine questionable content, the UK government is planning to develop a database to hold the contents of all messages passing along their nations’ telecommunications networks.

While this issue has recently been sensationalized in the media, I have yet to find a source addressing the actual technologies that will (likely) drive these ‘black boxes’. I want to address that deficiency, calling attention to the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technologies that will presumably be responsible for examining, categorizing, and heuristically evaluating the data flowing across British ISPs’ networks. In this piece, I want to briefly explain how DPI technology works, its technical limitations, and modes of actively evading its surveillance powers. Evading DPI-enabled surveillance is essential to participate in free, unsurveyed discourse in the contemporary digital environments that Western citizens find themselves within.

DPI Technologies

ISPs are uniquely situated to survey all of the data traffic that their customers are involved in. ISPs, unlike Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft, act as gateways that individuals must pass through to access the Internet-at-large. Thus, any attempt to comprehensively survey an individual’s online activities must occur at the ISP-level. While simultaneously monitoring millions of customers might seem a Herculean task, or one firmly situated in the realm of science fiction, networking hardware vendors such as Cisco, L-1, Ellacoya Networks, and Procera Networks have risen to the challenge, producing devices that can survey, filter, alter, and censor content in real time, as it passes through ISPs’ networks.

Packets of data traversing the Internet are composed of two parts: a header and a payload. The header holds the general addressing information – where the packet is going, what order it should arrive at its destination in, and so on. The payload holds information about the application that sent the packet, as well as the particular contents of the packet itself – in the case of email, each packet holds the address that it should be delivered to, a bit of information that notes that an email application sent the packet, and some of the email’s text. Metaphorically, a packet can be thought of in the terms of postal mail: the header corresponds with the address on the outside of the envelope, and the payload the letter itself.

DPI equipment lets ISPs examine the header information as well as the payload. This means that ISPs can examine the text of email, instant messages, cellular phone text messages, and unencrypted Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications, in real time, as these messages are transmitted. Given the present state of available networking equipment that the world’s networking vendors have made available to the market, I strongly expect that the UK government’s ‘Black Boxes’ are, in essence, DPI devices that capture data as it moves across UK ISPs’ networks, and will transmit the contents of those packets to government databases while analyzing packets’ contents to identify if they are carrying ‘questionable’ payloads.

The Effectiveness of DPI

The Internet Evolution actually tested DPI equipment provided by Ellacoya and Ipoque earlier this year. In their tests, they found that these vendors’ devices could not filter ‘unwanted’ content 100% of the time – the applications targeted by the devices continued to function, although at reduced speeds, in spite of the censoring and filtering heuristics that the devices employ. This suggests that attempting to capture unencrypted Voice over Internet Protocol conversations, as an example, will never be fully successful because some packets associated with a conversation will not be correctly identified, captured, and saved in meaningful ways by the UK government’s ‘black boxes’. Moreover, and pertaining to the following section, the tests that the Internet Evolution performed suggest that data-encryption strategies can prevent the capture and filtering of data traffic.

Evading DPI Surveillance

It seems that every day we hear about a new data scandal in the UK; some new database is accidentally leaked, putting the information of hundreds, thousands, or millions of UK citizens at risk of being used for nefarious purposes. The suggestion that all citizens’ digitized conversations and online actions be captured and stored by the UK government only heightens worries: what will happen when (not if) this proposed database is breached? How much information will be accessible to criminals?

Fortunately, UK citizens can prevent their government’s DPI equipment from ever capturing conversations or online actions, and thus simultaneously limit exposure to the risks of identity theft and ubiquitous government surveillance. A core weakness of DPI equipment is that it cannot read the contents of fully encrypted communications. This means that when you send or receive encrypted data packets that the government’s devices will be unable to capture the contents of your email, your VoIP sessions, or your instant messages.

Encryption isn’t something that is terribly hard to set up; Voltage Security has a product that will let Windows users encrypt their sent email at a low annual cost. By default, Skype encrypts its data traffic to prevent surreptitious snooping of your private conversations, actually providing more privacy than talking on the phone. When it turns to instant messaging, there are several open source clients such as Trillian (for Windows) and Adium (for OS X and Linux) that have built-in encryption and compatibility with all major messaging services. Finally, when browsing websites, access the ‘https’ versions of the sites whenever possible to encrypt data traffic to and from the websites.

Why Hide from Her Majesty?

You may be asking: why should I bother with this encryption nonsense? I don’t have anything to hide – as a law-abiding citizen I find it offensive, but not necessary ‘dangerous’, that my government is snooping on me. Only criminals have something to hide!

The collection and centralization of large amounts of personal data gives criminals a single point that they can attack to access to vast swathes of information about law-abiding citizens. As the UK government persistently demonstrates, it cannot be trusted to secure the citizen data that it holds. By continuing to predominantly send unencrypted messages, you greatly enhance the chances that your personal information could be used to open lines of credit, create phony identification documents, and generally cause mischief in your good name. Encrypting your data, hiding your personal thoughts and communications from the proposed UK ‘black boxes’, is essential to prevent your identity being stolen, and ensures that you can continue to engage in free speech without worrying feeling the chilling effects of persistent government surveillance. Protecting your communications isn’t about hiding because you’re a criminal: it’s about limiting criminals from taking advantage of your good name while protecting your enshrined right of free speech.

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Undercover cops were among the unruly at DNC

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

By Felisa Cardona |The Denver Post

When a Jefferson County deputy deployed pepper spray into a crowd during the first night of the Democratic National Convention, he did not know that his targets were undercover Denver police officers.

During a melee that occurred Aug. 25 between protesters, police and bystanders near Civic Center Park, undercover Denver detectives staged a struggle with a police commander in order to get out of the crowd undetected.

A Jefferson County deputy, unaware of the presence of undercover police, thought that the commander was being attacked and deployed the pepper spray, according to a police use-of-force report obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado.

The report does not say whether the pepper spray used on the undercover police officers was the first deployment or whether the melee already was underway.

About 106 people were arrested during the incident that took place at 15th Street and Court Place.

Denver police have testified during court trials that they deployed officers to the area that night because they had gathered intelligence that anarchists had planned to gather in Civic Center Park, then move toward the 16th Street Mall to wreak havoc at delegate hotels and other businesses during the DNC.

On Thursday, the ACLU of Colorado sent a letter to Denver’s Independent Monitor, Richard Rosenthal, asking for the Internal Affairs Bureau to conduct an investigation of the pepper-spraying incident.

“The actions of the undercover detectives on Aug. 25, 2008, may have had the effect of exacerbating an already ‘tense situation,’ as their feigned struggle led nearby officers and the public to believe that a commanding officer was being attacked by protesters and that the situation necessitated the use of chemical agents,” says the letter, written by ACLU staff attorney Taylor Pendergrass.

“Such actions may have escalated the overall situation by causing officers on the scene to fear that the protesters threatened their safety, when in fact, the struggle was only between uniformed officers and undercover officers,” he wrote.

Rosenthal said he had received the ACLU’s letter about the pepper-spray incident.

The monitor also received a letter from the ACLU last week requesting a probe into possible conflicting or false statements by police and whether the department withheld evidence in some of the protesters’ criminal trials.

“The letters have been received, and I am in the process of reviewing and evaluating them,” Rosenthal said Thursday.

The ACLU claims videos show that protesters, as well as otherwise uninvolved onlookers, were never ordered or given a chance to disperse before they were surrounded and detained by police.

The city has said it would prosecute as many as 60 accused protesters who declined to accept plea deals. Some cases already have been dismissed after a judge cited a lack of evidence.

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American History X

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

Commondreams | I teach American history to students in eastern Tennessee. In the narrative that makes up our nine-month journey, we encounter the broken and bleeding body of the American black dozens of times: crossing the Atlantic, sweating in the southern fields, hanging from the lynching tree, hiding from Jim Crow, dodging night-riders and sheriffs, urban sharecropping in ghettos, rioting after their leaders are shot dead, existing within a system of structural violence, paying never-ending rent to a landlord who keeps jacking up the price and never fixing the leaks in the ceiling.

Because of this, I have always sensed ghosts in my classroom. As if small pieces of the souls of black folk still, somehow, were left clinging to these stories. I always told these stories – of Emmitt Till, Claudette Colvin, Martin Luther King Jr. - with grit in my teeth and a chill in my bones and an ache that the story somehow find resolution.

And then Tuesday night.

Spike Lee declared, “This changes everything.’’ Congressman John Lewis – blood brother to Dr. King – called it a “nonviolent revolution.’’ On the streets and radio and television, I found black people doing one of three things: weeping with joy, jumping with joy, or making the statement, “I never thought I’d live to see the day.’’

If you ever doubted the concept of white privilege, ask yourself: when was the last time a white man wept with joy because another white man was elected president?

It is a new declaration of independence. Electing Obama begins the declaration of independence from a system of white supremacy, and independence from the illusion of democracy that comes from the top-down. Amy Goodman called President-elect Obama the “organizer in chief.’’ He cut his teeth on democracy in the streets of Chicago, and during his midnight speech on Tuesday, said his victory came brick by brick and block by block. This is democracy from the bottom up, which is the only version of democracy worth a damn.

I understand Obama will sit at the helm of a $700 billion defense budget, obscene in its injustice and madness. I understand that this in no way removes the cold violence that exists within black America today. Higher poverty rates, higher infant mortality, higher incarceration rates. Malcolm X had no use for the idea of an American dream, and instead saw it as a nightmare. And so Obama is not a savior, and certainly not the end of racism as we know it.

But we are closer than we’ve ever been.

In my classroom, I can look out my window and see the bridge where a black man was lynched in 1906 for allegedly raping a white girl. The Supreme Court had issued a stay of execution, but the mob was deaf to Washington, and took him out of his cell and strung him up, shot him and strung him up again as the rope broke. When I tell this story from this day forward, that man’s body will not hang so heavily, and the police dogs will not bite with such rage, and the sheriff’s nightstick will slam with less vengeance, and the bullet will not fire because the guns will no longer work.

“We Shall Overcome’’ evolves to: we are overcoming. We have overcome.

David Cook is a former journalist with the Chattanooga Times-Free Press and current columnist with the chattanoogan.com. He teaches American Studies and Democracy Studies at Girls Preparatory School in Chattanooga, TN and can be reached at dcook7@gmail.com.

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Lendman: The Wages of Sin

Saturday, November 8th, 2008

By Stephen Lendman - RINF | “Reaping the whirlwind” for money manager and market strategist Jeremy Grantham in his latest no-nonsense commentary. Worlds different from most in the mainstream. Cheerleaders in upturns. Downplaying risks. Soft-pedaling reversals and still many in denial about the severity of today’s crisis. The virtual certainty of a deep and protracted recession. The likely emergence of a changed world order at its end - for better or worse. The result of what Grantham calls “the poisonous wind we all sowed,” and went on to explain it with his customary thoughtful analysis. Calling it like he sees it as one of the earliest to spot the current storm. Even though it arrived sooner and with more severity than he imagined. In that respect, it fooled some of the best and brightest but no longer the ones most credible.

Grantham enumerated 10 “poisonous” elements:

(1) an extended period of excess in: “money supply, loan growth, leverage, and below normal interest rates;”

(2) at a time of a “remarkably lucky global economic” climate he called “near perfect;” in January 2007, he observed that “Against all odds, Goldilocks tiptoed through the perils of the first (2005) and second (2006) year of the Presidential Cycle (and) 2006 was the rarest of rare birds - a perfect year;” it was “the best year in the entire history of finance for the selling of high credit risks at low premiums” and sowed many seeds for the current debacle; it produced what Grantham called “the first truly global bubble in all asset classes everywhere with only a few modest exceptions;”

(3) as asset bubbles inflated, the Fed, SEC, Treasury, and (both parties in) Congress dismantled regulations instead of tightening them; they sanctified leverage and rejected efforts to curtail risks; worse still, they “encouraged (extreme) excesses by admiring the ingenuity of new financial instruments and repeated their belief that no bubbles existed and that housing at the peak ‘merely reflected a strong US economy;’ ” when conditions headed south, a “strong economy” was still the near-universal mantra;

(4) the combination of a favorable climate and cheerleading by authorities “produced an even more poisonous bubble that in risk-taking itself;” the idea was that in the event of trouble, moral hazard would ride to the rescue, so go as far out on limbs as you like;

(5) the “concept of rational expectations, or market efficiency,” laid deadly groundwork; the idea that we’re “far too sensible” to let major bubbles appear let alone get out of control; the notion is nonsensical on its face; in the “real world of greed and fear, it dangerously encourages the belief that if you take more risk you will automatically receive more reward;” true enough in calm markets, but in turbulent ones it’s disastrous; astonishingly, investors were lulled to think that until mid-2007, market conditions “were actually paying to take risks for the first time in history;”

(6) these bubbles burst like all previous ones; unsurprisingly, they were “absolutely not outlier events;”

(7) built up stresses were so extreme that unwinding them was certain to be painful; in early 2007, Grantham noted that “it is increasingly impressive and surprising how much we have done wrong this time;”

(8) “by far, the biggest failing of our system has been its unwillingness to deal with important asset bubbles as they form;” as the dot.com one grew, Grantham explained it in 1998, 1999 and in a 2002 “Feet of Clay” commentary that “aimed at (his) arch villain, Alan Greenspan;” because of a more dangerous housing bubble, “Bernanke joined (his) rogues’ gallery;”

– added icing on the cake came from Warren Buffett on derivatives; “financial weapons of mass destruction” he called them; so complex few understand them, and many of them are for gambling, not protection or investing; a sure recipe for trouble; the destruction of the very keys to our financial structure; as a result, trust and confidence have been hugely impaired; “a potentially lethal blow to the system and must be addressed at any cost as fast as possible;” and a final observation:

(10) foresight, imagination and competence are essential to avoid crises; when they occur, these elements in abundance are needed to deal with it; “the bitterest disappointment” this time is how authorities “rationalized and ignored” asset bubble buildups and risk-taking; especially their cheerleader in-chief, “the formerly esteemed chairman of the Fed.”

Grantham then asked: “Why did our leaders encourage the deregulation, encourage the leveraging and risk-taking, and completely miss or dismiss the growing signs of trouble and what we described as the ‘near certainties’ of bubbles breaking?” He suggested two “theories.” The first based on “career risk” or what he calls “the Goldman Sachs Effect: Goldman increased its leverage and its profit margins shot into the stratosphere.” Eager and needing to keep up, other less talented banks copied them “with ultimately disastrous consequences.” They had to because “woe betide the CEO who missed the game….The Board would simply kick him out” and replace him with a “gunslinger.”

Theory two is harder to prove: “that CEOs are picked for their left-brain skills — focus, hard work, decisiveness, persuasiveness, political skills (and with luck) analytical (ones) and charisma. The Great American Executives are not picked for their patience.” For wasting time “thinking about history and the long-term future. They are paid to be decisive and to act now.” Today’s CEOs, “to the man, missed everything that was new and different,” and these elements “happened to be vital.”

In mid-2007, Grantham noted three “near certainties:”

– that US and UK house prices would decline;

– profit margins globally would fall; and

– risk premiums everywhere would rise with the result that “markets and the financial and economic systems” would experience “severe consequences.”

The US housing market is down but “probably has quite a way to go” to reach bottom. The UK slump has just begun. It will hit with a thud and cause “another wave of write-downs and stress.” Global profits are falling “rapidly, but have a long way to go.” Most dramatically has been the rise of risk premiums. From record narrow spreads 18 months ago in developed country fixed income markets to far above normal. In emerging countries, the worst is likely ahead and in places may be “very severe.” As for equities, global markets “moved in three weeks from quite expensive to moderately cheap for the first time in at least 20 years.”

But hold the cheers. We’re not out of the woods. Not even close perhaps given the history of bubbles that are punctuated by strong bear market rallies like the one in the run-up to November’s election. Grantham’s research shows that all markets revert to their mean values from their highs and lows. No exceptions, and getting there is very bumpy. Nearly always by way overshooting. Further, the larger the bubble, the greater the overshoot.

In addition, US markets haven’t been cheap since 1982-1983 and have been “permanently overpriced since 1994.” Hence a “terrible caveat.” Until the greatest ever 2000 equity bubble, the three most important 20th century ones were in 1929, 1965 and Japan at end of 1989. All three overcorrected by more than 50%. Today, we have “a more global, interlocking, and complicated system, including non-bank players like hedge funds.” We’ve also got destabilizing derivatives in a totally unregulated market. Is a 50% overrun likely? Grantham thinks governments will do anything to prevent it and with luck they will, but not entirely.

He estimates S & P 500 fair value at around 975 and believes that it will likely “overrun on the downside by 20-40%, giving a range of 585 to 780 as a probable low.” Its closing October 9, 2007 high was 1565. The lower figure, if reached, will be 63% below the high. In the event of a 50% overshoot, the low will be 487, or a 69% drop. In sum, “the world faces unavoidable declines in economic activity and profit margins, so this overrun is unlikely to be much less painful than average” and may be worse.

Another disturbing sign was in the November 3 closely-watched Institute for Supply Management (ISM) report. The index fell to 38.9% in October from 43.5% in September. Its lowest level since September 1982. Readings below 50 signal contraction. This one is big and maybe worsening. Both new orders and production were their lowest since the early 1980s. A clear sign of a deepening recession with the worst still yet to come.

More evidence as well from an October 30 Bloomberg report headlined: “The Shipping News Suggests World Economy is Toast.” Writer Mark Gilbert cites the Baltic Dry Index that tracks the cost of shipping goods and commodities. It fell below 1000 for the first time in six years with a thud. It’s now nearly 90% cheaper to ship goods over water than early in the year. Air freight is also affected and dropped 7.7% in September, according to the International Air Transport Association, or the steepest decline since the trade group began compiling the data in January 2003.

Given the current economic crisis and some of the worst economic conditions in years, Societe Generale’s Guy Stear and Claudia Panseri said “Earnings expectations still look optimistic, with analysts projecting 2009 earnings for the S & P 500 rising by 19 per cent.” It’s astonishing that some people buy it or that analysts are allowed to get away with such deception. Slowly and grudgingly, they’ll lower their figures as unfolding evidence forces them.

More from Martin Weiss on “The Great American Housing Nightmare: Next Phase“

His latest analysis as of November 3, and it’s pretty grim. He explains that it’s foolish to assume home prices “are so low that they (can’t) go any lower. They don’t stop declining because they appear cheap or match a historical low. They keep dropping until “no new economic forces drive them down. Despite sharp declines already recorded, a steeper plunge is dead ahead.” Because “most of the (housing market) troubles (so far) have been caused by bad mortgages going sour. Meanwhile, the more common causes of housing slumps — high interest rates, rising unemployment, and recession — are just starting to kick in, and the most powerful causes — depression and deflation — are still on the horizon.”

In addition, massive over-indebtedness will pressure greater numbers of homeowners to abandon or sell properties for whatever amounts they’ll bring. Already in 2008, 10% of them are in foreclosure. Nearly 40% owe more than their homes are worth, and all this kicked in before recession deepens and the “next phase of the Great American Housing Nightmare” begins.

Weiss calls it “one of the biggest speculative manias of all time.” With no precedent, so no historical roadmap is available for guidance. “No one can (say) with precision how far US home prices will decline, when they will hit bottom, how many homeowners will lose their homes, or how soon a real recovery will begin.” It may take many years, and the most comparable precedents for today’s crisis had nothing to do with homes.

“They are the Dutch speculative mania of the 1630s, the South Sea Bubble of the 1700s, and the stock market panics of the early 1900s.” The 1929 one as well. Their critical boom-bust elements were quite similar:

(1) Debt: the fuel of speculation; with enough, prices can be wildly inflated; “in many respects, the borrowing mania makes all previous debt manias pale by comparison;” by mid-2008, the Fed reported $14.8 trillion in outstanding US mortgages or 40% more than the official national debt and triple the total of all mortgages a dozen years earlier. Even worse, was the quality of debt. Dangerous and substandard because all types of speculative lending proliferated. Requiring no proof of an ability to repay. No down payment so even low income households could buy unaffordable properties or even more than one. And even pay interest only or less than the full amount.

It’s no surprise that a majority made the smallest required payments and accrued unpaid amounts to their loan balances. The more payments they made, the deeper in debt they fell.

It gets worse. Unlike past speculative periods, non-lenders this time hold most of the mortgages — “institutions and investors far removed from borrowers.” And the $14.8 trillion in residential and commercial mortgages is compounded by another $20.4 trillion in consumer and corporate debt. As a result, Americans are pressured on multiple fronts — unaffordable mortgages, credit card and other loan balances, combined with mounting layoffs and unemployment. A potentially lethal combination.

(2) Investor Frenzy: history shows that the wilder it gets on the upside, the greater the selling panic heading down; at the housing bubble’s peak, the average existing home price was nearly five times the yearly incomes of owners - the highest ever ratio in history; at the same time, home affordability plunged to its lowest ever level; in addition, speculation was rampant as the market peaked; “an astounding 40% of houses and condos were bought as second homes or investments.”

Further, the annual appreciation rate for existing homes jumped from 3.6% in January 2001 to 16.6% in November 2005. For new homes, it surged from 4.8% to 18.1% over the same period. Securitized mortgages (sold globally) added more bubble fuel to the mix — $4.8 trillion worth or 60% more than the total value of all Dow Jones Industrial Average stocks.

(3) Government-Created Monopolies, Corruption, Fraud and Cover-Ups: some of the greatest bubbles in history were created, fueled and extended this way.

For example, failing to create a massive railroad monopoly caused the Panic of 1901. The Panic of 1907 followed the inability to corner the copper market, and the 1929 crash, in large measure, resulted from collusion among brokers, bankers and tycoons. Nearly always, the government fostered a deregulatory climate. Gave selected companies and individuals special privileges. Encouraged concentrated power, and desperately tried to reconstitute the boom after the bust occurred. It proved fruitless, collapse followed, and it portends what may happen today with a potentially similar or even worse outcome than in the past.

Take the two government-created housing monopolies for example, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They got dominant control over the nation’s largest debt market — mortgages, and were encouraged to compete aggressively with private subprime lenders. It proved disastrous, showed up early, but was ignored.

In September 2004, Fannie and Freddie’s primary regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise (OFHE), revealed massive accounting irregularities on both companies’ books. Four years later, they were still unaddressed. As a result, the SEC began investigating their accounting practices. In addition, their official filings and public pronouncements “consistently and wildly overstated their capital, while understating their risk. Fannie and Freddie were actually houses of cards in disguise,” but their executives repeatedly lied about their companies’ health in testimony before Congress. That both were undercapitalized and, in fact, insolvent.

It’s no surprise given their speculative practices. Between 2005 and 2008, Fannie alone purchased or guaranteed at least $270 billion in subprime mortgages, more than three times the amount it bought in all previous years combined. It went unnoticed, and Wall Street and Washington encouraged even greater risk-taking. In September 2008, it ended with a crash. Both companies were bankrupt, and it no longer could be hidden. They needed “an unprecedented $100 billion” each from the government to keep them operating.

But that amount way understates the problem. It “assumes an end to the credit crunch, no more debt collapses, no recession, and certainly no depression.” It thus completely ignores reality. What may be needed for what’s “fast becoming history’s largest (ever) cesspool of sinking debts and commitments — $5.2 trillion in mortgages guaranteed or owned by the two companies, their $1.5 trillion in debts, and their $2 trillion in derivatives.”

(4) Collapse: How far home prices will decline can’t be predicted with certainty. However, history once again is a guide:

– in the Dutch Tulip Mania, investors lost nearly everything if they paid cash; even more if they bought on a slim 2.5% margin.

– in the South Sea Bubble, share prices declined about 90%;

– in the 1929 crash, they dropped 89%;

– In the 2000 - 2002 tech bubble, they sunk 78%;

– in the 1990 to the present Japanese bear market, they lost 82% in the leading Nikkei average; and

– in today’s financial crisis, losses of up to 99% have occurred in some of America’s most noted companies.

Right or wrong, Weiss believes that today’s US housing bubble “is as extreme as (the above-listed) examples.” He sees it progressing in three phases:

– the subprime mortgage bust already experienced;

– a severe US recession “just beginning;” and

– “depression and deflation” to come.

Home prices will continue falling precipitously with the most over-valued areas and blightest regions with high unemployment hardest hit. “Never before in history have we witnessed home price declines of this magnitude.” The result of unprecedented levels of debt, speculation, government manipulation, fraud, corruption and consumer abuse. If history teaches anything, “it’s that unprecedented causes (produce) unprecedented consequences.” It’s now playing out in America and globally with the worst of it to come.

Another Potential Shoe to Drop

According to Nouriel Roubini in his November 4 commentary titled: “The Rising Risk of a Hard Landing in China: The Two Engines of Global Growth - the US and China - are Now Stalling“:

In recent years, “the global economy has been running on two engines, the US on the consumption side and China on the production side, both lifting the global economy.” As the world’s “consumer of first and last resort,” the latest macro data show this engine has effectively shut down. “More worrisome,” increasing signs show China is also stalling.

Their latest macro data are mixed but all point to “a sharp deceleration of economic growth.” Now at 9% compared to past 12% years. At risk is a potential “hard landing” that for China would mean around 5-6% growth and not the 9-10% it needs to absorb its 24 million new workers annually. Various “macro indicators suggest that China is indeed headed towards a hard landing.” It’s not good news for America, and in combination, aren’t good news for world economies.

One year ago, Chinese exports to the US grew at an annualized 20% rate. The most recent trade data show zero growth, but “the worst is still to come in the next few quarters” as US consumption is falling and is expected to continue declining. In addition, nearly all advanced economies face severe recession that will slow China’s growth further.

Monetary policy may prove ineffective, and analysts disagree about fiscal measures. As export demand falls, the country is committed to more infrastructure and other spending and has a huge (nearly $2 trillion) foreign currency war chest to do it. But Roubini believes fiscal stimulus will be limited at best. Because of the combined effects of Olympics spending, natural disasters, and social strife in the West, a large budget hole was created. Other factors are in play as well such as a turnover decline in local property markets. Lower fees and taxes have resulted that, in turn, have delayed some industrial development plans.

A “hard landing” may also increase the amount of non-performing loans from “the still mostly public state banks…. Once net exports go bust and real investment sharply falls we will see a massive surge in non-performing loans that financed low return and marginal investment projects. The ensuing fiscal costs of cleaning up the banking system could be really high.”

An additional factor comes from Michael Pettis — a leading Chinese economy expert. That a tax revenue surge “in the last 4 years has been more than matched by (a) surge in spending so that if revenue growth diminishes (or reverses) it might not be easy to slow spending growth proportionately. Contingent liabilities from non-performing loans could also reduce resources available for a fiscal stimulus.”

Nonetheless, fiscal measures are being implemented but so far just modestly, and the “big question is (can China) increase (the amount enough) if a quick order hard landing were to occur.” Roubini believes likely not because “moving a massive amount of economic resources from the tradeable (to the non-tradeable infrastructure) sector will take time…” He sees China decelerating to a 2009 7% growth rate — “just a notch above a 6% hard landing (and) an even worse outcome cannot be ruled out…”

In addition, “a hard landing in China will have severe effects on growth in emerging market economies in Asia, Africa and Latin America as Chinese demand for raw materials and intermediate inputs has been a major source of economic growth for emerging markets and commodity exporters…. Thus, global growth — at market prices — will be close to zero in Q3 of 2008, likely negative in Q4 and well into negative territory in 2009. So brace yourself for an ugly and protracted global economic contraction” next year.

On November 4, the US Commerce Department added fuel to that argument as factory orders slumped sharply as US and foreign businesses curtailed their capital equipment demand for the second straight month. It fell 2.5% in September, much weaker than the 0.2% expected. In August, it declined 4.3%, the biggest drop in almost two years, and more erosion is expected in the coming months as the US recession deepens.

Exacerbated by plunging US auto sales according to the latest reported figures. They dropped 31% in October to around 850,000 vehicles with GM reporting its worst month since 1945 — down 45% along with Chrysler’s 35% and Ford’s 30%. According to one analyst, adjusted for population increases, it was the worst monthly performance “in the post-WW II era. This is clearly a severe, severe recession,” and auto executives warned that the worst still may lie ahead.

Very likely according to the Fed’s Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices. It shows tighter standards along with weaker loan demand. It stated: “In the current survey, large net fractions of domestic institutions reported having continued to tighten their lending standards and terms on all major loan categories over the previous three months.” Both to businesses and households. In addition, “Demand for loans from both businesses and households at domestic institutions continued to weaken, on net, over the past three months.”

At the same time, there are huge federal funding demands that will cause an even greater debt crisis. The Treasury just announced a need to borrow $550 billion in the current quarter. Near-term needs may add $2-$3 trillion more to that total — to finance the federal deficit, buy $500 billion in toxic assets, roll over $561 billion in maturing Treasuries, and add the unknown factor of what other needs may arise.

On November 5, another worrisome one came from the latest ISM non-manufacturing (or service) sector. It dropped from a neutral 50.2 September reading to 44.4 in October. Another clear sign of contraction. In addition, the non-manufacturing business activity index fell 7.9 points to 44.2, and the new orders one declined 6.8 points to 44. The employment index stands at 41.5, and the price index dropped 16.6 points to 53.4. Any number below 50 signals contraction.

On November 6, two more weak reports came out:

– One from retailers showing their sales plummeted to their lowest level in about 40 years. AP retail reporter Anne D’Innocenzio called it “stunning and rare” and said it augurs a bleak outlook for holiday shopping. Michael Niemira, the International Council of Shopping Centers’ chief economist, described October sales as “awful. This reflects the severity of the current financial crisis.” The ICSC-Goldman Sachs Index registered a 1% decline to its lowest level since at least 1969 when the index was established.

– The Labor Department reported that longer-term jobless benefits hit a 25-year high with the number of people drawing unemployment benefits jumping by 122,000 to 3.84 million in late October. It was the highest reading since 1983 at a time of deepening recession. In addition, another report showed productivity declined to 1.1% in Q3 compared to 3.6% in Q2. Unit labor costs increased at a 3.6% rate compared to .1% in the earlier period.

The View According to Krassimir Petrov

He’s an economist and assistant professor at the American University in Bulgaria teaching macroeconomics, money and banking, and international finance, and his world view signals trouble of the most serious kind. “Worse than the Great Depression” he explains in a recent article. Gives reasons he feels are compelling, and lists the “very same mistakes that led to the” earlier one only this time they’re even worse:

– asset bubbles in stocks, real estate and more;

– securitization and the immense amount of toxic debt it created;

– excessive leverage compounded by a world of hedge funds;

– corrupt gatekeepers that allowed an Enron and Worldcom scandal and today’s far worse problems;

– lagging regulations or a complete lack of them where they’re most needed;

– market ideology; laissez unfair fundamentalism; and

– non-transparency to the degree that financial executives even fool themselves.

Combined he sees the current debacle much “worse than the Great Depression” because of six “baked in the cake” fundamental factors:

– overvalued real estate to a far greater degree than in the 1920s when most people paid cash for their homes;

– total US highly-levered credit; again more extreme than in the earlier era; to unprecedented levels;

– the explosion of derivatives; a thousand trillion dollar “sword of Damocles over the financial system;” an estimated $180 trillion held by banks alone;

– the Dow-gold ratio; the “most important ratio between the relative prices of financial” and real assets; leverage creates an imbalance and implies gross overvaluation; it reached its highest ever level in 2000 and needs painfully more downside to unwind;

– global bubbles not easily comparable to the less globalized 1920s; today, however, US stock market and real estate excesses exceed what occurred back then; and

– the collapsing Bretton Woods II as distinguished from Bretton Woods I tied to gold and its ability to restrain credit and financial excesses.

Today’s cumulative imbalances far exceed those of the earlier era and suggest a very grim outlook - if Petrov is right. His advice, and he’s not alone - think gold.

A Morning-After Reality Check

November 4 election night. It was a happening at Chicago’s Grant Park. Like New Year’s eve in Times Square. Expectant many tens of thousands assembled for a huge victory rally. Office buildings were emptied to let them come. They arrived early. Awaiting official word that their man won. Eager to greet him. The new president-elect. A change of the guard. A new day. At around 10PM, the crowd erupted when on giant TV screens CNN called it for Obama. “Yes we can” people chanted.

It was mass euphoria. At a time of deepening financial duress. The worst in many decades. Hitting Chicagaons hard like many others. The nation at war on two fronts as well. A possible new one with Iran, and a new Cold War with Russia in the wings. Out of sight and mind as Chicago threw a party and brought the whole city to a halt. Until after midnight when crowds began dispersing.

All night electricity filled the air. “Finally we have someone who will change the world,” said a woman. “He’ll put the right people in the right jobs,” said another. “He wants to make a difference in our country,” one more. Not a hint of negativity in sight. Not tonight at least. Tomorrow will be soon enough. Mark January 20 as the day it arrives. Inauguration day. In the meantime, party on.

In less than three months, the age of George Bush will end and a new Obama one will begin. Will it be different or more of the same? Will the new president be less hawkish? Less supportive of massive Wall Street bailouts? Socialism for the rich and the hindmost for the rest? Less controlled by monied interests? More committed to public need? Main Street over Wall Street? More eager to end foreign wars? More dedicated to a new course? Reversing his predecessor’s toxic legacy? Governing responsibly for the first time in decades? Maybe ever, but at least since the New Deal? Is anything close to that possible? Think so? Think again.

Comparing Obama to FDR and expecting another New Deal is ludicrous. Yet with every new president hope springs eternal. Candidates promise change (or at least suggest it) and people buy it. A new course. Racial harmony. Peace and prosperity. Populist reform and a radical shift away from the Bush administration’s toxic extremism. A deep breath please for a reality check. A wake-up call. A cold shower.

Obama is a creation of Wall Street and America’s boardroom rulers. Its dominant corporate power. His administration:

– will continue an imperial agenda;

– won’t end foreign wars;

– won’t repeal repressive police state laws;

– will let corruption go unpunished;

– will continue to serve monied interests;

– send hundreds of billions more to bankers;

– loot the federal treasury to do it;

– let taxpayers fund it;

– let Wall Street run the Treasury with either Goldman Sachs executives or others just like them;

– increase the size of the military;

– send more troops to Afghanistan;

– continue occupying Iraq;

– begin a new Cold War with Russia;

– continue attacking Pakistan;

– possibly Iran as well;

– will keep waging the “war on terrorism;”

– will continue one-sided support for Israel’s repressive occupation of Palestine and proved it by choosing pro-Israeli hardliner and neoliberal Rahm Emanuel as his White House chief of staff; it’s considered the most powerful executive branch position after the president and a Dick Cheney type vice-presidency; Emanuel rammed through NAFTA for Clinton and is a Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) insider;

– will send Israel billions of dollars, the latest weapons and technology, and much more annually;

– will maintain the Cuban embargo;

– hostility toward Hugo Chavez and all other independent leaders, democrats or despots;

– will support neoliberal “free trade;”

– keep undermining labor;

– do nothing to foster racial harmony;

– or defend the rights of immigrant workers;

– or reform the US gulag prison system; the largest in the world by far; affecting mostly poor people of color; his own people;

– won’t end the barbaric death penalty;

– won’t release political prisoners or end the war on Islam;

– will support privatizing public education;

– will ignore the plight of tens of millions with no health insurance and many millions more with too little;

– will back a business as usual agenda because “the business of America is business,” and Obama won’t ever forget it. Or the foreign wars he’ll support in its behalf, and

– will protect the two-party duopoly and do nothing to make an anti-democratic America more democratic.

Think a new progressive age is dawning? Think again. An Obama presidency will go Lincoln one better. It’ll prove that the electorate can be fooled “all of the time” or enough of them long enough before eventually they’ll know they were had — fooled again. One commentator put it up this way: “Forget the honeymoon - I want a divorce,” and Ralph Nader asked: Will Barak Obama be an “Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations?”

That said, consider two positive things. Thankfully, Obama isn’t John McCain, and given the dire state of things, he and Congress may have to help people in need. It will be woefully inadequate, packaged to look otherwise, but may be enough to contain public anger. Unless things get so dire, nothing less than massive stimulus will help, and then political exigencies may force a more progressive agenda than party leaders now have in mind. It’s how the New Deal came about. Enlightened politicians and some business leaders were scared enough to give a little to save capitalism. In the months ahead, that choice may again arise.

A View from the UK

It comes from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in his November 4 commentary headlined: “Revenge of the Left across the world.” He suggests the possibility that America’s election will produce a hostile laissez-faire climate given that “capitalism has run amok” and caused damage so great that Obama “may have to pursue unthinkable policies.” Just as Franklin Roosevelt did once in office.

True or not, some observers believe it or at least are hopeful. Ninety-one year old Eric Hobsbawm for one. The famed British Marxist historian and author in a BBC interview. He calls today’s events “the dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union: we now know that an era has ended. It is certainly the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s. As Marx and Schumpeter foresaw, globalization not only destroys heritage, but is incredibly unstable. It operates through a series of crises.”

This one will result in “a much greater role for the state, one way or another. We’ve already got the state as lender of last resort. We might well return to the idea of the state as employer of last resort” the way it was under FDR.

Evans-Pritchard is sympathetic and disagrees with those who think business can go on as usual given that governments have stepped in with massive rescue packages. He quotes Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, saying: “The rule of the radical market ideology that began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has ended with a loud bang. We need a comprehensive new start, so we can reestablish our society on fresh foundations. People create value, not locusts.” Thatcher’s TINA (there is no alternative) has come full circle. It was fraudulent on its face and is now turned on it head.

So says Nicolas Sarkozy in his “Laissez-faire, c’est fini” comment that needs no translation. “We will intervene massively whenever a strategic enterprise needs our money,” he said. It’s pouring out of Washington, the UK, and most Western European capitals in a frantic effort to staunch the bleeding that keeps gushing no matter what they do. Because of what Evans-Pritchard calls the “awful truth.” Gross excesses producing awesome credit bubbles now imploding and landing with a thud. Their “shock will move by degrees from revulsion to political rage.” It produced Hitler in 1930s Germany. Hobsbawm hopes America will be wiser and choose socialism over “the Hegelian broth nearing the boil in Europe.”

Given current conditions near certain to worsen and a new US administration in power, it’s anyone’s guess how a crisis this grave will be resolved or how things will look when it ends. One thing, however, is sure. The age of George Bush is over, and not a moment too soon. But undoing his damage may be too great a task for any head of state — even for all of them combined. The wages of sin are now due.

Have Your Say: Lendman: The Wages of Sin
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