January 29, 2013  |  

In the centuries-old tradition of human beings looking at images of other human beings naked, the internet is perhaps the biggest game-changer since the film camera.

Porn sites are some of the most-visited places on the web, and just about anything you could imagine (and lots of things you probably couldn’t have come up with on your own) is a mere Google search away. While that’s great news for folks who have, say, an unrequited zombie fetish or a deep desire to see old men swaddled in mohair diapers, the almost entirely unregulated buffet of internet pornography also has a whole host of downsides — one of the most odious being the popular genre of “revenge porn”.

On revenge porn sites, users upload x-rated photos of women (often ex girlfriends or lovers) without the women’s permission. Send a naughty photo to your boyfriend and when it turns out he’s a pig, your image is all over the internet, often with your name, location and links to your social media accounts. The purpose of revenge porn isn’t to allow regular guys the opportunity to see some naked girls-next-door; it’s explicitly purposed to shame, humiliate and destroy the lives and reputations of young women.

Luckily, some of those women are refusing to be shamed into silence. More than two dozen of them have filed a lawsuit against one of the websites, Texxxan.com, as well as its host, GoDaddy.com. Some of the women have lost their jobs; all of them have been exposed and exploited, first by men they trusted and then by entities simply looking to make a buck off of misogyny.

Gender cyber harassment is nothing new (pdf), and revenge porn sites are part of a widespread, deeply sexist online culture everywhere from blog comment sections to YouTube videos to message boards. Anonymous sexualized harassment of women online has been around since AOL chatrooms, and it seems to be getting more mainstreamed, more organized and more efficient. The internet is not a nice place to be a woman — something I found out first-hand, and not just through the ongoing threats, harassment and stalking I’ve received as a feminist blogger.

When I was a law student at NYU, I found myself the subject of hundreds of threads and comments on a website called AutoAdmit. Reading post after anonymous post about how your classmates and future professional peers want to rape you is not a particularly pleasant experience; seeing those posts right next to details of what outfit you wore to school yesterday, how tall you are or what kinds of comments you made in class feels awfully threatening.

It’s hard to explain the psychological impact these kind of anonymous posts have, when these people know your name, face and exactly where you are during the day. You can’t walk down the hall at school without wondering if that guy who just made eye contact with you is going to go home and write something disgusting about you on the internet, or if anything you say in class is going to be quoted on a message board as evidence that you are a stupid cow, or if any one of these anonymous commenters is going to take their sexually violent urges offline and onto your body.

My reaction was to shut down. I felt like I was in a fishbowl, so I just refused to look outside of the glass. I’m a very social person, but in three years of law school I made only two friends. I skipped a lot of my classes; when I did go, I kept my head down.

WASHINGTON – January 29 – Not since the late 1980s and early 1990s has there been such a wide variety of assault pistols available for sale on the U.S. civilian market warns the new Violence Policy Center (VPC) study Assault Pistols: The Next Wave (http://www.vpc.org/studies/awpistols.pdf). The study contains more than 20 examples of assault pistols currently marketed in the United States, led by AK-47 and AR-15 pistols that offer assault rifle power in a compact pistol format. Each of the assault pistols detailed in the study would be banned by legislation introduced last week by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). The study notes that in addition to next-generation AK-47 and AR-15 assault pistols, assault pistols that were banned by name under the now-expired federal assault weapons ban, such as the UZI pistol, MAC, and Calico, are also being marketed.

Josh Sugarmann, VPC executive director and author of the study states, “There is now a wider variety of assault pistols available on the civilian market than ever before. Able to accept high-capacity ammunition magazines filled with assault rifle rounds that can penetrate police body armor, concealable next-generation AK-47 and AR-15 pistols place law enforcement at an unprecedented risk. At the same time, assault pistols that defined the drug wars of the late 1980s and early 1990s, such as the UZI pistol and MAC-10, are being sold under federal law with no more restrictions than a traditional six-shot revolver.”

In a YouTube segment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9DdiGu6ZYI) from his cable television show Ted Nugent’s Spirit of the Wild titled “Uncle Ted’s Favorite Guns,” National Rifle Association Board Member Ted Nugent cheerfully acknowledges the military pedigree and lauds the rifle power of the Century International Arms Centurion 39 AK-47 pistol, “This is a variation of what they lovingly refer to as the Kalashnikov, the AK-47….This is a handgun version, almost what you see the bad guys in Afghanistan use…7.62 x 39mm, out of a little, short, rifle basically, but it’s a handgun, this is a handgun.”

Research by the Violence Policy Center and others makes it clear that AK-47 pistols are a “weapon of choice” of cross-border illegal gun traffickers who purchase firearms in the United States and then smuggle them into Mexico. A VPC review of 114 federal gun trafficking prosecutions in 16 states (http://www.vpc.org/indicted.htm) catalogued more than 4,800 firearms detailed in court and other legal documents. Of the 262 assault pistols tabulated, almost all were variants of AK-47 assault pistols (the remainder were mostly AR-15 assault pistols).

Examples of assault pistols presented in the study include the following:

–A headline for catalog copy for the aforementioned Century International Arms Centurion 39 AK Pistol boasts, “We brought you the 1st 100% American Made AK. Now we bring you the 1st 100% American Made AK Pistol!” The ad text reads: “Wow! This new Centurion 39 Pistol is totally awesome and is 100% made in the good old U.S. of A.! The new bird cage muzzle brake and ‘shark fin’ front sight, gives the small package a sexy new look. An ergonomic pistol grip and our proprietary quad rail, high-tech, poly furniture, gives an incredibly cool appearance that just oozes strength, quality and style…Perfect for home protection, CQB [Close Quarters Battle], or a fun day of inexpensive shooting at the range, the C39 is a trusty tool that is ready when you are. Takes all standard AK type magazines.”

–According to the 2010 catalog of Masterpiece Arms, which manufactures MAC-10 pistols, “The MAC is back, and its [sic] better than ever before.” The company promises that its products have “the tactical look and feel so popular in today’s market. There is nothing that will catch the attention of a fellow gun enthusiast like the MAC.”

–The 2012 catalog for I.O. Inc. explains, “The Hellpup is the little brother to the Hellhound [AK-47] rifle. This tactical AK pistol is in 7.62×39 caliber with a 9.25” barrel and no rear stock…and almost every assault rifle option known can be fitted to this five pound pistol.”

–Catalog copy for the DSA Inc. SA58 PKP pistol brags, “The power of the 7.62×51 cartridge in a package a little larger than a full-size UZI. Despite it’s [sic] size, the FAL Pistol comes with the standard features you would expect to see on a full size FAL…. “

–A 2011 article published in Handguns magazine titled “AR Pistols: The Hugely Popular Rifle Platform Makes a Pretty Cool Handgun as Well” noted, “There’s no doubt in the last few years that AR pistols have become extremely popular.”

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Monday night Rachel Maddow expanded on her Friday report about the weird ad running in opposition to Chuck Hagel’s nomination. The group running the ad calls themselves “Use Your Mandate” and claims to be a group of liberals — gay liberals, even — who are afraid to come out into the light for fear of White House retribution.

Because this White House has been so bitterly retributive, don’t you know? When I first heard about it I thought it was bull too, because liberals tend to oppose nominations loudly and without any guise of secrecy. In fact, I can’t think of a time where any liberal group I’ve had contact with has been secretive about who they are and why they’re running an ad. That seems to be the province of the US Chamber of Commerce and Koch-funded front groups..

Rachel’s instinct seems to be right on the money. As she reports, “Use Your Mandate” used a media buyer in San Diego to place the ad by the name of Del Cielo Media, LLC*. Del Cielo Media is the company name for Sarah Linden, who is the west coast media director for Smart Media Group.

On Smart Media Group’s resumé: Official media buyers for the McCain-Palin campaign, Republican National Committee, NRSC, and the US Chamber of Commerce, among others.

DelCielo Media’s website is a splash page and a link to a map now, but as Rachel reports, one of Linden’s clients is the Emergency Committee for Israel, a relatively new neocon group whose directors include Bill Kristol, Gary Bauer, and Michael Goldfarb. Michael Goldfarb is an advisor to Liz Cheney’s neocon message machine, Keep America Safe, where Kristol also serves as a director.

The other firm Rachel mentions is Tusk Strategies. Michael Tusk was Michael Bloomberg’s campaign director in 2009 and now has his own New York PR firm. Tusk’s client list boasts of relationships with Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst and Education Reform Now, two groups which call themselves liberal but which are not, by any stretch of the imagination, liberal.

Tusk also served as deputy governor of Illinois from 2003-2006, during Rod Blagojevich’s term, and testified against him about Blago’s attempted shakedown of Rahm Emanuel.

All of the objections to Chuck Hagel’s nomination seem to emanate from the fact that he isn’t interested in blowing up the world on Israel’s behalf. They word them in different ways, but that’s the gist of things.

You be the jury. Based on Rachel’s report and the information here, I’d say the odds of the anti-Hagel ad coming from a liberal group shaking in their boots over Obama’s reprisals is the same as that of being struck by lightning three times in the same day.

Here are the other groups opposing Hagel’s nomination, according to ABC News and the New York Times:

• American Future Fund: American Future Fund is the Iowa astroturf organization, funded in part by the Wellspring Committee.
• Americans For a Strong Defense: This is a new front group. According to their website, two of their board members are Brian Hook and Mauricio Claver-Carone. Hook is a Bushie who served in the White House from 2003-2008, dealing with matters of Homeland Security, and then went to the Department of State to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from October, 2008 to January 20, 2009 when Barack Obama took over. Claver-Carone is an ardent anti-Castro advocate who sits on the board of Cuba Democracy Advocates, a non-profit organization which shares the goal of spreading democracy around the world, and in particular, to Cuba. It appears to be aligned philosophically with neocon goals.
• AIPAC: Well, not directly as far as anyone knows. But as this writer points out, they’ve got a former lobbyist roaming at large who is free to undertake whatever campaigns someone might want to finance. Bibi Netanyahu isn’t pleased, I’m sure, with the Hagel nomination. According to that article, AIPAC is fond of using “cutouts” (what we would call astroturf) to advance Bibi’s particular agenda wherever necessary.

Opposition to Chuck Hagel’s nomination is unprecedented. I believe that it is as likely to come from the US Chamber of Commerce as it is AIPAC, given that Hagel’s nomination will spell the beginning of the end of corporate defense complex dominance in favor of other industries. It shifts the center of thought around defense and its role from one of aggressor to one where the United States stops throwing its weight around the world and starts tending to other business. This does not please those who profit from perpetual war.

What I can say with a high degree of certainty, however, is that “Use Your Mandate” is neither liberal nor gay.

*Del Cielo is the name of Ronald Reagan’s Santa Barbara ranch.

WASHINGTON – January 29 – On Monday, Free Press filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission concerning AT&T’s request for the FCC to facilitate the transition to all-IP networks. If granted under the FCC’s current broadband classification framework, AT&T’s request would result in the complete removal of all regulatory oversight of our nation’s critical telecommunications infrastructure.

Free Press urged the Commission to first address the lingering questions about FCC authority over broadband transmission networks. This deliberation must take place before the agency even considers taking any action that would lead to the removal of all the consumer protections and competitive safeguards Congress enacted for our nation’s communications markets.

To read the comments go to: http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/resources/FP_Petition_to_Launch_Comments.pdf.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner made the following statement:

“The communications infrastructure that connects us to each other is a critical utility for all Americans. We welcome a dialogue about the appropriate regulatory approach a 21st-century network needs, but we must recognize that telecommunications regulations and the law they are based on exist to ensure interconnection, promote universal service and protect consumer rights.

“But make no mistake: AT&T doesn’t want a discussion about a reasonable regulatory framework. Rather, AT&T is asking the FCC to end all oversight of our nation’s communications markets. The company is trying to exploit an FCC-created legal loophole: AT&T previously convinced the Commission that the mere use of IP places a service outside the laws governing two-way communications networks. Thus the otherwise unremarkable progression of telecom technology from circuit to packet switching will now, under the FCC’s current framework, result in total deregulation.

“The Commission must confront the lingering and politically difficult questions concerning its authority over next-generation networks. If it doesn’t, American consumers will face increasing prices, accountability-free service disruptions, the loss of reliable emergency communications, second-class services in rural areas, declining competition and the end of the open Internet.”

The United States is in the midst of the most protracted unemployment crisis in modern history, and for vast segments of the population, the recession has never ended. Wages are still sinking; more than 20 million people are in need of full-time work. Yet, the national debate is fixated on fixing the debt rather than fixing the economy.

This is “austerity” economics, which demands cuts in government spending in the belief that this will reduce government deficits, even as it costs jobs and imposes hardships on people.

Mass unemployment, declining wages, and faltering growth suggests the United States has already suffered too much austerity, too soon. And yet the political debate is focused on how much more to impose. Washington imposed $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years in the 2011 “debt ceiling” deal. Washington stumbled past the year-end “fiscal cliff” with a deal that featured about $600 billion in tax hikes over ten years, including returning rates for the richest Americans back to Clinton era levels, and ending the payroll tax holiday, adding 2 percent to every working family’s payroll tax rate.

Now Congress has created an even more precarious fiscal peril to extort even greater cuts. Between now and the middle of May, we’ll hit the debt ceiling again, the automatic cut (sequester) of military and domestic budgets for the remainder of the year will kick in, and the temporary appropriations for government will expire. This sets up a new negotiation to forestall these ruinous calamities, now with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid directly targeted.

The leaders of both parties suggest that more deficit reduction is needed and that it would help the economy. Not surprisingly, polls suggest that most Americans believe that cutting spending will help the economy, not harm the recovery. The reality is that spending is not out of control, the deficit is already plummeting, and we should be focused on fixing the economy to make it work for working people, not on austerity driven by wrong-headed deficit hysteria.

Here’s how we can make the case against it.

Start with the struggles families are facing. The budget debate now underway in Washington, focused on “fixing the debt,” misses the point. Americans are still suffering record levels of long-term unemployment. Poverty has risen to a level unseen in generations. Inequality is at new extremes. Wages are at the lowest percentage of the economy on record, while corporate profits are at the highest. We should be focused on fixing our economy.

Challenge the austerity myth. And here’s the real deal. You can’t fix the economy by “fixing the debt.” Cutting spending now will only slow the recovery, put more people out of work — and as we have seen in Europe, end up adding to our debt burdens.

In fact, fixing the economy is the necessary first step in getting our books back in order. Our deficits are largely due to the recession, with the costs of unemployment and the lost revenue from the loss of jobs. In these conditions, the best deficit reduction program is to put people back to work.

Even the slow growth we’ve witnessed has begun to reduce our deficits as jobs have been created. Despite all the hysteria, deficits are down by 25% compared to the economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They are falling faster than anytime since the demobilization at the end of World War II. And our debt level is basically stabilized for the next decade. More austerity — whether balanced between taxes and spending as the president calls for or focused just on spending cuts as Republicans suggest — will only serve to slow growth, cost jobs, and impede the recovery needed to get our books back in shape.

Worse, the austerity debate is now focused on whacking at the basic pillars of family security — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The cuts under discussion — slowing the inflation adjustment for Social Security, raising the eligibility age for Medicare or the retirement age for Social Security – would harm the most vulnerable in our society.

Describe the way out. Fixing our economy requires a very different agenda than mindless cuts. We need to invest in areas vital to our future, and stop squandering resources on things we don’t need and can’t afford. End the wars abroad, bring our troops home, and invest the savings in rebuilding America — putting people to work while modernizing our decrepit infrastructure, from roads and rail to broadband and the electric grid.

End the subsidies and tax breaks to big oil companies and invest the resources in research and development to capture a lead in clean energy and the green industrial revolution sweeping the country.

Crack down on global tax havens, tax Wall Street speculation, tax investors at the same rate as workers, and use that income to provide every child with the opportunity to learn, from universal preschool to affordable college.

Lift the minimum wage, empower workers to gain a fair share of the profits they help to generate and curb perverse CEO compensation schemes that give them million-dollar incentives to ship jobs abroad.

And fix the sole source of our projected long-term debt problems — our broken health care system. Don’t cut benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, take on the insurance and drug company lobbies that have made our health care cost nearly twice what the rest of the industrial world pays,.

This is an excerpt from the latest edition of Smart Talk, a regular series of issue briefs on how to talk about the economic issues facing working-class people. Richard Eskow contributed to this post.

© 2012 Campaign for America’s Future

Robert L. Borosage is the founder and president of the Institute for America’s Future and co-director of its sister organization, the Campaign for America’s Future.

WASHINGTON – January 29 – President Obama is scheduled to address immigration policy today at a speech in Las Vegas.

JEFF BIGGERS, [email]
Biggers is author of State Out of the Union: Arizona and the Final Showdown Over the American Dream. He stresses the need to look at “border security realities, including the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border and the largely forgotten impact – including thousands of migrant deaths – from Operation Gatekeeper passed by President Bill Clinton nearly 20 years ago.” See a recent review of his book in the El Paso Times: “Taking back Arizona: Author casts state’s politics as community vs. carpetbaggers.”

MAEGAN ORTIZ, [email], @mamitamala
Ortiz is publisher of VivirLatino. She recently wrote the piece on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” titled “It’s Like #CIR All Over Again,” which states: “There is so much hype about what comprehensive immigration reform could be that the rhetoric about what may happen is really an industry on it’s own. …Some are anxious for a real sign that President Obama is serious about reform. His tenure in office has brought increased funding for enforcement and record deportation numbers.”

Most recently, she wrote “Blueprint for a Road that Already Is,” which states: “And they’re off! ‘The Road to Immigration Reform Starts Today!’ announced one organizational email. They are talking about a set of immigration reform principles – not an actual bill – that was released today by a bi-partisan group of eight senators. … What’s interesting about all the congratulatory messages that ask people to support immigration reform is that they lack an actual analysis of what is in the principles. Since the principles include ‘a pathway to citizenship,’ it’s assumed to be good enough.” Ortiz lists nine points that are skewing the discussion:

1: The border is “secure” so let’s stop pouring money into agencies and organizations that put more boots on the ground and enforcement technology.

2: Being able to live in the United States “with papers” shouldn’t be based on some merit system that awards the “smart” immigrants. If we really want to award success then we need to look at how the educational system in the U.S. perpetuates cycles of poverty and underachievement, filtering a limited amount of “success stories.”

3: Employment verification systems like E-Verify have proven themselves flawed and harmful to the labor market so stop the push to make this mandatory. … We will not accept the introduction of a biometric identification card which has been the subtext for much of … the discussion in years past.

4: We don’t want a guest worker program. We want fair labor standards for farmworkers. How is the proposed Agricultural Worker Program different from H-2A visa program already in place?

5. This get-to-the-back-of-the-line language means people who are already in the United State will have to wait how long before they can get papers? Ten years? Twenty years? Is this the beginning of an expanded DACA-like [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] program that will allow people to stay in the U.S. in a limbo status indefinitely? How do immigration court backlogs figure into this line?

6: Who will determine what makes an immigrant “seriously criminal” or a threat to national security and thus ineligible for citizenship and targeted for deportation?

7. Limits on accessing federal public benefits for “lawful probationary immigrants” helps to perpetuate poverty and poor health outcomes in immigrant communities. This isn’t being “tough” – this is punishment.

8: Having an English language requirement in order to earn a green card is reminiscent of Jim Crow era literacy laws. There is already a proficiency requirement to become a naturalized citizenship. Making it a requirement for permanent residency has one intention, to limit the amount of people eligible.

9: Creating a fast track to citizenship for DREAMers and some agricultural workers while leaving others to languish in undefined lines will serve to further separate families who have mixed statuses and mixed immigration histories. No to a hierarchy of applicants.

WASHINGTON – January 29 – A Senate panel today examined a “major crisis” in primary health care at a time when 30 million more patients will soon get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and worsen an already acute doctor shortage.

One in five Americans today live in areas where they do not have adequate access to primary care due to a shortage of providers, according to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chairman of the Senate Primary Care and Aging Subcommittee.

“In our country today we are spending almost twice as much per capita on health care as any other major country yet our health outcomes in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and disease prevention are not particularly good,” Sanders said. “One of the reasons for that is that we have a major crisis regarding primary health care access which results in lower quality health care for our people and greater expenditures.”

According to a report released at the hearing, as many as 45,000 people die each year because they do not have health insurance and do not get to a doctor on time. A significant reason for the lack of access to care is that less than one-third of all doctors in America today practice primary care, down for half of all physicians 50 years ago. The problem is likely to get worse because many primary care doctors are nearing retirement and fewer and fewer medical students are interested in becoming family practitioners.

Dr. Claudia M. Fegan, the chief medical officer at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, told the subcommittee she sees evidence every day of patients without primary doctors. “Every single day, people without a physician line up across the street from our hospital to be seen in our walk-in clinic … They hope to be one of the lucky ones who will be given a physician of their very own, who will get to know them and take care of them and be available when they have a problem or question, someone to help them meet their medical needs, someone to help them navigate our complicated health care system to get what they need.”

Another witness, Princeton economist Uwe E. Reinhardt, said Medicare and Medicaid payments should be realigned to address the acute shortage of primary care physicians.

Tess Kuenning, executive director of the Montpelier, Vt.-based Bi-State Primary Care Association, testified that community health centers could provide affordable care for more patients. The 2010 health care law included a Sanders provision that authorized $11 billion to double the number of patients cared for at health centers. Funds needed to reach that goal, however, have not been committed.

In Vermont, Kuenning said, more than 110,000 patients receive care at one of eight community health centers throughout the state. With additional funding, she added, three more communities “are fully poised to apply for competitive federal funding to bring medical, dental and behavioral health services to communities in need.”

The US Treasury Department has provided “excessive” pay for executives tied to the bailed-out corporations rescued from the financial crisis, a new report shows.

The Office of the Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) released a report on Monday accusing the Treasury Department for approving 18 executive pay raises and other extravagant packages to bailed-out companies including General Motors, Ally Financial and AIG.

The executives “continue to rake in Treasury-approved multimillion-dollar pay packages that often exceed guidelines,” according to the statement released by Special Inspector General Christy Romero’s office.

The watchdog criticized the government agency for pushing through pay packages worth more than USD 5 million, while also allowing extra pay packages worth over USD 3 million for executives at Ally Financial “despite knowing that the subsidiary was planning to file for bankruptcy” weeks later.

Experts recommend that the government monitor executive salaries and slash pay based on performance to prevent a worsening of the current financial crisis.

“One lesson of this financial crisis is that regulators should take an active role in monitoring and regulating factors that could contribute to another financial crisis, including executive compensation that encourages excessive risk-taking,” Romero concluded.

The report also revealed that General Motors has requested Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to remove executive pay restrictions for the automaker.

This comes as Geithner formally notified Congress last month that the country has reached its USD 16.4 trillion debt ceiling, with the National Debt continuing to increase at an average rate of USD 3.83 billion per day since September 28, 2007.

The debate over the debt limit resembles the disagreement between the Democrats and the Republicans over the “fiscal cliff,” where an agreement was finally reached in the last few hours of the January 1 deadline.

The financial disputes have left rival American political leaders and lawmakers with no definitive strategy as to how to deal with what is likely to emerge as a persisting bitter clash over the country’s economic crisis.

GMA/PKH

WASHINGTON – January 29 – In anticipation of the Super Bowl, today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released its latest report, Defensive Game, which examines patterns in lobbying spending by both the National Football League (NFL) and the National Football League Players’ Association (NFLPA). CREW’s research shows that over the past five years, the NFL has been on the defensive, beefing up its lobbying team and creating its first political action committee (PAC) in light of increased congressional interest in player safety, drug testing, and labor issues.

Read more about Defensive Game or download the full report

In 2012, the NFL spent $1.14 million on federal lobbying, a more than five-fold increase of what it spent a decade ago. The NFLPA, which spends far less on lobbying, saw its spending triple from $40,000 in 2002 to $120,000 in 2012.

“With increasing scrutiny and coverage of the lasting, debilitating effects football careers can have on players’ health, the NFL has gone into damage control mode – pumping up its lobbying spending and donations to influential members of Congress,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan.

Gridiron-PAC, formed by the NFL in 2008, did not start making donations until the 2010 election cycle, when labor negotiations with the NFLPA grew tense and Congress began to express interest in the NFL’s response to concussions and head trauma. During the 2012 election cycle, the PAC contributed $838,000 to federal candidates, PACs, and party committees – an increase of 26 percent from the 2010 election cycle.

The top recipients of donations from the PAC have mostly been a bipartisan group of congressional leadership and key members on committees exercising jurisdiction over NFL issues. For instance, Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), the chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee, received $30,000 over the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. In July 2012, Rep. Upton and three other committee leaders wrote to the NFL and the NFLPA expressing concern about whether a comprehensive testing program for human growth hormone would be in place prior to the start of the 2012 season. Three weeks before the letter was sent, Rep. Upton’s campaign committee accepted a $5,000 contribution from Gridiron-PAC.

“Given the NFL’s estimated $9 billion in annual revenue, both sides can clearly afford to maintain their influence in Washington,” continued Ms. Sloan. “While the league is dealing with numerous challenges off the gridiron – including a renewed interest in drug testing – it is worth keeping an eye on how the billionaire owners and millionaire players use their deep pockets to influence Congress.”

Capital used to sell us visions of tomorrow. At the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, corporations showcased new technologies: nylon, air conditioning, fluorescent lamps, the ever-impressive View-Master. But more than just products, an ideal of middle-class leisure and abundance was offered to those weary from economic depression and the prospect of European war.Although he did not explicitly use the phrase, Karl Marx is credited with explaining the ‘creative destruction’ of capitalism. (Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis)

The Futurama ride even took attendees through miniature versions of transformed landscapes, depicting new highways and development projects: the world of the future. It was a visceral attempt to renew faith in capitalism.

In the wake of the second world war, some of this vision became a reality. Capitalism thrived and, though uneven, progress was made by American workers. With pressure from below, the state was wielded by reformers, not smashed, and class compromise, not just class struggle, fostered economic growth and shared prosperity previously unimaginable.

Exploitation and oppression didn’t go away, but the system seemed not only powerful and dynamic, but reconcilable with democratic ideals. The progress, however, was fleeting. Social democracy faced the structural crisis in the 1970s that Michal Kalecki, author of The Political Aspects of Full Employment, predicted decades earlier. High employment rates and welfare state protections didn’t buy off workers, it encouraged militant wage demands. Capitalists kept up when times were good, but with stagflation — the intersection of poor growth and rising inflation — and the Opec embargo, a crisis of profitability ensued.

An emergent neoliberalism did curb inflation and restore profits, but only through a vicious offensive against the working class. There were pitched battles waged in defense of the welfare state, but our era has largely been one of deradicalization and political acquiescence. Since then, real wages have stagnated, debt soared, and the prospects for a new generation, still wedded to a vision of the old social-democratic compact, are bleak.

The 1990s technological boom brought about talk of a light and adaptive “new economy”, something to replace the old Fordist workplace. But it was a far cry from the future promised at the 1939 World’s Fair.

The 2008 recession shattered those dreams, anyway. Capital, free of threats from below, grew decadent, wild, and speculative.

For many in my generation, the ideological underpinnings of capitalism have been undermined. That a higher percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 have a more favorable opinion of socialism than capitalism at least signals that the cold war era conflation of socialism with Stalinism no longer holds sway.

At an intellectual level, the same is true. Marxists have gained a measure of mainstream exposure: Foreign Policy turned to Leo Panitch, not Larry Summers, to explain the recent economic crisis; and thinkers like David Harvey have enjoyed late career renaissances. The wider recognition of thought “left of liberalism” — of which the journal I edit, Jacobin, is a part — isn’t just the result of the loss of faith in mainstream alternatives, but rather, the ability of radicals to ask deeper structural questions and place new developments in historical context.

Now, even celebrated liberal Paul Krugman has been invoking ideas long relegated to the margins of American life. When thinking about automation and the future of labor, he worries that “it has echoes of old-fashioned Marxism — which shouldn’t be a reason to ignore facts, but too often is.” But a resurgent left has more than worries, they have ideas: about the reduction of working time, the decommodification of labor, and the ways in which advances in production can make life better, not more miserable.

This is where what’s evolving, however awkwardly, into the 21st-century socialist intellectualism shows its strengths: a willingness to present a vision for the future, something deeper than mere critique. But intellectual shifts don’t mean much by themselves.

A survey of the political landscape in America, despite Occupy’s emergence in 2011, is bleak. The labor movement has shown some signs of life, especially among public sector workers combating austerity, but these are at best rearguard, defensive struggles. Unionization rates continue to decline, and apathy, not revolutionary fervor, reigns.

Marxism in America needs to be more than an intellectual tool for mainstream commentators befuddled by our changing world. It needs to be a political tool to change that world. Spoken, not just written, for mass consumption, peddling a vision of leisure, abundance, and democracy even more real than what the capitalism’s prophets offered in 1939. A socialist Disneyland: inspiration after the .

Tel Aviv has boycotted a UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) review, which is taking place in the Swiss city of Geneva to examine Israel’s violations of Palestinians’ rights.

The UNHRC is reviewing Israel’s human rights records on Tuesday as part of the Universal Periodic Review process. Tel Aviv is not a member of the Council but it is required to undergo UPR like all UN members.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR), which is held once every four years, was established by the UN General Assembly in 2006 to examine human rights records of the United Nations’ members.

Israel severed all ties with the Council in March 2012 after the UNHRC adopted a resolution condemning Tel Aviv’s announcement of new settlement homes and demanded a reversal of the settlement policy.

This is the first time, since the reviews began, that a member under evaluation is absent in the meeting.

A group of human rights organizations have already slammed Tel Aviv’s announcement that it would shun the meeting, saying the decision shows Israel is fearful of a rigorous study of its violations of international law.

More than half a million Israelis live in over 120 illegal settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem) in 1967.

The UN and most countries regard the Israeli settlements as illegal because the territories were captured by Israel in a war in 1967 and are hence subject to the Geneva Conventions, which forbid construction on occupied lands.

PG/SS

A regular feature back in 2010 when we had our first taste of global currency warfare as Brazil’s finance minister accurately summarized when he said “a currency war has broken out” (and yes: currency war existed then, and especially in the 1930s which led to the Great Depression, long before the recent eponymous book came out desperate to take credit for this simplistic concept) were the global FX heatmaps which showed how any given currency is doing on any given day. Since currency warfare is now back and more violent than at any time in the past 80 years, it only makes sense to bring back a long-time reader favorite: the currency warfare heatmaps which show who, on any given day, is winning and losing, the global race to debase and in the process beggar all globalized and SWIFT-interlinked neighbors. But don’t forget: in a relativistic fiat world, nobody can actually win the global race to debase. Well, not nobody: gold (and other precious metals) can, assuming it is not confiscated as it was the last time the US ended the global currency war with a 50%+ devaluation of the USD relative to gold… and promptly confiscated all gold.

Legend for the charts below for any given currency:

• red indicates a given country/insolvent monetary union is winning the FX debasement war relative to any given currency;
• green indicates it is losing it.

Below are the currency warfare charts for today:

USD – doing solidly well, trouncing Brazil, South Africa, India, Canada and Russia showing Europe who is boss. The only clear winners against King Dollar: tiny Iceland.

EUR – not too shabby either, mauling Brazil, South Africa and landlocked Switzerland, but retreating against the US, China, Argentina, and of course Iceland.

JPY – today’s clear winner, except again for Iceland which just like in Risk, remains a key strategic hotspot for anyone hell bent on destroying their currency. 

GBP – the biggest loser today, is this once powerful colonial nation, whose currency has appreciated against most of the world.

But one day is tactics. One year is strategy. Here is what the fallout of currency warfare over the past year looks like. The undisputed winner of the past year’s currency nuke out is…

JPY – That’s right: the Japanese Yen is the winner by a mile from all the coordinated currency intervention in the past year: not one country has managed to destroy its currency nearly by as much. The only problem now is if China will actually agree to import any of Japan’s products and services any time soon, as not even a JPY at 0.00 will help much unless this key export market remains shut over that whole island fiasco.

Since every clear winner needs a clear loser, here it is:

EUR – the European currency has soared in the past year, and in the process has made life for both its export industry and its current account next to impossible. One can only hope the ECB can reponzify as much capital into the troubled nations to offset the increasing trade isolation of the insolvent continent, which will soon have to figure out a way to boost German exports or else. 

Curiously, the USD is doing only so-so despite the fact that it has been long priced in that Bernanke will print some $1+ trillion in 2013, and another $1 trillion in 2014, and so on.

As for Cable, well, Mark Carney has yet to introduce the BOE to just how Goldman suicides your currency:

Amid growing concern of yet another liquidity-fueled real estate bubble in the UAE (real estate firms up 92% in the last year in USD terms), the government (via bank regulations) have drastically restricted the proportion of loans that can be provided to foreign investors. However, this has had absolutely no impact as Bloomberg reports that increasingly ‘suitcases of cash’ are being used to pay for the property. With relatively lax capital controls ‘cash is king’ as the efforts of the UAE central bank to cap speculation in real estate (which saw property prices crash 65% from their peak in 2009) are failing as one local realtor noted “[the market] is increasingly dominated by cash buyers,” and UAE real estate stocks are up over 20% in the last month alone. From Russian diamond dealers to Iranian speculators, Morgan Stanley notes that “property prices … have continued to rise because of ample liquidity given negative real interest rates and nominal mortgage rates below rental yields,” as the world’s central banks do what they do best – blow bubbles in unintended places.

UAE Real Eatate Stock Index are up 92% (in USD terms) in the last year (after falling 65% from its peak in 2009…

Charts: Bloomberg

Britain has expressed readiness to send over 300 military personnel to Mali and West Africa to boost support for the French-led war on the African country.

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond said on Tuesday that London has offered to deploy as many as 40 personnel for a European Union training mission in Mali.

The minister further highlighted that the British government is ready to deploy up to 200 military personnel for a separate training force in neighboring English-speaking West African countries.

This comes as some 20 British personnel have already been sent to operate a Royal Air Force C-17 cargo aircraft that supports the French-led war in Mali. In addition, 70 British personnel are sent to Senegal to operate a Sentinel surveillance plane.

Also on Tuesday the leaders of African nations as well as representatives from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Japan attended an international donors’ conference in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa to raise funds for the French war in Mali.

Some Western states and their allies pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Mali’s ruling junta.

The conference, however, did not provide the clear figure of the required finance for the Malian army in its combat against the country’s fighters.

Meanwhile British Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman said London has offered to transport French vehicles and equipment from France via using a British roll-on roll-off ferry.

Britain has already sent two transport planes and a high-altitude surveillance aircraft to aid the French war in Mali, where some 3,000 French forces have so far been deployed.

France launched the war on January 11 under the pretext of halting the advance of the fighters in the African country.

Meanwhile, reports said that French-led forces have taken control of the access points to the Malian desert town of Timbuktu on Monday as they continued advancing further across the north of the country.

Thousands of people in Mali have been forced to flee their homes amid the French war.

MR/PKH

Iran Majlis (parliament) Speaker Ali Larijani says the Iraqi nation will foil conspiracies by practicing national unity and avoiding political disputes.

“The vigilant and revolutionary people of Iraq will neutralize these plots [hatched by enemies] by steering clear of differences,” Larijani said in a meeting with the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq Ammar al-Hakim in Tehran on Tuesday.

Larijani stressed the importance of strengthened unity among Iraqi tribes and ethnic groups.

He further lauded Tehran-Baghdad brotherly and friendly relations and expressed the Islamic Republic’s willingness to enhance cooperation with its neighbor.

Hakim, for his part, briefed Larijani on the latest developments in Iraq, and said the enemies’ plots will fail due to the finesse of Iraqi officials and the vigilance of Iraqi people.

Iraq has been the scene of anti-government demonstrations since December 23, 2012, when the bodyguards of Finance Minister Rafie al-Issawi were arrested on terrorism-related charges.

The demonstrators allege that the arrests were made on sectarian grounds and demand an end to anti-terrorism laws. However, Baghdad says it is up to the parliament to decide on abolishing those laws.

YH/KA/SS

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Washington, DC — Republicans shouldn’t worry that President Obama is trying to destroy the GOP. Why would he bother? The party’s leaders are doing a pretty good job of it themselves.

As they try to understand why the party lost an election it was confident of winning — and why it keeps losing budget showdowns in Congress — Republican grandees are asking the wrong questions. Predictably, they are coming up with the wrong answers.

They prefer to focus on flawed tactics and ineffectual “messaging” rather than confront the essential problem, which is that voters don’t much care for the policies the GOP espouses.

In post-debacle speeches and interviews, Republicans are sounding — and there’s no kind way to put this — paranoid and delusional. House Speaker John Boehner said in a speech to the Ripon Society that the Obama administration is trying to “annihilate the Republican Party.” Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the party’s fiscal guru and failed vice presidential candidate, claimed Sunday on “Meet the Press” that Obama seeks “political conquest” of the GOP.

It is no secret that Obama is trying to advance a progressive agenda. He promised as much in his campaign speeches. Were Republicans not listening? Did they think he was just joshing?

In five of the last six presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote. Republicans have done well at the state level, and through redistricting have made their majority in the House difficult to dislodge. But it’s not possible to lead the country from the speaker’s chair, as Boehner can attest. To have a chance at effecting transformative change, you have to win the White House.

And to win the White House, you have to convince voters that the policies you seek to enact are the right ones. This is what the GOP doesn’t seem to understand.

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, one of the GOP’s brightest young stars, said in a much-anticipated speech at the party’s winter meeting last week. “We’ve got to stop insulting the intelligence of voters. We need to trust the smarts of the American people.”

That’s all well and good. But Jindal also warned that the party should not “moderate, equivocate or otherwise change our principles” on issues such as abortion, gay marriage, “government growth” and “higher taxes.”

On abortion, there is an uneasy consensus that the procedure should be legal but uncommon; the GOP wants to make abortion illegal, and the party’s loudest voices on the issue do not even favor exceptions for incest or rape. On gay marriage, public opinion is shifting dramatically toward acceptance; the Republican Party is adamantly opposed. On the size of government, Americans philosophically favor “small” — but, as a practical matter, demand services and programs that can only be delivered by “big.” And on taxes, voters agreed with Obama that the wealthy could and should pay a bit more.

“We must reject the notion that demography is destiny, the pathetic and simplistic notion that skin pigmentation dictates voter behavior,” Jindal said. These are noble and stirring words. But the GOP is insane if it does not at least ask why 93 percent of African-Americans, 71 percent of Latinos and 73 percent of Asian-Americans voted for Obama over Mitt Romney.

If minority voters continue to favor the Democratic Party to this extent, then demography will indeed prove to be destiny. What would be simplistic is to attribute the disparity to the fact that Obama is the first black president, or the fact that Republicans have been perceived as so unsympathetic on issues concerning immigration. If they want to attract minority support, Republicans will have to take into account what these voters believe on a range of issues, from the proper relationship between government and the individual to the proper role of the United States in a rapidly changing world.

I have to wonder if the GOP is even getting the tactics-and-messaging part right. Michael Steele (now an MSNBC colleague of mine) served as party chairman when Republicans won a sweeping victory in 2010; he was promptly fired. Reince Priebus presided over the 2012 disaster; last week, he was rewarded with a new term as chairman.

But no matter who’s in charge, the GOP will have a tough time winning national elections until it has a better understanding of the nation. If Boehner is worried about being shoved “into the dustbin of history,” what he and other Republicans need to do is put down the broom.

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has actively lobbied against state plans to implement a national popular vote for president, urging state legislators to preserve the Electoral College — which GOP legislators are now trying to rig to ensure the the next president is a Republican. In late 2011, ALEC officially changed its policy on the Electoral College to implicitly support allocating electoral votes by congressional district.

ALEC Recently Shifted Policy on Electoral College

In December 2011, ALEC reconfirmed its support for the Electoral College, but with one tweak — official ALEC policy no longer supports allocating electoral votes based on the winner of a state’s popular vote for president.

Republican leaders, including Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus, have been criticized for recent proposals to allocate electoral votes according to the victor in each Congressional district, rather than according to the winner-take-all system. This change would significantly benefit the GOP’s presidential chances, in part because Republicans were able to re-draw Congressional districts to favor their party after the 2010 elections.

In Virginia, where the Republican-led legislature has taken the first step toward reallocating the state’s electoral votes, Mitt Romney would have garnered nine of Virginia’s electoral votes in 2012, and Obama would have won four — despite Obama beating Romney by 150,000 votes and four percentage points in the state as a whole.

The proposals come on the heels of a 2011-2012 legislative term where Republicans proposed bills to twist the democratic system for partisan gain through restrictive voter ID and registration requirements, many of which can be traced back to ALEC “model” bills.

ALEC Has Pushed Back on National Popular Vote

Even without the proposed rigging by GOP leaders, the Electoral College is an imperfect system. The winner of the national popular vote can still lose the presidential election, which has occurred four times in American history (three times over a century ago, and most recently in 2000 after the Supreme Court intervened to put George W. Bush in the White House). Under the Electoral College, presidential campaigns focus their energies on a handful of swing states and largely ignore the rest of the country, particularly those states where a majority consistently supports one party. Votes for president don’t really count from Republicans in blue states like California and Democrats in red states like Texas.

The GOP’s recently-proposed changes to the Electoral College make a bad system worse, further limiting the number of voters who actually matter in presidential elections. But a bipartisan movement has been underway in recent years to replace the Electoral College’s indirect election of the president with a system where the candidate who gets the most votes in all 50 states wins the presidency.

The bipartisan organization National Popular Vote (NPV) has been promoting an interstate compact where states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the nationwide popular vote, rather than according to votes within the state. Choosing the president by way of the Electoral College is part of the U.S. Constitution, but Article II leaves it up to state legislatures to decide how to allocate electors. Such an agreement between states would help create a more level playing field, particularly when compared to the Republican effort to split Electoral College votes in blue states but continue the “winner-take-all” method in red states.

“Our goal is to make sure every voter in every state matters equally,” says Pat Rosenstiel, a Senior Consultant to NPV. Rosenstiel, who is a Republican, says that “four out of five voters are on the sidelines” under the current system, where presidential elections are decided by just a few swing states like Ohio or Florida.

Eight states and the District of Columbia have passed national popular vote compact legislation into law. A national popular vote would take effect if the legislation is enacted by enough states to constitute a majority of electors (270 out of the country’s 538 electoral votes), and these nine enactments count for 132 electoral votes, bringing NPV nearly halfway to its goal of 270.

ALEC has pushed back hard against this effort. The group has adopted model resolutions in opposition to the national popular vote and in favor of the Electoral College, has repeatedly rejected appeals from NPV to support its legislation, and has actively lobbied legislators in opposition to the national popular vote interstate compact.

ALEC Lobbied Legislators to Defeat NPV

In 2007, Maryland was the first state in the country to adopt national popular vote legislation. That year, ALEC adopted its “Resolution in Opposition to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” and its“Resolution in Support of the Electoral College.”

“[T]he State of [insert state] shall defeat any legislation that creates a multi-state compact for the purpose of dismantling its current Electoral College system,” the latter ALEC document provides.

NPV paid thousands of dollars to join ALEC in 2008 and encourage ALEC legislators to drop their opposition to national popular vote legislation. The group was represented at ALEC meetings by former California Sen. Ray Haynes, a Republican who was the ALEC National Chairman in 2000, as well as other representatives. But according to minutes from ALEC meetings, NPV has been repeatedly rebuffed in their efforts.

Despite ALEC’s opposition, national popular vote legislation has nonetheless advanced in the states with bipartisan support. In 2008, New Jersey, Illinois, and Hawaii enacted legislation, followed by Washington in 2009 and both Massachussetts and Washington, D.C., in 2010. Legislation was enacted in California and Vermont in 2011 and proposed in multiple states that year.

ALEC spent considerable energy lobbying legislators in opposition to these bills.

“Under the National Popular Vote system, a candidate could emerge victorious from a multi-party race for president, having won only a majority of votes in one region of the country,” reads an ‘issue alert’ sent by ALEC to legislators in Louisiana when it was considering NPV legislation. “This interstate compact is an end-run around the Constitution … Louisiana should stick with its current system and reject the interstate compact.”

Identical “issue alerts” were sent to legislators in states like Alaska, Arizona, California, Connecticut,Delaware, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Utah, Vermont, and West Virginia.

ALEC has consistently told the IRS that it does “zero” lobbying but these “issue alerts” tell another story. These and other “issue alerts” provided support for an IRS complaint filed by Common Cause alleging ALEC actively lobbies and has misled in its IRS filings.

ALEC Change to Resolution Opened Door for Electoral Rigging

In December 2011, at the final meeting of the “Public Safety and Elections Task Force” (before it was allegedly disbanded under public pressure after CMD connected ALEC to “Stand Your Ground” laws and voter ID), NPV representative Ray Haynes proposed an overhaul of the 2007 “Resolution in Support of the Electoral College” to replace the provisions opposing the national popular vote with language supporting it.

The task force’s private and public sector members — which included state legislators and lobbyists for the NRA and other groups — rejected all of his changes but one. Those ALEC legislators and corporate representatives amended the 2007 “Resolution in Support of the Electoral College” to eliminate this one line:

WHEREAS, the current Electoral College system ensures that (insert state)’s electoral votes are awarded based on how the majority of the State’s citizens vote;

This deletion effectively changed ALEC’s policy to sanction electoral votes being allocated based on Congressional district, rather than on the winner-take-all basis that has been the practice for decades.

At the time, the issue had already been placed on the political agenda. Legislators in Pennsylvania andWisconsin proposed awarding electoral votes by Congressional district in 2011 (months before the ALEC meeting), but the bills did not pass.

In 2013, ALEC members and their fellow Republicans in those states and others are again taking up proposals to rig the already-broken Electoral College in their favor — and with the 2012 “Resolution in Support of the Electoral College” amendments, official ALEC policy implicitly supports it.

Republicans are not discussing changes to electoral allocation in solidly red states, but only in states like Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan — all states where a majority of residents voted for President Obama, but which are controlled by Republicans at the state level and whose congressional maps were recently gerrymandered to benefit the GOP. RNC Chair Priebus has said explicitly that the plan is only intended for “states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red.” If the proposed changes for these four states had been in place during the 2012 election, Mitt Romney would have received 35 electoral votes and Obama just 23, despite Obama winning the popular vote in each state (the proposal in Virginia would allocate all electoral votes according to Congressional district, but in the other states two votes would go to the statewide winner).

Making these changes to how electoral votes are allocated “takes a bad system and makes it worse,” says NPV’s Rosenstiel. By shifting the fight for electoral votes from just a few swing states to just a few contested districts, “It concentrates power in the hands of even fewer voters, not more.”

As for NPV and ALEC, Rosenstiel says, “our membership with ALEC has run its course.”

Nearly 50,000 children who live abroad are receiving benefits claimed by immigrant families living in Britain, figures have revealed.

Just under 30,000 families are claiming child benefits and tax credit for offspring who live outside the UK but within the European Union, as well as Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.

Poland is home to the highest number of children in the region who are receiving benefits claimed in the UK with more than half the total, 25,659, receiving welfare.

The figures were disclosed by Treasury minister Sajid Javid in a written answer to Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee.

Vaz said: “I am very surprised at this figure. Most people would consider it wrong for people to receive child benefit when the children are living abroad permanently.”

• Number of ongoing child benefit awards and number of children receiving ongoing awards as at December 31 2012

1. Poland – 15,499/25,659
2. Republic of Ireland – 1,281/2,609
3. Lithuania – 1,276/1,772
4. Slovakia – 1,083/1,881
5. France – 1,080/2,003
6. Latvia – 853/1,117
7. Spain – 756/1,275
8. Germany – 366/641
9. Portugal – 239/364
10. Netherlands – 192/379
11. Romania – 196/328
12. Italy – 193/330
13. Czech Republic – 176/282
14. Bulgaria – 174/238
15. Belgium – 138/274
16. Switzerland – 122/238
17. Hungary – 132/203
18. Sweden – 66/122
19. Cyprus – 53/80
20. Greece – 51/76
21. Estonia – 43/63
22. Austria – 29/47
23. Denmark – 20/35
24. Norway – 14/65
25. Finland – 16/30
26. Malta – 14/21
27. Luxembourg – 10/21
28. Slovenia – 7/13
29. Iceland – 3/5

On December 31 there were 24,082 ongoing child benefit awards in respect of 40,171 children living in the European Economic Area, Javid revealed.

There were also 4,011 ongoing child tax credit awards claimed in respect of 6,838 children.

Parents can claim child benefits of £20.30 a week for their eldest child and £13.40 a week for each of their other children, while child tax credit is worth at least £545 a year.

The data will add to concerns about the impact of an expected wave of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria when temporary controls lapse at the end of the year.

The Government has refused to give an estimate of the numbers of people who might move to Britain after gaining the right to live and work in the UK from the end of December.

But campaigners Migration Watch UK have predicted that up to 250,000 Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants – equal to the population of Newcastle – could come to Britain within five years.

Javid said: “The main purpose of child benefit and the child tax credit is to support families in the UK. Consequently, the rules for these benefits generally do not provide for them to be paid in respect of children who live abroad.”

However, Javid said child benefit and child tax credit are family benefits which are protected by European Commission regulations that cover the social security rights of nationals of all EEA member states.

Around 7.5 million families are currently claiming child benefit for around 13 million children and roughly 5.2 million families are receiving child tax credit for almost 9.3 million children.

Transcanada, the multinational giant behind the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, has followed a new corporate strategy by filing crushing lawsuits against individual activists and financially vulnerable organizations that have tried to halt to the construction of the controversial project.

(Photo: Tar Sands Blockade) Despite the repressive tactics designed to censor opposition and intimidate others from joining such activities, those targeted vow to continue the fight to protect “their homes and futures from toxic tar sands.”

The suit’s defendants, which included several environmental groups including anti-pipeline coalition Tar Sands Blockade and 19 individual protesters, “were threatened with losing their homes and life’s savings if the lawsuit went forward,” Tar Sands Blockade said a press statement.

Kevin Gosztola of FireDogLake explains:

The suit brought was what is known as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP). Such lawsuits enable fascism by providing a mechanism for a corporation to go after individuals or groups engaged in protest or freedom of speech. They are often used against people who lack resources or cannot afford to pay the legal expenses necessary to stand up to a corporation in court.

Despite the legal setback, members of Tar Sands Blockade vowed to keep fighting. 

“TransCanada is dead wrong if they think a civil lawsuit against a handful of Texans is going to stop a grassroots civil disobedience movement,” said spokesperson and defendant Ramsey Sprague. “This is nothing more than another example of TransCanada repressing dissent and bullying Texans who are defending their homes and futures from toxic tar sands.”

Tammie Carson, another target of the lawsuit and grandmother from Arlington, TX, said she took the action to protect her grandkids’ future. “I couldn’t sit idly by and watch as a multinational corporate bully abused eminent domain to build a dirty and dangerous tar sands pipeline right through Texans’ backyards,” she said. “I had no choice but to settle or lose my home and everything I’ve worked for my entire life.”

Citing one court’s opinion of the SLAPP lawsuit, the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC) writes, “Short of a gun to the head, a greater threat to First Amendment expression can scarcely be imagined.”

In reaction to the settlement, Lauren Regan, veteran attorney with CLDC who helped coordinate legal representation for the activists, said:

This is a David versus Goliath situation, where an unethical, transnational corporation is using its weight to crush First Amendment rights of people speaking out and resisting the irreparable destruction that will result from construction of this highly controversial XL Pipeline…But the resistance to the pipeline is growing, not shrinking; it’s coming from everywhere. This is a national and global issue that will effect us all.

Lawyers from the CLDC represented the Tar Sands Blockade, Rising Tide North America and Rising Tide North Texas as well as the other targeted individuals. As part of the settlement, the activists agreed to no longer trespass or cause damage to Keystone XL property throughout the pipeline’s entire southern leg, including any demonstrations “aimed at interfering with pipeline construction,” the Toronto Star reports.

However, as Gosztola adds, “what it does not do is stop individuals unknown to TransCanada and groups other than Tar Sands Blockade or Rising Tide chapters from engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience or disruptive activity.”

[This essay will appear in the next issue of Jacobin. It is posted at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of that magazine, and re-posted at Common Dreams with subsequent permission.]

Shakespeare’s Polonius offered this classic advice to his son: “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Many of our nation’s Founding Fathers emphatically saw it otherwise. They often lived by the maxim: always a borrower, never a lender be. As tobacco and rice planters, slave traders, and merchants, as well as land and currency speculators, they depended upon long lines of credit to finance their livelihoods and splendid ways of life. So, too, in those days, did shopkeepers, tradesmen, artisans, and farmers, as well as casual laborers and sailors. Without debt, the seedlings of a commercial economy could never have grown to maturity.

Ben Franklin, however, was wary on the subject. “Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt” was his warning, and even now his cautionary words carry great moral weight. We worry about debt, yet we can’t live without it.

Debt remains, as it long has been, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of capitalism. For a small minority, it’s a blessing; for others a curse. For some the moral burden of carrying debt is a heavy one, and no one lets them forget it. For privileged others, debt bears no moral baggage at all, presents itself as an opportunity to prosper, and if things go wrong can be dumped without a qualm.

Those who view debt with a smiley face as the royal road to wealth accumulation and tend to be forgiven if their default is large enough almost invariably come from the top rungs of the economic hierarchy. Then there are the rest of us, who get scolded for our impecunious ways, foreclosed upon and dispossessed, leaving behind scars that never fade away and wounds that disable our futures. 

Think of this upstairs-downstairs class calculus as the politics of debt. British economist John Maynard Keynes put it like this: “If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.”

After months of an impending “debtpocalypse,” the dreaded “debt ceiling,” and the “fiscal cliff,” Americans remain preoccupied with debt, public and private. Austerity is what we’re promised for our sins. Millions are drowning, or have already drowned, in a sea of debt — mortgages gone bad, student loans that may never be paid off, spiraling credit card bills, car loans, payday loans, and a menagerie of new-fangled financial mechanisms cooked up by the country’s “financial engineers” to milk what’s left of the American standard of living. 

The world economy almost came apart in 2007-2008, and still may do so under the whale-sized carcass of debt left behind by financial plunderers who found in debt the leverage to get ever richer. Most of them still live in their mansions and McMansions, while other debtors live outdoors, or in cars or shelters, or doubled-up with relatives and friends — or even in debtor’s prison. Believe it or not, a version of debtor’s prison, that relic of early American commercial barbarism, is back. 

In 2013, you can’t actually be jailed for not paying your bills, but ingenious corporations, collection agencies, cops, courts, and lawyers have devised ways to insure that debt “delinquents” will end up in jail anyway. With one-third of the states now allowing the jailing of debtors (without necessarily calling it that), it looks ever more like a trend in the making.

Will Americans tolerate this, or might there emerge a politics of resistance to debt, as has happened more than once in a past that shouldn’t be forgotten?  

The World of Debtor’s Prisons

Imprisonment for debt was a commonplace in colonial America and the early republic, and wasn’t abolished in most states until the 1830s or 1840s, in some cases not until after the Civil War. Today, we think of it as a peculiar and heartless way of punishing the poor — and it was. But it was more than that.

Some of the richest, most esteemed members of society also ended up there, men like Robert Morris, who helped finance the American Revolution and ran the Treasury under the Articles of Confederation; John Pintard, a stock-broker, state legislator, and founder of the New York Historical Society; William Duer, graduate of Eton, powerful merchant and speculator, assistant secretary in the Treasury Department of the new federal government, and master of a Hudson River manse; a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge; army generals; and other notables.

Whether rich or poor, you were there for a long stretch, even for life, unless you could figure out some way of discharging your debts. That, however, is where the similarity between wealthy and impoverished debtors ended.

Whether in the famous Marshalsea in London where Charles Dickens had Little Dorritt’s father incarcerated (and where Dickens’s father had actually languished when the author was 12), or in the New Gaol in New York City, where men like Duer and Morris did their time, debtors prisons were segregated by class. If your debts were large enough and your social connections weighty enough (the two tended to go together) you lived comfortably. You were supplied with good food and well-appointed living quarters, as well as books and other pleasures, including on occasion manicurists and prostitutes. 

Robert Morris entertained George Washington for dinner in his “cell.” Once released, he resumed his career as the new nation’s richest man. Before John Pintard moved to New Gaol, he redecorated his cell, had it repainted and upholstered, and shipped in two mahogany writing desks.

Meanwhile, the mass of petty debtors housed in the same institution survived, if at all, amid squalor, filth, and disease. They were often shackled, and lacked heat, clean water, adequate food, or often food of any kind. (You usually had to have the money to buy your own food, clothing, and fuel.) Debtors in these prisons frequently found themselves quite literally dying of debt. And you could end up in such circumstances for trivial sums. Of the 1,162 jailed debtors in New York City in 1787, 716 owed less than twenty shillings or one pound. A third of Philadelphia’s inmates in 1817 were there for owing less than $5, and debtors in the city’s prisons outnumbered violent criminals by 5:1. In Boston, 15% of them were women. Shaming was more the point of punishment than anything else.

Scenes of public pathos were commonplace. Inmates at the New Gaol, if housed on its upper floors, would lower shoes out the window on strings to collect alms for their release. Other prisons installed “beggar gates” through which those jailed in cellar dungeons could stretch out their palms for the odd coins from passersby.

Poor and rich alike wanted out. Pamphleteering against the institution of debtor’s prison began in the 1750s. An Anglican minister in South Carolina denounced the jails, noting that “a person would be in a better situation in the French King’s Gallies, or the Prisons of Turkey or Barbary than in this dismal place.” Discontent grew. A mass escape from New Gaol of 40 prisoners armed with pistols and clubs was prompted by extreme hunger. 

In the 1820s and 1830s, as artisans, journeymen, sailors, longshoremen, and other workers organized the early trade union movement as well as workingmen’s political parties, one principal demand was for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. Inheritors of a radical political culture, their complaints echoed that Biblical tradition of Jubilee mentioned in Leviticus, which called for a cancellation of debts, the restoration of lost houses and land, and the freeing of slaves and bond servants every 50 years.

Falling into debt was a particularly ruinous affliction for those who aspired to modest independence as shopkeepers, handicraftsmen, or farmers. As markets for their goods expanded but became ever less predictable, they found themselves taking out credit to survive and sometimes going into arrears, often followed by a stint in debtor’s prison that ended their dreams forever. 

However much the poor organized and protested, it was the rich who got debt relief first. Today, we assume that debts can be discharged through bankruptcy (although even now that option is either severely restricted or denied to certain classes of less favored debt delinquents like college students). Although the newly adopted U.S. Constitution opened the door to a national bankruptcy law, Congress didn’t walk through it until 1800, even though many, including the well-off, had been lobbying for it.

Enough of the old moral faith that frowned on debt as sinful lingered. The United States has always been an uncharitable place when it comes to debt, a curious attitude for a society largely settled by absconding debtors and indentured servants (a form of time-bound debt peonage). Indeed, the state of Georgia was founded as a debtor’s haven at a time when England’s jails were overflowing with debtors.

When Congress finally passed the Bankruptcy Act, those in the privileged quarters at New Gaol threw a party. Down below, however, life continued in its squalid way, since the new law only applied to people who had sizable debts. If you owed too little, you stayed in jail. 

Debt and the Birth of a Nation

Nowadays, the conservative media inundate us with warnings about debt from the Founding Fathers, and it’s true that some of them like Jefferson — himself an inveterate, often near-bankrupt debtor — did moralize on the subject. However, Alexander Hamilton, an idol of the conservative movement, was the architect of the country’s first national debt, insisting that “if it is not excessive, [it] will be to us a national blessing.”

As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton’s goal was to transform the former 13 colonies, which today we would call an underdeveloped land, into a country that someday would rival Great Britain. This, he knew, required liquid capital (resources not tied up in land or other less mobile forms of wealth), which could then be invested in sometimes highly speculative and risky enterprises. Floating a national debt, he felt sure, would attract capital from well-positioned merchants at home and abroad, especially in England.

However, for most ordinary people living under the new government, debt aroused anger. To begin with, there were all those veterans of the Revolutionary War and all the farmers who had supplied the revolutionary army with food and been paid in notoriously worthless “continentals” — the currency issued by the Continental Congress — or equally valueless state currencies.

As rumors of the formation of a new national government spread, speculators roamed the countryside buying up this paper money at a penny on the dollar, on the assumption that the debts they represented would be redeemed at face value. In fact, that is just what Hamilton’s national debt would do, making these “sunshine patriots” quite rich, while leaving the yeomanry impoverished.

Outrage echoed across the country even before Hamilton’s plan got adopted. Jefferson denounced the currency speculators as loathsome creatures and had this to say about debt in general: “The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” He and others denounced the speculators as squadrons of counter-revolutionary “moneycrats” who would use their power and wealth to undo the democratic accomplishments of the revolution.

In contrast, Hamilton saw them as a disinterested monied elite upon whom the country’s economic well-being depended, while dismissing the criticisms of the Jeffersonians as the ravings of Jacobin levelers. Soon enough, political warfare over the debt turned founding fathers into fratricidal brothers.  

Hamilton’s plan worked — sometimes too well. Wealthy speculators in land like Robert Morris, or in the building of docks, wharves, and other projects tied to trade, or in the national debt itself — something William Duer and grandees like him specialized in — seized the moment. Often enough, however, they over-reached and found themselves, like the yeomen farmers and soldiers, in default to their creditors. 

Duer’s attempts to corner the market in the bonds issued by the new federal government and in the stock of the country’s first National Bank represented one of the earliest instances of insider trading. They also proved a lurid example of how speculation could go disastrously wrong.  When the scheme collapsed, it caused the country’s first Wall Street panic and a local depression that spread through New England, ruining “shopkeepers, widows, orphans, butchers… gardeners, market women, and even the noted Bawd Mrs. McCarty.”   

A mob chased Duer through the streets of New York and might have hanged or disemboweled him had he not been rescued by the city sheriff, who sent him to the safety of debtor’s prison. John Pintard, part of the same scheme, fled to Newark, New Jersey, before being caught and jailed as well.

Sending the Duers and Pintards of the new republic off to debtors’ prison was not, however, quite what Hamilton had in mind. And leaving them rotting there was hardly going to foster the “enterprising spirit” that would, in the treasury secretary’s estimation, turn the country into the Great Britain of the next century. Bankruptcy, on the other hand, ensured that the overextended could start again and keep the machinery of commercial transactions lubricated. Hence, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800.

If, however, you were not a major player, debt functioned differently. Shouldered by the hoi polloi, it functioned as a mechanism for funneling wealth into the mercantile-financial hothouses where American capitalism was being incubated.

No wonder debt excited such violent political emotions. Even before the Constitution was adopted, farmers in western Massachusetts, indebted to Boston bankers and merchants and in danger of losing their ancestral homes in the economic hard times of the 1780s, rose in armed rebellion. In those years, the number of lawsuits for unpaid debt doubled and tripled, farms were seized, and their owners sent off to jail. Incensed, farmers led by a former revolutionary soldier, Daniel Shays, closed local courts by force and liberated debtors from prisons. Similar but smaller uprisings erupted in Maine, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, while in New Hampshire and Vermont irate farmers surrounded government offices. 

Shays’ Rebellion of 1786 alarmed the country’s elites. They depicted the unruly yeomen as “brutes” and their houses as “sties.” They were frightened as well by state governments like Rhode Island’s that were more open to popular influence, declared debt moratoria, and issued paper currencies to help farmers and others pay off their debts. These developments signaled the need for a stronger central government fully capable of suppressing future debtor insurgencies.

Federal authority established at the Constitutional Convention allowed for that, but the unrest continued. Shays’ Rebellion was but part one of a trilogy of uprisings that continued into the 1790s. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was the most serious. An excise tax (“whiskey tax”) meant to generate revenue to back up the national debt threatened the livelihoods of farmers in western Pennsylvania who used whiskey as a “currency” in a barter economy.  President Washington sent in troops, many of them Revolutionary War veterans, with Hamilton at their head to put down the rebels. 

Debt Servitude and Primitive Accumulation

Debt would continue to play a vital role in national and local political affairs throughout the nineteenth century, functioning as a form of capital accumulation in the financial sector, and often sinking pre-capitalist forms of life in the process. 

Before and during the time that capitalists were fully assuming the prerogatives of running the production process in field and factory, finance was building up its own resources from the outside. Meanwhile, the mechanisms of public and private debt made the lives of farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and others increasingly insupportable.

This parasitic economic metabolism helped account for the riotous nature of Gilded Age politics. Much of the high drama of late nineteenth-century political life circled around “greenbacks,” “free silver,” and “the gold standard.” These issues may strike us as arcane today, but they were incendiary then, threatening what some called a “second Civil War.” In one way or another, they were centrally about debt, especially a system of indebtedness that was driving the independent farmer to extinction.

All the highways of global capitalism found their way into the trackless vastness of rural America. Farmers there were not in dire straits because of their backwoods isolation. On the contrary, it was because they turned out to be living at Ground Zero, where the explosive energies of financial and commercial modernity detonated. A toxic combination of railroads, grain-elevator operators, farm-machinery manufacturers, commodity-exchange speculators, local merchants, and above all the banking establishment had the farmer at their mercy. His helplessness was only aggravated when the nineteenth-century version of globalization left his crops in desperate competition with those from the steppes of Canada and Russia, as well as the outbacks of Australia and South America.

To survive this mercantile onslaught, farmers hooked themselves up to long lines of credit that stretched back to the financial centers of the East. These lifelines allowed them to buy the seed, fertilizer, and machines needed to farm, pay the storage and freight charges that went with selling their crops, and keep house and home together while the plants ripened and the hogs fattened. When market day finally arrived, the farmer found out just what all his backbreaking work was really worth. If the news was bad, then those credit lines were shut off and he found himself dispossessed.

The family farm and the network of small town life that went with it were being washed into the rivers of capital heading for metropolitan America. On the “sod house” frontier, poverty was a “badge of honor which decorated all.” In his Devil’s Dictionary, the acid-tongued humorist Ambrose Bierce defined the dilemma this way: “Debt. n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.”

Across the Great Plains and the cotton South, discontented farmers spread the blame for their predicament far and wide. Anger, however, tended to pool around the strangulating system of currency and credit run out of the banking centers of the northeast. Beginning in the 1870s with the emergence of the Greenback Party and Greenback-Labor Party and culminating in the 1890s with the People’s or Populist Party, independent farmers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, small businessmen, and skilled workers directed ever more intense hostility at “the money power.”

That “power” might appear locally in the homeliest of disguises. At coal mines and other industrial sites, among “coolies” working to build the railroads or imported immigrant gang laborers and convicts leased to private concerns, workers were typically compelled to buy what they needed in company scrip at company stores at prices that left them perpetually in debt. Proletarians were so precariously positioned that going into debt — whether to pawnshops or employers, landlords or loan sharks — was unavoidable. Often they were paid in kind: wood chips, thread, hemp, scraps of canvas, cordage: nothing, that is, that was of any use in paying off accumulated debts. In effect, they were, as they called themselves, “debt slaves.” 

In the South, hard-pressed growers found themselves embroiled in a crop-lien system, dependent on the local “furnishing agent” to supply everything needed, from seed to clothing to machinery, to get through the growing season. In such situations, no money changed hands, just a note scribbled in the merchant’s ledger, with payment due at “settling up” time. This granted the lender a lien, or title, to the crop, a lien that never went away.

In this fashion, the South became “a great pawn shop,” with farmers perpetually in debt at interest rates exceeding 100% per year. In Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, 90% of farmers lived on credit. The first lien you signed was essentially a life sentence. Either that or you became a tenant farmer, or you simply left your land, something so commonplace that everyone knew what the letters “G.T.T.” on an abandoned farmhouse meant: “Gone to Texas.” (One hundred thousand people a year were doing that in the 1870s.) 

The merchant’s exaction was so steep that African-Americans and immigrants in particular were regularly reduced to peonage — forced, that is, to work to pay off their debt, an illegal but not uncommon practice. And that neighborhood furnishing agent was often tied to the banks up north for his own lines of credit. In this way, the sucking sound of money leaving for the great metropolises reverberated from region to region.

Facing dispossession, farmers formed alliances to set up cooperatives to extend credit to one another and market crops themselves. As one Populist editorialist remarked, this was the way “mortgage-burdened farmers can assert their freedom from the tyranny of organized capital.” But when they found that these groupings couldn’t survive the competitive pressure of the banking establishment, politics beckoned.

From one presidential election to the next and in state contests throughout the South and West, irate grain and cotton growers demanded that the government expand the paper currency supply, those “greenbacks,” also known as “the people’s money,” or that it monetize silver, again to enlarge the money supply, or that it set up public institutions to finance farmers during the growing season. With a passion hard for us to imagine, they railed against the “gold standard” which, in Democratic Party presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s famous cry, should no longer be allowed to “crucify mankind on a cross of gold.”

Should that cross of gold stay fixed in place, one Alabama physician prophesied, it would “reduce the American yeomanry to menials and paupers, to be driven by monopolies like cattle and swine.” As Election Day approached, populist editors and speakers warned of an approaching war with “the money power,” and they meant it. “The fight will come and let it come!”

The idea was to force the government to deliberately inflate the currency and so raise farm prices. And the reason for doing that? To get out from under the sea of debt in which they were submerged. It was a cry from the heart and it echoed and re-echoed across the heartland, coming nearer to upsetting the established order than any American political upheaval before or since. 

The passion of those populist farmers and laborers was matched by that of their enemies, men at the top of the economy and government for whom debt had long been a road to riches rather than destitution. They dismissed their foes as “cranks” and “calamity howlers.” And in the election of 1896, they won. Bryan went down to defeat, gold continued its pitiless process of crucifixion, and a whole human ecology was set on a path to extinction.

The Return of Debt Servitude

When populism died, debt — as a spark for national political confrontation — died, too. The great reform eras that followed — Progessivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society — were preoccupied with inequality, economic collapse, exploitation in the workplace, and the outsized nature of corporate power in a consolidated industrial capitalist system.

Rumblings about debt servitude could certainly still be heard. Foreclosed farmers during the Great Depression mobilized, held “penny auctions” to restore farms to families, hanged judges in effigy, and forced Prudential Insurance Company, the largest land creditor in Iowa, to suspend foreclosures on 37,000 farms (which persuaded Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to do likewise). A Kansas City realtor was shot in the act of foreclosing on a family farm, a country sheriff kidnapped while trying to evict a farm widow and dumped 10 miles out of town, and so on.

Urban renters and homeowners facing eviction formed neighborhood groups to stop the local sheriff or police from throwing families out of their houses or apartments. Furniture tossed into the street in eviction proceedings would be restored by neighbors, who would also turn the gas and electricity back on. New Deal farm and housing finance legislation bailed out banks and homeowners alike. Right-wing populists like the Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin carried on the war against the gold standard in tirades tinged with anti-Semitism. Signs like one in Nebraska — “The Jew System of Banking” (illustrated with a giant rattlesnake) — showed up too often.

But the age of primitive accumulation in which debt and the financial sector had played such a strategic role was drawing to a close. 

Today, we have entered a new phase. What might be called capitalist underdevelopment and once again debt has emerged as both the central mode of capital accumulation and a principal mechanism of servitude. Warren Buffett (of all people) has predicted that, in the coming decades, the United States is more likely to turn into a “sharecropper society” than an “ownership society.”

In our time, the financial sector has enriched itself by devouring the productive wherewithal of industrial America through debt, starving the public sector of resources, and saddling ordinary working people with every conceivable form of consumer debt.

Household debt, which in 1952 was at 36% of total personal income, had by 2006 hit 127%. Even financing poverty became a lucrative enterprise. Taking advantage of the low credit ratings of poor people and their need for cash to pay monthly bills or simply feed themselves, some check-cashing outlets, payday lenders, tax preparers, and others levy interest of 200% to 300% and more. As recently as the 1970s, a good part of this would have been considered illegal under usury laws that no longer exist. And these poverty creditors are often tied to the largest financiers, including Citibank, Bank of America, and American Express.

Credit has come to function as a “plastic safety net” in a world of job insecurity, declining state support, and slow-motion economic growth, especially among the elderly, young adults, and low-income families. More than half the pre-tax income of these three groups goes to servicing debt. Nowadays, however, the “company store” is headquartered on Wall Street.

Debt is driving this system of auto-cannibalism which, by every measure of social wellbeing, is relentlessly turning a developed country into an underdeveloped one.  

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are back.  Is a political resistance to debt servitude once again imaginable?

© 2013 Steve Fraser

Steve Fraser is Editor-at-Large of New Labor Forum and co-founder of the American Empire Project (Metropolitan Books). He is, most recently, the author of Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace. He teaches history at Columbia University.

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When President Obama announced his sweeping new plan for preventing gun violence on January 16, it included no fewer than twenty-three “executive actions,” in addition to a series of legislative proposals. The message was clear: in the face of congressional intransigence–on gun control and beyond–Obama will push changes through the executive branch that he believes to be for the good of the country. “Congress too must act, and Congress must act soon,” Obama said, while making it clear that the White House will not wait for the GOP-controlled House.

It was not the first time the president has flexed his executive muscle. Obama deployed such power during his first term on a number of notable occasions. The “Mini—Dream Act” executive action, for example, was hugely successful, both in terms of public policy and progressive politics. It helped people in an immediate and tangible way, was enormously popular with Latinos and Asian-Americans, and may well have won him re-election.

Others, like raising the CAFE standards to demand better fuel efficiency from carmakers and capping student loan payments, were part of the Obama administration’s “We Can’t Wait” initiative, launched in the fall of 2011, following the debt ceiling fiasco and the House Republicans’ refusal to seriously consider the American Jobs Act. “We can’t wait for an increasingly dysfunctional Congress to do its job,” Obama said at the time. “Where they won’t act, I will.”

The president has also acted through the appointment process. He made a recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, despite intense congressional opposition, and another three recess appointments to the five-member National Labor Relations Board, putting it back in action after the Republicans refused for months to confirm any new members. Obama also handed down the Health and Human Services Department contraception mandate–a critical fulcrum point in the GOP’s politically costly “war on women.”

Less high-profile measures have included utilizing the 1906 Antiquities Act, first used by Theodore Roosevelt to protect historic or beautiful public land, to preserve a few areas, including Fort Monroe in Virginia and Fort Ord in California. Last fall, Obama also named Colorado’s Chimney Rock Archaeological Area as a national monument, and dedicated the César E. Chávez National Monument in California.

The president can do much more. So can the cabinet departments and federal regulatory agencies. As Barack Obama begins his second term, and weighs his overall legacy, it will be crucial for progressives to push him to act on a broad range of issues for which there is an absence of congressional will (or a concerted effort to block progress). Pressing for reforms through executive action–using both “street heat” and “suite heat”–should be a serious focus of our work in the coming months.

An executive order, briefly defined, is a presidential directive that carries the force of law. Such actions have a long and checkered history in American politics: Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was enacted via executive order, as was the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II (one of a flurry of orders handed down by FDR). Executive orders were used sparingly, for the most part, until the presidency of Bill Clinton, who vastly expanded their use, handing down more than even George W. Bush. Obama has continued this broader trend, issuing 144 executive orders in his first four years. Less binding are executive actions, presidential recommendations that cannot be carried out by the executive branch unilaterally.

In the era after 9/11, the consolidation of executive authority has led to a number of dangerous policies [see David Shipler, in this issue], and we strongly oppose the extreme manifestations of this power, such as the “kill lists” that have already defined Obama’s presidency. Yet executive power, when properly deployed, can and has played a legitimate role in helping to realign the country with its values and the needs of Americans–as Obama attempted to do when he ordered the closing of Guantánamo and an end to torture just days into his first term.

With this goal in mind, The Nation has compiled a list of executive actions that the president should take across a broad range of issues–and asked our readers to submit their own. Many pointed to the excessive military, intelligence and police powers they would like to see rolled back, at home and abroad. Richard Nixon declared the “war on drugs” and created the Drug Enforcement Administration via executive order; Obama, some readers suggested, could finally end the “war on drugs”–or at least direct the DEA to stop enforcing disproportionate crackdowns on drug crimes–using the same power.

Indeed, in addition to ratcheting back the “war on drugs,” the executive branch could also–at least in theory–end the war in Afghanistan; help close some of our hundreds of overseas bases; follow through on its pledge to close Guantánamo; cut back on the use of drones; stop jailing whistleblowers; end the official harassment and surveillance of Muslims and activists; and even pardon Leonard Peltier.

Obviously, the president is unlikely to act on a number of these suggestions. But it is also obvious that our nation is facing multiple crises, many of which will not wait until an obstinate GOP House has evolved enough to act. Wherever possible, the president should act on his own to implement good public policies that can break the gridlock and ease at least some of our most serious crises, such as the heating of the earth’s atmosphere and the dangerous storms like Hurricane Sandy that result; our overextended and bloated military empire; and the corporate corruption of our political system, among many others. 

We believe that aggressive and progressive executive action will bring political benefits as well, because the public is tired of waiting for results from Washington. And even if it doesn’t, taking action is still the right thing to do–for the planet, for the jobless and the homeless, for the loyal voters who stood in long lines to make history with Barack Obama twice. Besides, what’s a second term for if you can’t use your presidential power for the good of the many?

What follows is a list of ways that Obama can act to achieve progressive goals in his second term. Some, like taking nuclear weapons off “hair-trigger alert” status, are long overdue–a relic of another age that nonetheless bears correcting. Others, like a plan to modernize voting protocols, are tied to our current political landscape. By no means is this an exhaustive list–it was designed to inspire and encourage further brainstorming along these lines, as well as action-building strategies on how to explicitly pressure the White House over the next four years.

* * *

Environment

Assemble a Commission on Climate Change
In his first press conference since winning a second term, President Obama said, “I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we’ve got an obligation to future generations to do something about it.” He should start by assembling a blue-ribbon Climate Change National Security Commission to take stock of the most pressing dangers posed by climate change. The commission would be composed of experts like Dr. James Hansen and Bill McKibben, and its members would outline a schedule for analyzing and making recommendations on how best to tackle this enormous and wide-reaching national security issue.

Direct the EPA to Regulate All Greenhouse Gases

In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate all greenhouse gases, yet it has not done so. It is long past time for Obama to order the EPA to exert this authority–not just when it comes to carbon dioxide, but methane gas and black carbon as well. Specifically, the president should direct the EPA to apply the approach advocated by NASA scientist James Hansen and the Center for Biological Diversity, which would set a national pollution cap of no more than 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If that standard sounds overly ambitious, the president should bear in mind that regulations issued under the Clean Air Act are supposed to be “technology forcing”–inducing the private sector to develop and deploy superior technologies that will safeguard the health of the public and the planet.

Reject the Keystone Pipeline and ‘All of the Above’

With climate change already battering the nation’s great cities and ravaging our Farm Belt, it is unconscionable for federal policy to make things worse by encouraging major expansions in coal, oil and natural gas consumption. The president should reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Canada and replace his “All of the Above” energy strategy with a “Green Growth” one that rapidly phases out fossil fuels while scaling up energy efficiency and wind, solar and other renewable sources.

Foreign Policy And National Security

Take Nuclear Weapons Off ‘Hair-Trigger’ Status
To this day, the United States and Russia have several hundred missiles ready to launch at a moment’s notice. In 2000, George W. Bush called this “another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation,” and eight years later, Barack Obama vowed to undo it. Yet nothing has changed since then. As Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, points out, handing down an order to do so would not be unprecedented. “George H.W. Bush ended the practice of having our nuclear-armed bombers on strip alert as part of his unilateral 1991 nuclear initiatives,” he says. “He also took hundreds of missiles off alert.” Obama should make good on his promise and lay whatever diplomatic groundwork is necessary to issue this long-overdue executive order, which could make our planet a lot less dangerous.

Take Cuba Off the ‘State Sponsors of Terror’ List
In another relic of the Cold War, Ronald Reagan placed Cuba on the State Department’s list of terror-supporting countries to demonize its support for revolution in Central America. “This was, and continues to be, a grave injustice,” says Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. “Rather than a terrorist advocate, Cuba has been, historically, a victim of terrorism, much of it shamefully emanating from US territory. The written justifications for keeping Cuba on the list over the last several years actually read like arguments to take Cuba off the list.” Kornbluh cites Cuba’s efforts to mediate a cease-fire and peace accord between the Colombian government and the FARC rebels as proof that Cuba, in fact, is “playing a fundamental and constructive role in seeking to end conflicts that breed terrorism in the region.”

Audit the Pentagon
Almost every federal agency routinely passes the yearly financial audit required by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990. The major exception is the Pentagon, which is “unauditable,” according to the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO). The Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when the audit would be done, even as Congress doubled Pentagon spending. It’s time to get serious, but no new laws are needed. “President Obama should request significant reductions in the Pentagon budget until the Pentagon can pass the audit,” said Rafael DeGennaro, a former taxpayer group leader who is starting the nonprofit Audit the Pentagon.

Economy

Create a National Development Bank
The president often invokes the need to invest in “nation building at home.” As he told a crowd in Virginia on the campaign trail last summer: “Let’s rebuild our roads and our bridges…. Let’s build broadband lines and high-speed rail. Let’s expand our ports and improve our airports. That’s what’s going to keep us at the cutting edge of a twenty-first-century economy. And we’ve got tens of thousands of construction workers ready to be put back to work.” To this end, a National Development Bank could provide the funding for such ambitious projects–and serve as a source of funding for reconstruction projects following Sandy-scale natural disasters.

Labor

Implement ‘High Road’ Contracting 
In fiscal year 2009, according to the GAO, the government awarded more than $6 billion in contracts to companies that had violated federal labor laws. Obama should instruct the Labor Department to implement a policy of rewarding and punishing potential contractors based on their labor, environmental and other records. In the absence of a congressional minimum-wage increase, Obama could mandate living-wage standards for federal contractors as well.

Grant Wage and Overtime Protections to Homecare Workers
In December 2011, as part of his “We Can’t Wait” initiative, Obama promised to extend federal minimum wage and overtime protections to homecare workers. “One year later, we are still waiting,” a number of homecare workers wrote to the president in December. According to the National Employment Law Project, “the long-delayed rules change would close a loophole–known as the companionship exemption–that allows most of the nation’s 2.5 million homecare workers to be shut out from basic minimum wage and overtime protections. The rules change would provide a rapidly growing workforce with the same basic wage guarantees that other workers have relied on for decades.”

Criminal Justice

Challenge the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Of the president’s twenty-three executive actions addressing gun violence–several of which were quite important–one was particularly troubling: his promise to “help schools hire more resource officers,” a euphemism for putting more police in schools. This will only accelerate what advocates call the “school-to-prison pipeline,” a phenomenon so catastrophic that the Senate held its first hearing on how to address it just two days before the Newtown massacre. Before following through on this action, the president should direct the Justice Department to draw up a racial impact statement to analyze how such a policy might disproportionately affect children of color, and take steps to ensure that it does not.

Pardon Prisoners and Commute Unjust Sentences
As Sasha Abramsky recently wrote in our pages, President Obama has been stingy in exercising his considerable pardon power, even for prisoners serving clearly unjust sentences. The New York Times has reported that he has granted a pardon for one out of every fifty applicants, “compared with 1 out of 33 for George W. Bush, 1 of 8 for Bill Clinton and 1 of 3 for Ronald Reagan”–and this despite the scores of federal nonviolent drug offenders ensnared by the drug war. Obama should not only hand down pardons to men and women serving time disproportionate to their crimes; he should also order the Federal Bureau of Prisons to regularly send the White House names of potential candidates for commutations and early release.

Tell the Justice Department to Focus on High-Level Offenses
To prevent such miscarriages of justice, Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project suggests that “the president and/or attorney general could issue a policy recommendation asking United States attorneys to prosecute only high-level cases or those in which there is a clear federal interest.” This could include ordering the DEA to cease its raids on medical marijuana growers, which result in outrageous miscarriages of justice–as in the case of Chris Williams, arrested in Montana for growing then-legal medical marijuana, who at one point was facing more than eighty years in prison.

Immigration

Stop Deporting Undocumented Parents
On January 2, the Department of Homeland Security released a rule aimed at reducing the amount of time “US citizens are separated” from family members seeking legal residency status. This is a positive development, but it does not change the fact that Obama’s staggering number of deportations–1.5 million people in his first term–has left thousands of children in foster care after their parents were deported. A study by the Applied Research Center estimates that at least 5,100 kids are in foster care in twenty-two states–a number that could rise to 15,000 by the end of Obama’s second term if deportation levels continue apace. Given the hints that Congress will take up comprehensive immigration reform, Obama should take steps to halt the deportation of parents until this comes to pass.

Reproductive Rights

Tell HHS to Approve Over-the-Counter Plan B for All Women 
In December 2011, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius made the unprecedented decision to overrule a decision by the Food and Drug Administration to make the “morning-after pill” available over the counter to women of all ages. The president, much to the dismay of many American women, supported the move and went so far as to invoke his two daughters in doing so. Obama should reverse this decision, which was clearly born of political calculation: studies have shown that the emergency contraception pill known as Plan B has no adverse effects on young women and girls under 17.

Reinterpret the Helms Amendment
In 2009, President Obama fulfilled a campaign pledge and repealed the global gag rule, “one of the most ludicrous and paternalistic U.S. foreign policies in history,” in the words of RH Reality Check. Yet the “last stronghold of America’s oppressive overseas reproductive health policies, the Helms Amendment, is still alive and well.” This forty-year-old law prohibits any foreign aid that might be used for abortion, regardless of the law in those countries and in spite of supposed exceptions to accommodate cases of rape, incest and risk to the woman’s life. “Even our colleagues who oppose abortion rights regularly carve out these minimal exceptions to the harsh anti-abortion bills and amendments they introduce,” twelve members of Congress wrote to Obama in December 2011. “Conforming implementation of the Helms Amendment to the actual meaning of the law should not be controversial and, in any case, would be eminently defensible.”

Civil Liberties

Rewrite FBI Guidelines for Spying on Americans 
In 2009, The New York Times revealed new post-9/11 powers bestowed on the FBI that lowered the bar for targeting certain communities as possible terrorists. “One section lays out a low threshold to start investigating a person or group as a potential security threat,” the paper reported. “Another allows agents to use ethnicity or religion as a factor–as long as it is not the only one–when selecting subjects for scrutiny.” The result, as Center for Constitutional Rights president emeritus Michael Ratner points out, has been to criminalize communities and entrap individuals simply because of their religion, ethnicity or political activities. “Obama could protect our right to dissent and protest by ordering the FBI to curb surveillance and entrapment of activists and others not engaging in criminal activity.”

Release the Legal Memos on Targeted Killings
In this era of the so-called “disposition matrix,” Obama is not likely to reverse the dangerous course he has taken on targeted killings. But at the very least, he must stop ignoring the transparency pledge he made upon taking office in 2009, to “hold myself as president to a new standard of openness.” As Vicki Divoll, former deputy legal adviser to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, wrote in an impassioned op-ed for The New York Times, Obama “has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.” The president should release the secret memos that outline his administration’s rationale for targeted killings.

Voting Rights

Modernize Voting
When a newly re-elected President Obama thanked Americans for voting him back into office, he acknowledged that some had “waited in line for a very long time” to do so. “By the way,” he added, in an unscripted aside, “we have to fix that.” Although the states are in charge of administering their own voting practices, the Brennan Center for Justice has identified one way the president can unilaterally move to modernize voting methods across the country. “Several states have requested agreements to designate certain federal agencies as voter registration agencies, meaning that registration materials should be offered to all citizens when they directly interact with those agencies,” explains Nicole Austin-Hillery, director and counsel at the Brennan Center’s Washington office. “Where it is within his authority, we would like to see the president direct agencies to accept these designations. This will encourage other states to make additional designation requests and should significantly increase registration rates among those directly served by the agencies.”

Money in Politics

Appoint New Federal Election Commissioners
“The FEC is the most dysfunctional agency in government, thanks to partisan deadlock,” says Robert Weissman of Public Citizen. “Five of the six members are serving past their terms–including the former chair, who has announced she will step down February 1–because the president has not made new appointments.” It’s past time for Obama to appoint new commissioners to better equip this critical agency to do its job.

Make Government Contractors Reveal Political Donations

Congress has repeatedly failed to pass the DISCLOSE (Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections) Act. But the president could address this by requiring federal contractors to open the books on their campaign spending. As Public Citizen has pointed out, “among the 50 largest contractors, nearly all contractor political spending was disclosed to the public until 2010, when [an FEC] loophole and a Supreme Court decision combined to permit unlimited secret spending in elections.” In the post—Citizens United era, the president should take all actions necessary to rein in such secretive, uncontrolled spending.

As ProPublica has reported in an ongoing investigation about America’s management of its underground water, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has issued more than 1,500 permits for companies to pollute such aquifers in some of the driest regions. Frequently, the reason was that the water lies too deep to be worth protecting.

But Mexico City’s plans to tap its newly discovered aquifer suggest that America is poisoning wells it might need in the future.

Indeed, by the standard often applied in the U.S., American regulators could have allowed companies to pump pollutants into the aquifer beneath Mexico City.

For example, in eastern Wyoming, an analysis showed that it would cost half a million dollars to construct a water well into deep, but high-quality aquifer reserves. That, plus an untested assumption that all the deep layers below it could only contain poor-quality water, led regulators to allow a uranium mine to inject more than 200,000 gallons of toxic and radioactive waste every day into the underground reservoirs.

But south of the border, worsening water shortages have forced authorities to look ever deeper for drinking water.

Today in Mexico City, the world’s third-largest metropolis, the depletion of shallow reservoirs is causing the ground to sink in, iconic buildings to teeter, and underground infrastructure to crumble. The discovery of the previously unmapped deep reservoir could mean that water won’t have to be rationed or piped into Mexico City from hundreds of miles away.

According to the Times report, Mexican authorities have already drilled an exploratory well into the aquifer and are working to determine the exact size of the reservoir. They are prepared to spend as much as $40 million to pump and treat the deeper water, which they say could supply some of Mexico City’s 20 million people for as long as a century.

Scientists point to what’s happening in Mexico City as a harbinger of a world in which people will pay more and dig deeper to tap reserves of the one natural resource human beings simply cannot survive without.

“Around the world people are increasingly doing things that 50 years ago nobody would have said they’d do,” said Mike Wireman, a hydrogeologist with the EPA who also works with the World Bank on global water supply issues.

Wireman points to new research in Europe finding water reservoirs several miles beneath the surface – far deeper than even the aquifer beneath Mexico City – and says U.S. policy has been slow to adapt to this new understanding.

“Depth in and of itself does not guarantee anything – it does not guarantee you won’t use it in the future, and it does not guarantee that that it is not” a source of drinking water, he said.

If Mexico City’s search for water seems extreme, it is not unusual. In aquifers Denver relies on, drinking water levels have dropped more than 300 feet. Texas rationed some water use last summer in the midst of a record-breaking drought. And Nevada – realizing that the water levels in one of the nation’s largest reservoirs may soon drop below the intake pipes – is building a drain hole to sap every last drop from the bottom.

“Water is limited, so they are really hustling to find other types of water,” said Mark Williams, a hydrologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It’s kind of a grim future, there’s no two ways about it.”

In a parched world, Mexico City is sending a message: Deep, unknown potential sources of drinking water matter, and the U.S. pollutes them at its peril.

Syrian security personnel in the northern city of Aleppo have discovered the bodies of more than 80 people, saying the victims were killed execution style.

The bodies of young men and boys were found in the Quweiq River, which separates Bustan al-Qasr district from Ansari, in Aleppo’s southwest.

The area is under the control of the foreign-backed militants who are seeking to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Some of the bodies had their hands tied behind them and the others appear to had been shot in the head.

A senior security source said many of the victims had previously been reported kidnapped.

He blamed the terrorists of carrying out the executions. But the armed groups accuse the government of being behind the massacre.

The Syria crisis began in March 2011, and many people, including large numbers of army and security personnel, have been killed ever since.

The Syrian government says the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the militants are foreign nationals.

Damascus blames the West and its regional allies Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey for supporting the armed groups.

In addition, several international human rights organizations have accused the militants fighting the Syrian government of committing war crimes.

MRS/PKH/SS

Text and Photos by Scott DeLarm

Edited by Prof. James F. Tracy

My partner and I became fed up with the mainstream media’s depiction of what took place in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012.

So on January 20 we traveled there from our home in Ottawa, Canada in an effort to visit the sites and respectfully approach the locals.

Before we even got off the highway there was a display of dozens of American flags on the shoulder. There is a large tented memorial located just off the freeway. The tent had a sign on the outside, “Sandy Hook Memorial Never Forgotten.”

Inside the tent was a chaplain who asked that I not take any photos. There were hundreds of stuffed animals and candles as well as children’s art from around the country—if not the world. Inside was also a donation jar that was at mid-afternoon close to full of money.

We signed one of the boards with condolences from Canada. I saw adults and children inside the tent on the two visits we made. No one was there who was impacted directly. I asked the chaplain if she had seen any children whom had been impacted. She did not answer.

We spent January 21 in Newtown visiting the Sandy Hook School and Sandy Hook Volunteer Fire House, Gene Rosen’s residence, the 100 Church Hill Restaurant (and pub), the Newtown Bee offices, as well as the Newtown Police Department.

We found that the school can not be seen from the front when coming down Riverside Road which is the only access to the school passing the fire house. This may explain why there was no “media” photos of the broken / shot out glass at the front.

Dickenson Road was closed with layers of orange cones and numerous “No Trespassing” signs. The entire school is now enclosed with fencing, barbed wire, no trespass and surveillance signage.

The front of the school is entirely boarded up which would be consistent with broken glass. The lettering from the front of the school “Sandy Hook Elementary” is removed.

The side door and other windows were not boarded up. No cameras could be seen at the front door or anywhere on the property.

Gene Rosen lives next door to the fire house. Thus Ms. Victoria Soto’s students that landed on Mr. Rosen’s yard had to come down Dickenson Drive and turn right, passing the fire house, to get to Mr. Rosen’s. A lady at the Rosen house would not answer the door when I knocked.

We sat at the 100 Church Hill Restaurant for a couple of hours. There were about 10 people inside.

There were about 100 drawings from children from around the country (if not the world) offering condolences and well wishes. No one was talking about these. My partner and I spoke with a couple in their early twenties for an hour or so. They were life long locals.

Eventually they asked why we were in Newtown and we told them we had heard of their tragedy. They did not comment further and we did not push the issue.

We then went to the offices of The Newtown Bee, the community’s weekly newspaper, where we spoke with the editor, Mr. Curtis Clark. Mr. Clark did not offer a warm reception and stated from the start that they were concentrating the paper’s efforts on healing efforts and that he had little time. I told him I was there to follow up on The Bee’s report that stated, in part, “A man with a gun who was spotted in the woods near the school on the day of the incident was an off-duty tactical squad police officer from another town, according to the source.” I asked who this officer was, and why he was in the woods.

Mr. Clark told me that there was a number of “conspiracy theories floating around” and “some of them even suggest that the shooting didn’t even happen.” Furthermore, “Snopes.com debunks many of these conspiracy theories.”

I told Clark I was familiar with Snopes, but it was The Bee that reported that this was an off duty officer prancing about in the woods on the day of the shooting. Clark would not address this report and became very agitated with me “interrogating” him. “I don’t intend to discuss this any further with you,” he said. Mr. Clark then referred me to the Newtown Police for any additional questions. As I was walking out of the office I overheard a lady on the phone explaining to a caller that “there is an ongoing investigation,” and referring the caller to Snopes.com.

Next, we proceeded to the Newtown Police Department. After entering I walked up to the glassed-in safety window, picked up the phone on the wall and asked the attendant on the other side if I could speak with the Communications Officer. I explained why. He directed me to The Newtown Bee.

I advised him that The Bee had directed me to them and he asked me to have a seat. The room was rectangular with doors on both ends. Then, a male and female police officer simultaneously entered through each door. I addressed the female sergeant, telling her I would like to know who was the off duty tactical officer The Bee reported on on December 27. A male officer I was not addressing repeatedly ordered me to remove my hands from my pockets.

The female sergeant told me that the man detained was the uncle of a student at the school who had gone to get his niece. I asked about the police scanner audio where the dispatcher reports that a caller from inside the school saw “two shadows” run by the gym at the back of the school.

Additionally, an officer apparently arriving at the scene stated

“I’ve got ‘em (sic). They are running at me down Crestwood.”

Crestwood Drive borders that backside of the school beyond some woods. The sergeant told me that this was the confusion of the day and that there were not two individuals. “It was just someone that went crazy, killed a bunch of people and then killed himself,” she said consolingly.

“You have nothing to worry about. You are safe.”

I still wonder.

Edited by Prof. James F. Tracy

Svetlana Lunkina (RIA Novosti / Ruslan Krivobok)

One of the Bolshoi ballet’s leading ballerinas, Russia’s Svetlana Lunkina, has reportedly fled to Canada after receiving multiple threats over a business dispute involving her husband’s work on a film about an imperial Russian ballerina.

­Svetlana Lunkina told Russia’s Izvestia daily she had taken leave from the landmark theater until the end of the season. The announcement comes less than two weeks after the artistic director of the Bolshoi Theater Sergey Filin suffered third degree burns in an acid attack near his Moscow home.

Lunkina, who has danced with the Bolshoi since 1997, said she and her husband, producer Vladislav Moskalyev, had allegedly received the threats from representatives of her husband’s business partner, with whom he worked on a film about the legendary Russian ballerina, Matilda Kshesinskaya. According to AFP, Moskalyev is being sued for $3.7 million by his former partner and thrown off the project.

“I think we need to react to these threats. These people have no right to interfere in our private lives or my professional work,” the ballerina told Izvestia.

Lunkina added that according to the people threatening her, the letters discrediting her have been “sent to all theaters”.

Although there seems to be no link between Lunkina’s situation and the attack on the Bolshoi ballet’s artistic director, her flight could be regarded as more evidence of the tense atmosphere at the Bolshoi theater.

The ballerina told Izvestia she was seeking help from the Bolshoi, but in vain.

“I wrote a letter to my artistic director Sergey Filin. I also sent him a request to extend my leave. I’ve asked him for support — I didn’t know who to turn to. He didn’t reply, while at the theater they told me, ‘We receive a lot of letters, bad and good. It doesn’t mean you should respond to each of them’”, Lunkina told Izvestia.

The ballerina told the newspaper she was “supposed to be doing a lot of interesting work, including several premieres.” Lunkina was due to appear in a new work by the renowned British choreographer Wayne McGregor. She said she “was looking forward to it for many years”.

She said she was shocked when she learnt about the attack on Filin. According to the ballerina, his attacker “may not be someone who works at the Bolshoi theatre but someone linked to the theatre and ballet.”

Filin has undergone several surgeries to save his eyesight. Next week he is due to be transferred for further treatment to a hospital in the German city of Aachen.

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

If we understand the simple dynamics of value creation, total compensation costs and the cost-basis of doing business (general overhead), then we understand why employment isn’t coming back in the U.S.

It is impossible to understand job creation without understanding value creation and labor/overhead costs. People hire other people when their labor creates more value than it costs to hire them.

When labor costs are high, the value created must also be high; it makes no sense to hire someone if doing so generates a loss.

When labor is cheap, the bar of value creation is lowered, and so the risk of hiring a worker is also lower: they don’t have to add much value to be worth their wage.

This is why you see many low-value jobs in developing-world countries. There are night watchmen on duty in virtually every parking lot and building in urban Thailand, for example; these workers are providing a fundamental value, “eyes on the street,” but it is a low-value proposition: no special skill is required other than being a light sleeper. The cost of their labor is equivalently low, but in a low-cost basis economy such as Thailand’s, a very low wage is still a living wage.
 

In a self-employment example, many vendors in urban Thailand set up their informal food stall (a cart or a tent) for a few hours a day. Their net income is low, because what they provide–readymade food and snacks–is available in abundance, i.e. there are many competitors.

Nonetheless, because the cost basis of life is relatively low, modest earnings from a low cost, low-profit enterprise make the enterprise worthwhile.
 

Compare that with the typical government job in the U.S. or Europe. It is difficult to measure the true cost of government pension costs, as local governments do their best to mask their pension costs and inflate their pension funds’ projected returns. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation yields about a 100% direct labor overhead cost for the typical government job with full healthcare, pension and vacation benefits. So an employee earning $50,000 a year costs $100,000 in total compensation expenses.
 

Many local government employees on the left and right coasts earn close to $100,000, so their total compensation costs are roughly $200,000 per worker.
 

How much value must be created by each employee to justify that compensation? Government needn’t bother itself with that calculation, as the compensation is not set by market forces and the revenue stream can be increased via higher taxes, junk fees, tuition, licences, permits, etc.

As the legacy costs of healthcare and pensions for retirees become due, local government operating budgets are being gutted to pay these ballooning legacy costs.
 

As a result, it is now impossible for many local municipalities to fill potholes: it makes no sense to have $100,000/year employees performing low-value work like filling potholes. Put another way, there is a labor shortage in high-overhead government bureaucracies because after paying for legacy pension costs, there is no money left to hire more people at $100,000 a year in total compensation to fill potholes, a job that might be worth $35,000 in total compensation.
 

The value created by government employees filling potholes is completely out of alignment with the cost of their wages/benefits. If employees cost $100,000 (recall that their annual earnings may be $50,000–we must always use total compensation, not wages as reflected on pay stubs), then in effect all work that generates less than $100,000 in value can no longer be done.
 

This is why cities and infrastructure are falling apart. Once you raise the cost of compensation far above the value being created by the labor, then most lower-value but nonetheless essential work (e.g. filling potholes) becomes unaffordable to accomplish.
 

We can understand this dynamic very clearly in a private-sector example. Let’s say a high-tech start-up pays its programmers $90,000 a year, with minimal benefits. The total compensation costs of each programmer are thus around $125,000 annually.
 

Now let’s say that the owners are very egalitarian and they pay everyone they hire $90,000 a year ($125,000 in total compensation costs) regardless of their skills or how much value their labor creates. Does it make sense to pay someone $125,000 a year to empty the trash cans in the office? No, it does not. So the trash doesn’t get emptied. Does it make sense to have a $125K/year worker being a go-fer, typing correspondence and making copies? No, it does not.
 

Those menial tasks are pushed down to the programmers and managers, who must do those tasks themselves on a need-only basis.
 

The new hire is expected to create $200,000 of value annually (the minimum output of value needed to keep the company afloat) or they must be let go, or the firm will lose so much money it goes belly-up.
 

Now let’s say that the local minimum wage law sets the minimum total compensation costs of any employee at $40,000 annually. For example, $25,000 in wages and $15,000 in direct labor overhead (healthcare, disability, workers comp, vacation, 401K pension contributions, etc.)
 

What is the value created by an administrative assistant who makes copies and empties the trash cans? Let’s say the value added is $20,000 a year. At $40,000 per year minimum cost, it makes no sense to hire a “low-cost” worker because the value created by that worker is not even close to their total compensation costs.
 

As a result, the job of administrative assistant is not just unfilled–it vanishes. It makes no sense to hire workers when the value they create is less than their compensation costs.

How do we measure value created? The most accurate way is to let the market discover the value of the work performed by raising the price of our goods and services to reflect the value added.
 

Does our product or service become more valuable if the trash in our office is emptied? No; so the trash is not emptied, as the labor cost only raises the cost-basis and lowers gross profit, thus increasing the risk of insolvency.
 

The same can be said of all sorts of overhead: from healthcare costs that rise far faster than the company’s revenues, expansive offices, higher junk fees and taxes, higher energy costs, and so on.
 

In a global economy, the value added by labor is measured on a global scale. As the overhead costs of healthcare, energy, office rent, local government junk fees, etc. keep rising, each worker in the company must produce more value just for the firm to generate enough gross margins to pay overhead costs and stay solvent.
 

If overhead costs–the cost-basis of doing business in the U.S.–keep rising faster than gross profits (out of which overhead is paid), then the owners have little choice: they can either close the business before they are personally bankrupted, cut everyone’s pay or lay off some employees and somehow raise the productivity of the remaining workers to maintain enough value creation to survive.
 

This is the U.S. economy in a nutshell. If we understand the simple dynamics of value creation, total compensation costs and the cost-basis of doing business (general overhead), then we understand why employment isn’t coming back in the U.S.

The tension between Central Banks that we noted yesterday continues to worsen. This time it was China and the EU, not just Germany, that fired warning shots at the US Fed.

A senior Chinese official said on Friday that the United States should cut back on printing money to stimulate its economy if the world is to have confidence in the dollar.

Asked whether he was worried about the dollar, the chairman of China’s sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation, Jin Liqun, told the World Economic Forum in Davos: “I am a little bit worried.”

“There will be no winners in currency wars. But it is important for a central bank that the money goes to the right place,” Li said.

Speaking at the same session, French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici voiced concern that the euro was becoming overvalued as a result of quantitative easing and other stimulus actions taken by other nations’ central banks.

“Certainly, the level of the euro is high and creates some problem,” he said, attributing the single currency’s recent gains partly to the return of confidence created by the European Central Bank and euro zone governments in starting to overcome Europe’s debt crisis.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/25/us-davos-currencies-idUSBRE90O10620130125

So first Germany begins pulling its Gold reserves from the US, and now China and the EU are saying publicly that the Fed’s policies are damaging confidence in the US Dollar.

This does not bode well for the financial system. The primary role of Central Banks is to maintain confidence in the system. If the Central Banks begin to turn on one another it is only a matter of time before the system breaks down.

Remember, every time the Fed debases the US Dollar it forces the Euro and other currencies higher, hurting those countries’ exports. The Fed has recently announced it will be printing $85 billion every month until employment reaches 6.5% (obviously the Fed is ignoring the mountains of data that indicate QE doesn’t create jobs).

How long will the other Central Banks tolerate this before they initiate a currency war? Both Germany and China have fired warning shots at the Fed. And we all know that just beneath the veneer of goodwill, tensions are building between the primary players of the global financial system.

We offer several FREE Special Reports to help investors navigate this risks and others in the financial system. They include:

Preparing Your Portfolio For Obama’s Economic Nightmare

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This article was published in partnership with GlobalPossibilities.org.

How do you keep consumers in the dark about the horrors of factory farms? By making it an “act of terrorism” for anyone to investigate animal cruelty, food safety or environmental violations on the corporate-controlled farms that produce the bulk of our meat, eggs and dairy products.

And who better to write the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, designed to protect Big Ag and Big Energy, than the lawyers on the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force at the corporate-funded and infamous American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska are the latest states to introduce Ag-Gag laws aimed at preventing employees, journalists or activists from exposing illegal or unethical practices on factory farms. Lawmakers in 10 other states introduced similar bills in 2011-2012.  The laws passed in three of those states: Missouri, Iowa and Utah.  But consumer and animal-welfare activists prevented the laws from passing in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York and Tennessee.

In all, six states now have Ag-Gag laws, including North Dakota, Montana and Kansas, all of which passed the laws in 1990-1991, before the term “Ag-Gag” was coined.

Ag-Gag laws passed 20 years ago were focused more on deterring people from destroying property, or from either stealing animals or setting them free. Today’s ALEC-inspired bills take direct aim at anyone who tries to expose horrific acts of animal cruelty, dangerous animal-handling practices that might lead to food safety issues, or blatant disregard for environmental laws designed to protect waterways from animal waste runoff. In the past, most of those exposes have resulted from undercover investigations of exactly the type Big Ag wants to make illegal.

Wyoming’s HB 0126 is the perfect example of a direct link between an undercover investigation of a factory farm and the introduction of an Ag-Gag law. The bill was introduced mere weeks after nine factory workers at Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods, were charged with animal cruelty following an undercover investigation by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS). HSUS activists videotaped workers kicking live piglets, swinging them by their hind legs and beating and kicking mother pigs. Charges were filed in late December. In January, State Rep. Sue Wallis and Senator Ogden Driskill introduced Wyoming’s Ag-Gag bill which would make it a criminal act to carry out investigations such as the one that exposed the cruelty at Wyoming Premium Farms.

Wallis and Driskill both have ties to Big Ag. Wallis was the subject of a conflict-of-interest complaint filed in 2010 by animal welfare groups. The groups accused her of improper and fraudulent abuse of her position as a legislator after she introduced a bill allowing the Wyoming Livestock Board to send stray horses to slaughter. At the time she introduced the bill, Wallis also was planning to develop a family-owned horse slaughter plant in the state. Both Wallis and Driskill are members of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association. Driskill has acceptedpolitical contributions from the livestock industry and Exxon Mobil, a member of ALEC.

Most of the Ag-Gag laws introduced since 2011 borrow the premise, if not the exact language, from model legislation designed by ALEC. ALEC’s sole purpose is to write model legislation that protects corporate profits. Industry then pushes state legislators to adapt the bills for their states and push them through. The idea behind the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act is to make it illegal to “enter an animal or research facility to take pictures by photograph, video camera, or other or other means with the intent to commit criminal activities or defame the facility or its owner.”

In other words, these laws turn journalists and the investigators of crimes into criminals.

Many of the legislators involved in ramming through state Ag-Gag bills have ties to ALEC, including Missouri’s Rep. Casey Guernsey. Guernsey’s top donor in 2010 was Smithfield Foods, itself a target of undercover investigations that exposed widespread abuse of pigs. Of the 60 Iowa lawmakers who voted for Iowa’s Ag-Gag laws, at least 14 of them, or 23%, are members of ALEC

ALEC’s interest in large-scale factory farm operations, or in industry-speak, Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), can be traced to one of its staunchest members, Koch Industries. Koch Industries once owned the Koch Beef Company, one of the largest cattle feeders in the U.S. When neighbors of one of the company’s huge cattle-feeding operations opposed a planned expansion, claiming it would pose health concerns, Koch persuaded local legislators to rule in its favor. ALEC subsequently wrote the “Right to Farm Act,” a bill to bar lawsuits by citizens claiming that neighboring farms, including industrial farms, are fouling their air and water. 

Ag-Gag bills a threat to animals, public health and the environment

Under U.S. laws, farm animals don’t get the same protection as other animals, such as dogs and cats. Anti-free speech Ag-Gag bills only serve to leave farm animals even more vulnerable to the routine pain and suffering on factory farms. The three federal statutes that address animal welfare, including the U.S. Animal Welfare Act, do not apply to animals raised for food. The Humane Methods of Slaughter Act regulates animals raised for food, but applies exclusively to slaughterhouses, where animals may spend only a short time before they are killed. That leaves the states to regulate the often-barbarous treatment of animals raised for food.

But as we’ve seen with the Ag-Gag bills, state laws often are written by big corporations. Nowhere is that more obvious than in states where cruel methods of treating animals are exempted from state laws on the basis of their being classified as “customary.” Who decides if a certain practice is “customary” even if most thinking people would consider that practice cruel? Corporations that own and operate CAFOs in that state.

Apart from the obvious ethical concerns, Ag-Gag laws also threaten public health and the environment, and undermine workers’ rights and free speech laws. Undercover investigations at factory farms have exposed the mishandling of meat, eggs and milk in ways that could potentially lead to health risks including mad cow disease, salmonella, e-coli and others. One investigation in Chino, Calif., revealed widespread mistreatment of “downed” cows — cows that are too sick or injured to walk. The facility is the second-largest supplier of beef to USDA’s Commodity Procurement Branch, which distributes the beef to the National School Lunch Program.

Ag-Gag bills also keep employees and others from blowing the whistle on environmental violations. Huge amounts of waste are generated by the billions of cows, pigs and chickens on factory farms. Much of that waste, full of antibiotics, growth promoters and synthetic hormones, finds its way into our waterways and municipal water supplies. State and federal laws require CAFOs to minimize their environmental damage, but the laws are often not enforced. One of the ways to expose violations is through undercover investigations.

And then there’s the matter of free speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has been an outspoken opponent of Ag-Gag bills. In a letter opposing the proposed Ag-Gag law in New Hampshire, the executive director of the New Hampshire Civil Liberties Union wrote that the proposed law “has serious implications for two fundamental rights protected by the U.S. and New Hampshire constitutions: the right to freedom of expression and the right against self-incrimination.”

There’s still time to stop Ag-Gag laws in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska

The majority of Americans see Ag-Gag laws for what they are: just another attack on consumers’ right to know. According to a poll conducted last year by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 71% of Americans oppose the laws. When consumers learn that 99% of the animals raised for food are raised in factory farms, they generally agree that lawmakers should focus on strengthening animal cruelty laws, not prosecuting the whistleblowers.

It was public outrage that killed proposed bills in seven states last year. Here are the three latest bills to be introduced, and links to petitions telling lawmakers in New Hampshire, Wyoming and Nebraska to reject the proposed laws:

New Hampshire: HB110 

Primary sponsor: Bob Haefner (R) ; Co-sponsors: Majority Leader Steve Shurtleff (D), Rep. Tara Sad (D), Senator Sharon Carson (R), and Bob Odell (R)

This is a 7-line bill written to look as if its main concern is the protection of animals. However the bill would require whistleblowers to report animal abuse and turn over videotapes, photographs and documents within 24 hours or face prosecution — a clear attempt to intimidate and deter people from conducting undercover investigations. Lawmakers know that in order for anyone to prove a pattern of abuse in factory farms, they must document repeated instances of cruelty. A video or photograph of only one instance will be dismissed as a one-time anomaly, which will get the agribusiness company off the hook.

Sign the petition to stop New Hampshire’s Ag-Gag bill.

Wyoming: HB0126 

Co-sponsors: Rep. Sue Wallis (R), Sen. Ogden Driskill (R)

Introduced within weeks after nine workers at a Wyoming factory farm werecharged with abuse. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Sue Wallis, is planning to build horse slaughterhouses in Wyoming and other states. If this bill had been law in 2012, it would have prevented activists from exposing horrific acts of cruelty at Wheatland, WY-based Wyoming Premium Farms, a supplier to Tyson Foods. 

Sign the petition to stop Wyoming’s Ag-Gag bill.

Nebraska: LB 204http://openstates.org/ne/bills/103/LB204/

Introduced by Sen. Tyson Larson (R), Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh (R), and Sen. Ken Schilz (R)

The bill would make it a Class IV felony for any person to obtain employment at an animal facility with the broadly defined “intent to disrupt the normal operations,” It would require animal abuse reports to be filed within 12 hours. Co-sponsor Sen. Launtenbaugh has advocated in the past for horse slaughtering.

Sign the petition to stop Nebraska’s Ag-Gag bill.

As Britain prepares to send hundreds of troops to West Africa to support French forces fighting Islamists in Mali, charities and human rights groups have warned of serious atrocities being committed on both sides of the conflict.

Reports from workers on the ground suggest child soldiers are being drafted into a war that is split down ethnic and geographical lines, and one that is threatening to turn into a major humanitarian crisis.

More than 2,000 French soldiers are currently supporting the army in Mali after Islamist fighters seized hold of several regions in the North more than nine months ago.

Malian soldiers boarding a French Transall military plane in Bamako, Mali

“We are winning in Mali,” French President Francois Hollande told a news conference on Monday, after armed forces secured the key city of Timbuktu.

While news footage showed local Malians celebrating the departure of the Islamists and cheering the French, the situation is far more complicated than some bulletins suggest.

Phillipe Bolopion, the UN Director of Human Rights Watch, told the Huffington Post UK the organisation was documenting “serious evidence of multiple killings by the Malian army”, recounting how bodies are dumped and wilfully ignored by the local police.

Malian soldiers walking through the rubble of a former army base leveled during fighting with Islamist rebels in Konna

Bolopion, speaking from Sévaré, a town in the Mopti Region of Mali, said a number of people from different ethnic groups were rounded up from around town and bus stations a few weeks ago and then slaughtered.

“The bodies were dumped in a well close to the Gendarmerie station and they are still there. No one is interested in investigating,” he said.

Islamist groups have been driven from the area, yet Bolopion painted a stark picture of the scene that will greet British troops, adding: “If Sevare is the test case of things to come in other liberated areas it is very worrying.”

“We are trying to piece it all together but the army are intimidating people and telling them not to talk. We told the Gendarmerie; ‘the bodies are still there, you can see them, but they say ‘why dont you ask my boss? or ‘it’s the fire service’s fault.’ And what this shows is there is no interest in investigation from local authorities.’

Malian soldiers outside Gao airport

His disturbing account follows a report by The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) alleging that the Malian army is responsible for at least 33 killings since Jan 10, particularly in the towns of Sévaré, Nioro, and Mopti.

Refugees have told of horrific atrocities committed by the Islamists too, with public whippings, children being recruited to fight and rebels chopping off people’s hands.

As displaced families struggle with the emotional and physical toll of what they have witnessed, both Save The Children and UNHCR have reported on how members of different ethnic communities blame each other for supporting the separatist rebellion which led to the present conflict.

Many of these people have already survived the worst food crisis in living memory and there are fears that the situation could develop into a major humanitarian crisis.

A burnt-out car in Konna after the fighting

Sévaré is not the only town that has seen conflict. Konna, in the centre of Mali, witnessed fierce fighting less than a week ago. Many of the town’s main buildings were razed to the ground after clashes between Malian army and rebel groups and then the French forces moved their troops in.

Bolopion claims they have collected evidence of civilian casulties after a French airstrike in Konna and said there had also been reports of people being taken away from the Malian army and turning up either dead or missing.

A crowd cheers the arrival of French soldiers in Timbuktu, in northern Mali

He said they had documented four civilians who were killed in the airstrike so far, with one woman, and three children, aged six, ten and 11.

He added: “Reports suggested there may be more but we did not have enough time to check as the Malian army did not allow it.”

There has been widespread frustration at the lack of access to the places where fighting has taken place, either to journalists or to people providing humanitarian aid. Al Jazeera’s Yasmine Ryan, who is in Mali, described the conflict as an ‘invisible war’ with no official death tolls for civilians or soldiers.

A French soldier guards the Timbuktu airport in Mali

Despite these accounts of violence, Tom McCormack of Save the Children said most people seem happy that the West has intervened.

Speaking from the capital Boloko, McCormack told the Huffington Post UK: “It seems most Malians accept that forceful intervention was needed and most people feel relieved that armed groups (Islamists) are gone.”

The brutal violence of these groups was documented in a January 2013 report by Amnesty, which told how Tuareg and Islamist armed opposition groups engaged in widespread rape and torture and killed of captured Malian soldier and recruited child soldiers.

“We dont have first hand reports but we are hearing stories of child soldiers being involved in the fighting, being lured into training camps with a little bit of money and being used in the conflict in various ways.”

McCormack said he thought the recent flurry of violence was now settling down into a “long simmering conflict” which came with its own set of challenges.

Angry crowds shout at suspected Islamist extremists in the back of an army truck in Gao

Thousands of people have been displaced by the fighting, with very few refugee camps and instead refugees staying with host families or extended relatives.

According to UNCHR some 380,000 people have fled northern Mali since the start of the conflict a year ago. This includes 230,000 who fled South, and more than 150,000 who are living as refugees in Mauritania, Niger, Burkina Faso and Algeria (despite the border being closed)

McCormack said this displacement threatens to push communities to breaking point. “These are some of the poorest people in the world and it wont take very much for people to be pushed over the edge,” he added.

“People have always been able to accept the many different ethnic groups in Malian society and prided themselves on getting along but these Islamist groups have proved really divisive.

“There’s an added factor of social strain now. A lot of people resent this, and blame the Touregs for this tension and some Northern Malians living down south fear they could be stigmatised and blamed for the crisis. People are pitted against people and there have been isolated cases where northern malians have been targeted.

“I fear there will be some social damage with reprisals as those in the south see it a chance to punish people in the north for the unrest.”

Hundreds of Malians looted stores in Timbuktu, saying the shops belonged to ‘Arabs’ and ‘terrorists’ linked to the radical Islamists who occupied the desert town for 10 months

This is supported by a report by the UNHCR which talks of “tension between ethnic communities” and appeals to community leaders and to the Malian authorities “to give urgent priority to initiatives to promote peace and reconciliation between various ethnic groups.”

Additionally both the Red Cross and Crescent and Plan International have raised concern over the developing humanitarian situation in the region. ICRCC have been involved in large scale food distribution in the north, amid shortages of fuel needed to power water pumps and lack of chemicals to treat the water.

Dr Krishnan of Plan International told the Huffington Post UK: “We, the global humanitarian community, have been struggling to raise money to help almost 400,000 people displaced by the fighting. We are asking for just one-third of the military budget — US$370 million. But as of this morning only 1% has been committed.”

Lindsay German of Stop the War Coalition told the Huffington Post UK that intervention in these kinds of situations never worked “because it doesnt address the problems and grievances people are facing on the ground.”

“Every time the government does a knee jerk reaction like this you know its not addressing the real problems.

“They need to address the inequality of people living there. Islamists do well in part in these regions because the state is not functioning for the people and they provide some sort of alternative for people who are very very poor.”

A French court has suspended Peugeot’s restructuring plan to slash thousands of jobs as unions gain an edge over the automaker’s misconduct.

According to PSA Peugeot Citroen on Tuesday, the Paris Court of Appeal ordered “the suspension of the restructuring in progress” until the company has consulted with workers at two sites belonging to automotive part manufacturer Faurecia.

The injunction comes a day after the General Confederation of Labor (CGT) union sent the appeal to court for Peugeot’s controversial plans to close the Aulnay plant near Paris and lay off 8,000 workers.

Despite the court ordering a temporary delay to the plan, Peugeot vows to continue talks with trade unions to reach an agreement on the cuts for its scheduled completion by March.

“The project was not suspended today because we are in a negotiating phase,” PSA spokesman said after the court ruling. He went on to say that the talks with Faurecia officials are set to begin soon.

The CGT called on workers to stage a strike over the layoffs on January 16 and 28, when hundreds of employees staged a sit-in at the Aulnay plant, paralyzing the 3,000-strong factory.

CGT officials say Peugeot started the false restructuring negotiations in November 2012, which gives employees at PSA Aulnay “absolutely nothing at all.” This comes while the management refuses “to address the demands of the employees.”

Peugeot fell under pressure from worldwide competition and experienced a drop in car sales in Europe in 2012.

French carmakers, since the European economic downturn in 2008, have tried to solve their problems with plummeting car sales through slashing capacity and cutting costs.

GVN/PKH

Gold fell $4.00 or 0.24% in New York yesterday and closed at $1,654.90/oz. Silver climbed to $31.30 in Asia before it eased off to $30.73 and finished with a loss of 1.09%.

Gold in USD, 1 Year — (Bloomberg)

Gold inched up on Tuesday as some investors judged the recent sell off overdone. Recent positive U.S. economic data is stirring misguided optimism of an economic recovery and may have led less aware investors to recently reduce allocations to gold.

Fitch’s rating agency said it is scaling back the chance of removing the U.S.’s AAA rating status, based on the recent deal reached on the debt limit. They cite this exercise in kicking the can down the road again as a reason to avoid the cut however they warned of continuing danger due to the appalling U.S. fiscal position.

Fitch said that the U.S. is not completely in the clear — which is putting it mildly. 

XAU/GBP, 1 Year — (Bloomberg)

England’s risk of a credit downgrade is said to have led to the sterling’s dive into a 13 month low against the euro and a 5 month low versus the greenback.

It also led to sterling falling 2.2% against gold in 2012 and those losses have accelerated in 2013 with sterling already down 2.4% in January alone. 

The U.S. Federal Open Market Committee meets today and tomorrow they will announce their policy statement but most economists expect their loose monetary stance to be unchanged which will support gold.

Economic data reporting today in the U.S. is the Case-Shiller 20-city Index (1400 GMT) and Consumer Confidence (1500 GMT).  ADP Employment, GDP, and a FOMC Rate Decision on tomorrow, Initial Jobless Claims, Personal Income and Spending, Core PCE Prices, the Employment Cost Index, and Chicago PMI on Thursday, and January’s jobs data, Michigan Sentiment, the ISM Index, and Construction Spending on Friday.

The Financial Times has said that the Bundesbank’s move to repatriate 674 tonnes of the German gold reserves from Paris and New York to Frankfurt is a victory for openness, transparency and for those who have campaigned for transparency in the gold market for years.

The FT said that the move is important –

“not for what it says about Germany’s faith in French or American vaults; nor for the cost of shifting 674 tonnes of gold; but because it is a major victory for transparency in the gold market.”

The move by the Bundesbank to be more transparent about the location of gold reserves was welcomed by the FT and the FT’s commodities correspondent Jack Farchy noted that while central banks should not have to reveal their trading strategies to the world, there is a world of difference between this and — 

“disclosing simple facts about your reserves — such as their quantity, where they are held, whether they have been lent or swapped, and so forth — with a delay if need be.”

XAU/EUR, 1 Year — (Bloomberg)

The article concluded:

“That the Bundesbank has been nudged into this new-found transparency must be chalked up as a victory for the groups of investors — most prominent among them, the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, or GATA — that have for years been asking central banks to reveal their activities in the gold market.”

“If central banks wish to refute suggestions from such groups that their gold does not exist, or that they are scheming to manipulate prices, they could do worse than to follow the Bundesbank’s lead.”

Those who have dismissed the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee or GATA as “conspiracy theorists” may now wish to apologise and acknowledge the documentation and evidence that GATA have amassed over the years.

GATA have long made a strong case that certain banks may have been manipulating gold and silver prices lower. In the same way that banks conspired to rig LIBOR and interest rates.

The CFTC in the U.S. has been investigating the allegations for some years but have yet to come to a conclusion or adjudicate, leading to concerns that their extensive and lengthy investigations will come to nought.

The FT article is an important development and may help bring about a free market in gold and silver prices. This should lead to a revaluation of precious metal prices to the higher levels that have been expected by more astute analysts for some time and which are merited due to the very strong fundamentals. 

The inflation adjusted highs for gold and silver of $2,400/oz and $140/oz remain likely medium term price targets.

NEWS
Gold Snaps Four-Day Decline Before Fed Meeting as Silver Gains – Bloomberg

Gold off 2-1/2 week low but Fed meeting weighs – Reuters

China regulator mulls launch of gold ETFs — Market Watch

Gold coins from 17th century found in pub — The Independent

Mint Rations 2013 Silver Maple Leaf Coins — Silver Coins Today

COMMENTARY
Buba’s New Era Of Openness On Its Gold — The Financial Times

Two major warnings from history for investors in 2013 — Money Week

Are we going to ignore the obvious? – GoldSeek

Fed To Create Gold Rally & Bond Plunge Next Week — King World News

The Day the Music Died — 24HGold

For breaking news and commentary on financial markets and gold, follow us onTwitter.

Don’t let the forces of regression dominate the media in 2013 – click here to support brave, independent reporting today by making a contribution to Truthout.

Washington, DC – As another debt-deal deadline looms this winter in Congress, an unusual alliance of lawmakers has joined forces to put the Pentagon budget under greater scrutiny and to end the almost carte blanche status it enjoyed in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In a letter last month to President Barack Obama and congressional leaders, 11 Democratic and 11 Republican lawmakers asked that Defense Department spending be put squarely on the table in the coming clashes over debt reduction.

“We believe that substantial defense savings can be achieved over the long term without compromising national security, through strategic reductions in the Pentagon’s budget,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Shifting fiscal and political pressures influence the emerging congressional coalition; approval ratings have hit historic lows among Americans upset by political gridlock.

But some military experts, both analysts who favor deeper spending cuts and those who oppose them, say there are additional reasons for the re-examination: The record federal debt, now at more than $16.4 trillion, has become a crucial priority that Pentagon leaders say affects military planning. At the same time, the national urgency over anti-terrorism has subsided as the Sept. 11 attacks recede into the chronological distance; the Iraq War has ended, the Afghanistan War is winding down and anti-terror efforts shift to new strongholds such as Mali and Yemen.

Lawrence Korb, who held a senior Pentagon post under President Ronald Reagan, sees a group of unlikely partners: Democrats who want to preserve social programs, tea party-backed Republicans focused on slashing the debt and libertarians aligned with Rep. Ron Paul — the Texas Republican and 2012 presidential candidate — who generally oppose U.S. military ventures abroad.

The congressional coalition has been at the center of a movement that’s stunted defense spending since its 2010 peak of $729 billion.

“The tide has turned,” Korb said.

First came the 2011 Budget Control Act, which imposed $487 billion in Pentagon funding cuts over a decade. It also directed Congress to find an additional $500 billion in reductions or accept forced across-the-board 8.6 percent cuts amounting to that total, now slated to start March 1.

Then, last July, the House of Representatives comfortably approved a one-year freeze on defense spending, with 89 Republicans joining 158 Democrats in voting for it. While the moratorium didn’t become law, it sent a signal that bipartisan resistance to unbridled military funding was rising.

Rep. Mick Mulvaney, a South Carolina Republican who helped spearhead the bipartisan letter, said it was intellectually dishonest for his party to protect the Pentagon while taking the knife to other large federal agencies.

“It undermines Republicans’ credibility on spending issues if we’re not willing to also look at the defense budget for possible savings,” said Mulvaney, who’s just starting his second term. “It’s hard to go home and say that we want to cut everything but not cut a penny on defense. People don’t believe that. More and more Republicans are willing to talk about this openly now.”

While the lawmakers who wrote last month’s letter have yet to get a response, the broader movement they represent alarms some defense analysts, who fear the pushback against military spending may go too far.

“By the time the Obama administration and Congress are done, we won’t have a big enough military to do what we need to do to remain a global power,” Thomas Donnelly, an analyst with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute in Washington, told McClatchy.

“A lot of people who are in favor of cutting the Pentagon budget want to see the United States play a lesser role in the world,” Donnelly said.

Korb, though, said the Pentagon could easily absorb an additional $500 billion in cuts over a decade, which he said would take its budget down to 2007 levels when adjusted for inflation. He’d like to see Obama, lawmakers and top military brass find the cuts instead of having them indiscriminately imposed across the board.

“The defense budget went up so rapidly, they didn’t have to make any hard choices,” said Korb, who’s now a national security analyst at the liberal Center for American Progress in Washington. “They had waste like I’ve never seen. They spent $50 billion on weapons that they then canceled. Their cost overruns on new weapons systems were $400 billion to $500 billion.”

Korb said the last time Congress had forced significant cuts in military spending was during Reagan’s second term, after passage of the 1985 Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act, following a large surge in Pentagon funding that the late president had championed to counter the Soviet Union.

Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who joined Mulvaney in leading the effort, said the major defense contractors made it difficult for lawmakers to back military spending cuts by spreading subcontractors and suppliers for huge weapons systems such as the F-35 fighter jet across virtually every state.

“Members (of Congress) don’t evaluate the need for weapons systems in terms of national security,” Ellison said. “They’re worried about families coming up to them and asking why they’re cutting jobs.”

Mulvaney cited Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the growing might of “the military-industrial complex” in the former World War II commander’s January 1961 farewell address.

“It is a problem for Republicans who think that defense spending creates jobs but other government spending doesn’t create jobs,” Mulvaney said. “That opens us up to charges of hypocrisy, and rightly so. We’re selective in our Keynesian philosophy.”

Keynesian economists, following the late John Maynard Keynes’ ideas, believe that government intervention is often necessary for sustained growth, especially during recessions and other economic downturns.

Some independent studies have indicated that Pentagon funding of big weapons systems has diminishing returns when it comes to job creation.

Total federal money to the five biggest defense contractors — Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon — increased by 10 percent from 2006 to 2011. But their combined number of employees dropped by 3 percent during the same period, according to a report last year by the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington.

The Pentagon budget rose from $421 billion in 2001 — that inflation-adjusted figure is in current dollars — to $711 billion in 2011, a 69 percent hike. The increases were used mainly to finance the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and other anti-terror initiatives.

The defense budget fell to $656 billion last year, mainly because of the cuts in the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone cost $1.4 trillion in the decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, with annual expenditures now declining thanks to the exit of most U.S. troops from Iraq and the ongoing drawdown in Afghanistan.

In last fall’s presidential campaign, Republican nominee Mitt Romney criticized Obama’s proposed future Pentagon funding levels and called for billions of dollars in new military spending.

Now some Republican senators have challenged Obama’s choice of former Sen. Chuck Hagel, himself a Republican, as defense secretary because of Hagel’s past opposition to the Iraq War and his recent calls for major decreases in Pentagon funding.

And lawmakers of both parties — especially those who represent heavy military states — warn of disastrous impacts on national security if the more than $500 billion in military cuts over 10 years proceeds under the forced spending reductions scheduled to begin March 1.

Rep. Tom McClintock, a California Republican who signed the Mulvaney-Ellison letter, said some calls for greater defense spending had baffled him.

“I’ve never understood why we continue to defend Europe from Russia more than two decades after the Soviet Union collapsed,” McClintock said. “We’re spending considerably more today, even inflation-adjusted, than we spent at the height of the Vietnam War, when we were facing down the Soviet Union and had 500,000 combat troops in the field.”

McClintock said the need to reduce the federal debt had made trimming military costs a necessity.

“Before you can provide for the common defense, you have to be able to pay for it. The ability of our country to do so is coming into grave doubt.”

When it comes to unfamiliar, far-off places, we trust our mainstream media to tell us what is going on with interminable conflicts raging through much of the world, and why–and most media trust Western governments’ explanations.

Thus, we learn that France (with the United States in the wings) intervened in the bloody upheavals besetting the West African country of Mali in order to help the government battle a threat as ubiquitous and expected as the old Red Menace: Al Qaeda.

But, as is usually true, things are not so simple. In fact, coming to grips with the searing civil war and foreign crisis du jour requires wading through multiple layers of tangled relationships–which threaten to turn the conflict into a yet another protracted, foreign-assisted internecine conflict.

Amid cinematic gun battles claiming the lives of dozens of Western hostages at a gas field in neighboring Algeria, the world may be finally waking up to the complexity of the Malian crisis. Yet many of those who have studied the region in depth saw it coming. “This has for a very long time been an accident waiting to happen,” says Professor David Anderson, an expert of African politics at St Cross College, the University of Oxford.

And no wonder. Because, as always seems to be the case, these benighted and barren provinces sit atop some rather spectacular wealth.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

West Side Story

The current conflict long predates (and ultimately will transcend) the recent-vintage Al Qaeda and all of its amorphous and poorly-defined franchise operations.

For decades now, the Tuaregs–a native Berber tribe whose members are spread across the vast expanse of the Sahara desert–have launched periodic rebellions to gain independence from Mali, Niger, Algeria and other countries in the region, whose territories incorporate lands the Tuaregs claim as their own.

The current crisis may be said to have its roots in another Western intervention, when France, the United States and allies–notably including Islamists with Al Qaeda ties–invaded Mali’s northern neighbor, Libya, under pretenses of protecting a domestic uprising and vanquished the quasi-socialist leader there, Muammar Qaddafi, who had, among other things angered Western financial and business interests. (For more on that poorly understood story, see WhoWhatWhy’s reports, here and here.)

Malian Tuaregs, reinforced by a large contingent of their well-trained and heavily armed non-AlQaedite brethren–who had escaped from Libya after their benefactor, Qaddafi, was routed in 2011—captured the entire northern part of the country early last year.

On April 6, 2012, the Tuaregs in the north declared independence for their territory–which is larger than the state of Texas. By early June, however, clashes had broken out between the secular Tuareg movement (its main representative being the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawa, or MNLA) and Islamists, some of whom are allied with an AQ variant that calls itself Al Qaeda in the Maghreb. The MNLA was pushed out of the main cities, and the Islamists took over the fight against the government.

But wait: things are still more complicated.

Each side consists of many different factions, and many splinter groups add to the complexity. According to some reports, for example, the attack on the Algerian gas field, which ostensibly took place in revenge for the French intervention in Mali, was in fact part of a power struggle between two large Islamist factions, led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar and Abelmalek Droukdel. The Islamist banner is considered by some nothing more than a “legitimate” overlay on a sprawling criminal network that ran kidnap, protection and tobacco smuggling rackets. This mano-a-mano spills over both sides of the border.

More Arcana, Then the Proverbial Pot ‘o Gold

In any case, the president of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure, was deposed in March 2012 by the Malian military–ostensibly as a result of his incompetent response to the Tuareg rebellion–an act that seems to have rent a dense web of local and regional relationships. To add a hint of tantalizing but obscure spice, several independent sources suggest that it was actually Toure, with regional and Western acquiescence, who had invited the radical Islamists to use the north as a base.

Consider, for example, the following report from the ground by May Ying Welsh, al-Jazeera’s correspondent:

Al-Qaeda has based itself in northern Mali for 10 years, as part of an alleged secret agreement with Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), the president of Mali who was deposed in a military coup in March 2012 as northern cities were falling to Tuareg rebels…. While ATT relied increasingly on ethnic militias and special units to crush Tuareg insurgency, the Malian army was starved and demoralised, its hungry soldiers forced to sell their weapons to eat, to watch AQIM parade before their barracks, and planes filled with cocaine landing near their bases. The system was rotten. Could they be blamed for overthrowing it?

Here’s the good news: the explanation for this behavior is simple.

If the Tuaregs in Mali’s north were to achieve independence, this would destabilize all neighboring countries that harbor significant Berber populations. The desert areas inhabited by the nomadic tribes, moreover, contain some of the largest concentrations of valuable natural resources in the world–including gold, uranium, oil, gas, and various industrial metals. Mali alone is the third largest producer of gold in Africa–despite being also one of the poorest countries in the world. According to the United Nations Human Development Index, it ranks 175^th of 187 countries, and the standard of living there is considerably below the average for sub-Saharan Africa.

Unlike the Tuaregs, most of the radical Islamists have little interest in independence–they fight largely for the establishment of sharia (Islamic law). For the most part, they are also ruthless against their rivals but avid trading partners–whether in the trade of hostages and cocaine (as has been the case in the region for the last several years) or in natural resources. Despite being a target of the post-9/11 War on Terror, they are often quietly preferred by members of the international community to the more secular local nomads.

It is a delicate balance. Neither the regional countries nor France can allow the Islamists to become too powerful, for fear that they would turn into a destabilizing factor themselves. Their push to take over southern Mali proved to be the last straw, leading to the current intervention.

According to Professor Anderson,

French concerns about wider regional stability are genuine, as are the worries of the Algerian government — who are a major target of some within Al Qaeda. France is the Western power with the strongest geo-political interests and financial investment here. The French have bases in Chad, to give but one example, and fear that instability in Algeria brings it too close to home. [Also they have] 6000 French citizens in Bamako [Mali] alone, [as well as significant] mining interests.

A “French Afghanistan”?

However, the situation could easily spin out of control and become a West African quagmire for France and the neighboring countries which are participating in the UN-sanctioned intervention. The Islamists have threatened to turn Mali into a “French Afghanistan,” and this appears to be more than an empty threat. Mali is almost twice the size of Afghanistan, and with its desert and mountainous terrain in the north, somewhat resembles its Asian counterpart. Central authority was never very well established in that part of the country, if at all.

Robert D. Kaplan, the noted foreign affairs analyst and correspondent, described in a recent Stratfor article his experiences in the region some years ago:

Here the Malian state did not exist. …These aren’t countries so much as city-states–Nouakchott, Bamako, Niamey, Ndjamena–with armies that try to keep some order in the far-flung, far less populated reaches. State armies never have ruled this desert; rather, they have maintained for much of the time a stable cease-fire with the Tuaregs there (often through integration of key Tuareg fighters into local military bases).

The mixture of rugged terrain, a vast expanse populated sparsely with nomadic tribes, and the presence of numerous militias with diverging agendas suggests that the war will be long, brutal and asymmetric.

Thus, when at the start of the operation the French government said that the military was going into Mali merely for several weeks, a colleague who specializes in Russia giggled. “This is exactly what the Russians said before they invaded Afghanistan,” he said. Mere days later, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that his country would continue to be involved in the conflict for “as long as necessary.”

And it all is redolent of foreign adventures past. According to a new report from a French-based human rights group, the “good guys,” i.e. the Malian army, may be carrying out summary executions and brutal abuses of civilians accused–often with no basis–of helping the rebels.

More recently, the MNLA–arguably the only indigenous force capable of taking on the Islamists–suggested through one of its leaders that it was willing to cooperate with the Western intervention forces.

It remains to be seen if a deal can be reached. It seems highly unlikely that the Malian government–or any of the international actors involved–would concede the MNLA’s demand for independence. On the other hand, the secular Tuaregs are reportedly afraid that, as has happened in the past, they will be the main victims of a war against Islamist terror. Given that both sides are under pressure, some sort of a compromise involving an increased autonomy in northern Mali may be possible.

By most accounts, a purely military solution imposed by foreign forces cannot hold. If the intervention forces hope to achieve their goal of stabilizing the country, they would need to negotiate with the Tuaregs and to address the deeper underlying issues. Unfortunately, so far there are few signs of that happening. And the deeper underlying issues do not play well with short-attentioned international audiences.

Oh, wait. Did we mention that there’s gold–and all kinds of amazing stuff, under the ground? Actually, when it comes to that subject, even a dauntingly complex stew like Afghanistan can seem very simple indeed.

Turkish Minister of Energy and Natural Sources Taner Yildiz says his country is satisfied with the unchanged level of gas trade with Iran.

“Iran successfully continues its performance on providing natural gas via pipeline. We are happy about the natural gas trade with Iran,” Yildiz said on Tuesday.

The minister stated that despite taking Iran to arbitration court over its gas price, the flow of the gas between the two countries has not been affected.

“We said we were not happy with the high gas price so we took Iran to international arbitration over the price paid for gas imports,” he added.

Iran’s natural gas is of crucial importance to Turkey, as it constitutes one-third of the country’s total natural gas imports. Turkey uses a significant portion of imported Iranian natural gas to generate electricity.

Iran, which owns the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia, is Turkey’s second-biggest supplier after Moscow.

In addition to exporting gas to Turkey, Armenia, and Pakistan, the country is currently negotiating gas exports to Iraq.

Turkey also imports oil from Iran.

PG/SS

Shakespeare’s Polonius offered this classic advice to his son: “neither a borrower nor a lender be.” Many of our nation’s Founding Fathers emphatically saw it otherwise. They often lived by the maxim: always a borrower, never a lender be. As tobacco and rice planters, slave traders, and merchants, as well as land and currency speculators, they depended upon long lines of credit to finance their livelihoods and splendid ways of life. So, too, in those days, did shopkeepers, tradesmen, artisans, and farmers, as well as casual laborers and sailors. Without debt, the seedlings of a commercial economy could never have grown to maturity.

Ben Franklin, however, was wary on the subject. “Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt” was his warning, and even now his cautionary words carry great moral weight. We worry about debt, yet we can’t live without it.

Debt remains, as it long has been, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of capitalism. For a small minority, it’s a blessing; for others a curse. For some the moral burden of carrying debt is a heavy one, and no one lets them forget it. For privileged others, debt bears no moral baggage at all, presents itself as an opportunity to prosper, and if things go wrong can be dumped without a qualm.

Those who view debt with a smiley face as the royal road to wealth accumulation and tend to be forgiven if their default is large enough almost invariably come from the top rungs of the economic hierarchy. Then there are the rest of us, who get scolded for our impecunious ways, foreclosed upon and dispossessed, leaving behind scars that never fade away and wounds that disable our futures. 

Think of this upstairs-downstairs class calculus as the politics of debt. British economist John Maynard Keynes put it like this: “If I owe you a pound, I have a problem; but if I owe you a million, the problem is yours.”

After months of an impending “debtpocalypse,” the dreaded “debt ceiling,” and the “fiscal cliff,” Americans remain preoccupied with debt, public and private. Austerity is what we’re promised for our sins. Millions are drowning, or have already drowned, in a sea of debt — mortgages gone bad, student loans that may never be paid off, spiraling credit card bills, car loans, payday loans, and a menagerie of new-fangled financial mechanisms cooked up by the country’s “financial engineers” to milk what’s left of the American standard of living.   

The world economy almost came apart in 2007-2008, and still may do so under the whale-sized carcass of debt left behind by financial plunderers who found in debt the leverage to get ever richer. Most of them still live in their mansions and McMansions, while other debtors live outdoors, or in cars or shelters, or doubled-up with relatives and friends — or even in debtor’s prison. Believe it or not, a version of debtor’s prison, that relic of early American commercial barbarism, is back. 

In 2013, you can’t actually be jailed for not paying your bills, but ingenious corporations, collection agencies, cops, courts, and lawyers have devised ways to insure that debt “delinquents” will end up in jail anyway. With one-third of the states now allowing the jailing of debtors (without necessarily calling it that), it looks ever more like a trend in the making.

Will Americans tolerate this, or might there emerge a politics of resistance to debt, as has happened more than once in a past that shouldn’t be forgotten?  

The World of Debtor’s Prisons

Imprisonment for debt was a commonplace in colonial America and the early republic, and wasn’t abolished in most states until the 1830s or 1840s, in some cases not until after the Civil War. Today, we think of it as a peculiar and heartless way of punishing the poor — and it was. But it was more than that.

Some of the richest, most esteemed members of society also ended up there, men like Robert Morris, who helped finance the American Revolution and ran the Treasury under the Articles of Confederation; John Pintard, a stock-broker, state legislator, and founder of the New York Historical Society; William Duer, graduate of Eton, powerful merchant and speculator, assistant secretary in the Treasury Department of the new federal government, and master of a Hudson River manse; a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge; army generals; and other notables.

Whether rich or poor, you were there for a long stretch, even for life, unless you could figure out some way of discharging your debts. That, however, is where the similarity between wealthy and impoverished debtors ended.

Whether in the famous Marshalsea in London where Charles Dickens had Little Dorritt’s father incarcerated (and where Dickens’s father had actually languished when the author was 12), or in the New Gaol in New York City, where men like Duer and Morris did their time, debtors prisons were segregated by class. If your debts were large enough and your social connections weighty enough (the two tended to go together) you lived comfortably. You were supplied with good food and well-appointed living quarters, as well as books and other pleasures, including on occasion manicurists and prostitutes. 

Robert Morris entertained George Washington for dinner in his “cell.” Once released, he resumed his career as the new nation’s richest man. Before John Pintard moved to New Gaol, he redecorated his cell, had it repainted and upholstered, and shipped in two mahogany writing desks.

Meanwhile, the mass of petty debtors housed in the same institution survived, if at all, amid squalor, filth, and disease. They were often shackled, and lacked heat, clean water, adequate food, or often food of any kind. (You usually had to have the money to buy your own food, clothing, and fuel.) Debtors in these prisons frequently found themselves quite literally dying of debt. And you could end up in such circumstances for trivial sums. Of the 1,162 jailed debtors in New York City in 1787, 716 owed less than twenty shillings or one pound. A third of Philadelphia’s inmates in 1817 were there for owing less than $5, and debtors in the city’s prisons outnumbered violent criminals by 5:1. In Boston, 15% of them were women. Shaming was more the point of punishment than anything else.

Scenes of public pathos were commonplace. Inmates at the New Gaol, if housed on its upper floors, would lower shoes out the window on strings to collect alms for their release. Other prisons installed “beggar gates” through which those jailed in cellar dungeons could stretch out their palms for the odd coins from passersby.

Poor and rich alike wanted out. Pamphleteering against the institution of debtor’s prison began in the 1750s. An Anglican minister in South Carolina denounced the jails, noting that “a person would be in a better situation in the French King’s Gallies, or the Prisons of Turkey or Barbary than in this dismal place.” Discontent grew. A mass escape from New Gaol of 40 prisoners armed with pistols and clubs was prompted by extreme hunger. 

In the 1820s and 1830s, as artisans, journeymen, sailors, longshoremen, and other workers organized the early trade union movement as well as workingmen’s political parties, one principal demand was for the abolition of imprisonment for debt. Inheritors of a radical political culture, their complaints echoed that Biblical tradition of Jubilee mentioned in Leviticus, which called for a cancellation of debts, the restoration of lost houses and land, and the freeing of slaves and bond servants every 50 years.

Falling into debt was a particularly ruinous affliction for those who aspired to modest independence as shopkeepers, handicraftsmen, or farmers. As markets for their goods expanded but became ever less predictable, they found themselves taking out credit to survive and sometimes going into arrears, often followed by a stint in debtor’s prison that ended their dreams forever. 

However much the poor organized and protested, it was the rich who got debt relief first. Today, we assume that debts can be discharged through bankruptcy (although even now that option is either severely restricted or denied to certain classes of less favored debt delinquents like college students). Although the newly adopted U.S. Constitution opened the door to a national bankruptcy law, Congress didn’t walk through it until 1800, even though many, including the well-off, had been lobbying for it.

Enough of the old moral faith that frowned on debt as sinful lingered. The United States has always been an uncharitable place when it comes to debt, a curious attitude for a society largely settled by absconding debtors and indentured servants (a form of time-bound debt peonage). Indeed, the state of Georgia was founded as a debtor’s haven at a time when England’s jails were overflowing with debtors.

When Congress finally passed the Bankruptcy Act, those in the privileged quarters at New Gaol threw a party. Down below, however, life continued in its squalid way, since the new law only applied to people who had sizable debts. If you owed too little, you stayed in jail. 

Debt and the Birth of a Nation

Nowadays, the conservative media inundate us with warnings about debt from the Founding Fathers, and it’s true that some of them like Jefferson — himself an inveterate, often near-bankrupt debtor — did moralize on the subject. However, Alexander Hamilton, an idol of the conservative movement, was the architect of the country’s first national debt, insisting that “if it is not excessive, [it] will be to us a national blessing.”

As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton’s goal was to transform the former 13 colonies, which today we would call an underdeveloped land, into a country that someday would rival Great Britain. This, he knew, required liquid capital (resources not tied up in land or other less mobile forms of wealth), which could then be invested in sometimes highly speculative and risky enterprises. Floating a national debt, he felt sure, would attract capital from well-positioned merchants at home and abroad, especially in England.

However, for most ordinary people living under the new government, debt aroused anger. To begin with, there were all those veterans of the Revolutionary War and all the farmers who had supplied the revolutionary army with food and been paid in notoriously worthless “continentals” — the currency issued by the Continental Congress — or equally valueless state currencies.

As rumors of the formation of a new national government spread, speculators roamed the countryside buying up this paper money at a penny on the dollar, on the assumption that the debts they represented would be redeemed at face value. In fact, that is just what Hamilton’s national debt would do, making these “sunshine patriots” quite rich, while leaving the yeomanry impoverished.

Outrage echoed across the country even before Hamilton’s plan got adopted. Jefferson denounced the currency speculators as loathsome creatures and had this to say about debt in general: “The modern theory of the perpetuation of debt has drenched the earth with blood and crushed its inhabitants under burdens ever accumulating.” He and others denounced the speculators as squadrons of counter-revolutionary “moneycrats” who would use their power and wealth to undo the democratic accomplishments of the revolution.

In contrast, Hamilton saw them as a disinterested monied elite upon whom the country’s economic well-being depended, while dismissing the criticisms of the Jeffersonians as the ravings of Jacobin levelers. Soon enough, political warfare over the debt turned founding fathers into fratricidal brothers.  

Hamilton’s plan worked — sometimes too well. Wealthy speculators in land like Robert Morris, or in the building of docks, wharves, and other projects tied to trade, or in the national debt itself — something William Duer and grandees like him specialized in — seized the moment. Often enough, however, they over-reached and found themselves, like the yeomen farmers and soldiers, in default to their creditors. 

Duer’s attempts to corner the market in the bonds issued by the new federal government and in the stock of the country’s first National Bank represented one of the earliest instances of insider trading. They also proved a lurid example of how speculation could go disastrously wrong.  When the scheme collapsed, it caused the country’s first Wall Street panic and a local depression that spread through New England, ruining “shopkeepers, widows, orphans, butchers… gardeners, market women, and even the noted Bawd Mrs. McCarty.”   

A mob chased Duer through the streets of New York and might have hanged or disemboweled him had he not been rescued by the city sheriff, who sent him to the safety of debtor’s prison. John Pintard, part of the same scheme, fled to Newark, New Jersey, before being caught and jailed as well.

Sending the Duers and Pintards of the new republic off to debtors’ prison was not, however, quite what Hamilton had in mind. And leaving them rotting there was hardly going to foster the “enterprising spirit” that would, in the treasury secretary’s estimation, turn the country into the Great Britain of the next century. Bankruptcy, on the other hand, ensured that the overextended could start again and keep the machinery of commercial transactions lubricated. Hence, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800.

If, however, you were not a major player, debt functioned differently. Shouldered by the hoi polloi, it functioned as a mechanism for funneling wealth into the mercantile-financial hothouses where American capitalism was being incubated.

No wonder debt excited such violent political emotions. Even before the Constitution was adopted, farmers in western Massachusetts, indebted to Boston bankers and merchants and in danger of losing their ancestral homes in the economic hard times of the 1780s, rose in armed rebellion. In those years, the number of lawsuits for unpaid debt doubled and tripled, farms were seized, and their owners sent off to jail. Incensed, farmers led by a former revolutionary soldier, Daniel Shays, closed local courts by force and liberated debtors from prisons. Similar but smaller uprisings erupted in Maine, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, while in New Hampshire and Vermont irate farmers surrounded government offices. 

Shays’ Rebellion of 1786 alarmed the country’s elites. They depicted the unruly yeomen as “brutes” and their houses as “sties.” They were frightened as well by state governments like Rhode Island’s that were more open to popular influence, declared debt moratoria, and issued paper currencies to help farmers and others pay off their debts. These developments signaled the need for a stronger central government fully capable of suppressing future debtor insurgencies.

Federal authority established at the Constitutional Convention allowed for that, but the unrest continued. Shays’ Rebellion was but part one of a trilogy of uprisings that continued into the 1790s. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was the most serious. An excise tax (“whiskey tax”) meant to generate revenue to back up the national debt threatened the livelihoods of farmers in western Pennsylvania who used whiskey as a “currency” in a barter economy.  President Washington sent in troops, many of them Revolutionary War veterans, with Hamilton at their head to put down the rebels. 

Debt Servitude and Primitive Accumulation

Debt would continue to play a vital role in national and local political affairs throughout the nineteenth century, functioning as a form of capital accumulation in the financial sector, and often sinking pre-capitalist forms of life in the process. 

Before and during the time that capitalists were fully assuming the prerogatives of running the production process in field and factory, finance was building up its own resources from the outside. Meanwhile, the mechanisms of public and private debt made the lives of farmers, craftsmen, shopkeepers, and others increasingly insupportable.

This parasitic economic metabolism helped account for the riotous nature of Gilded Age politics. Much of the high drama of late nineteenth-century political life circled around “greenbacks,” “free silver,” and “the gold standard.” These issues may strike us as arcane today, but they were incendiary then, threatening what some called a “second Civil War.” In one way or another, they were centrally about debt, especially a system of indebtedness that was driving the independent farmer to extinction.

All the highways of global capitalism found their way into the trackless vastness of rural America. Farmers there were not in dire straits because of their backwoods isolation. On the contrary, it was because they turned out to be living at Ground Zero, where the explosive energies of financial and commercial modernity detonated. A toxic combination of railroads, grain-elevator operators, farm-machinery manufacturers, commodity-exchange speculators, local merchants, and above all the banking establishment had the farmer at their mercy. His helplessness was only aggravated when the nineteenth-century version of globalization left his crops in desperate competition with those from the steppes of Canada and Russia, as well as the outbacks of Australia and South America.

To survive this mercantile onslaught, farmers hooked themselves up to long lines of credit that stretched back to the financial centers of the East. These lifelines allowed them to buy the seed, fertilizer, and machines needed to farm, pay the storage and freight charges that went with selling their crops, and keep house and home together while the plants ripened and the hogs fattened. When market day finally arrived, the farmer found out just what all his backbreaking work was really worth. If the news was bad, then those credit lines were shut off and he found himself dispossessed.

The family farm and the network of small town life that went with it were being washed into the rivers of capital heading for metropolitan America. On the “sod house” frontier, poverty was a “badge of honor which decorated all.” In hisDevil’s Dictionary, the acid-tongued humorist Ambrose Bierce defined the dilemma this way: “Debt. n. An ingenious substitute for the chain and whip of the slave-driver.”

Across the Great Plains and the cotton South, discontented farmers spread the blame for their predicament far and wide. Anger, however, tended to pool around the strangulating system of currency and credit run out of the banking centers of the northeast. Beginning in the 1870s with the emergence of the Greenback Party and Greenback-Labor Party and culminating in the 1890s with the People’s or Populist Party, independent farmers, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, small businessmen, and skilled workers directed ever more intense hostility at “the money power.”

That “power” might appear locally in the homeliest of disguises. At coal mines and other industrial sites, among “coolies” working to build the railroads or imported immigrant gang laborers and convicts leased to private concerns, workers were typically compelled to buy what they needed in company scrip at company stores at prices that left them perpetually in debt. Proletarians were so precariously positioned that going into debt — whether to pawnshops or employers, landlords or loan sharks — was unavoidable. Often they were paid in kind: wood chips, thread, hemp, scraps of canvas, cordage: nothing, that is, that was of any use in paying off accumulated debts. In effect, they were, as they called themselves, “debt slaves.” 

In the South, hard-pressed growers found themselves embroiled in a crop-lien system, dependent on the local “furnishing agent” to supply everything needed, from seed to clothing to machinery, to get through the growing season. In such situations, no money changed hands, just a note scribbled in the merchant’s ledger, with payment due at “settling up” time. This granted the lender a lien, or title, to the crop, a lien that never went away.

In this fashion, the South became “a great pawn shop,” with farmers perpetually in debt at interest rates exceeding 100% per year. In Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, 90% of farmers lived on credit. The first lien you signed was essentially a life sentence. Either that or you became a tenant farmer, or you simply left your land, something so commonplace that everyone knew what the letters “G.T.T.” on an abandoned farmhouse meant: “Gone to Texas.” (One hundred thousand people a year were doing that in the 1870s.) 

The merchant’s exaction was so steep that African-Americans and immigrants in particular were regularly reduced to peonage — forced, that is, to work to pay off their debt, an illegal but not uncommon practice. And that neighborhood furnishing agent was often tied to the banks up north for his own lines of credit. In this way, the sucking sound of money leaving for the great metropolises reverberated from region to region.

Facing dispossession, farmers formed alliances to set up cooperatives to extend credit to one another and market crops themselves. As one Populist editorialist remarked, this was the way “mortgage-burdened farmers can assert their freedom from the tyranny of organized capital.” But when they found that these groupings couldn’t survive the competitive pressure of the banking establishment, politics beckoned.

From one presidential election to the next and in state contests throughout the South and West, irate grain and cotton growers demanded that the government expand the paper currency supply, those “greenbacks,” also known as “the people’s money,” or that it monetize silver, again to enlarge the money supply, or that it set up public institutions to finance farmers during the growing season. With a passion hard for us to imagine, they railed against the “gold standard” which, in Democratic Party presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan’s famous cry, should no longer be allowed to “crucify mankind on a cross of gold.”

Should that cross of gold stay fixed in place, one Alabama physician prophesied, it would “reduce the American yeomanry to menials and paupers, to be driven by monopolies like cattle and swine.” As Election Day approached, populist editors and speakers warned of an approaching war with “the money power,” and they meant it. “The fight will come and let it come!”

The idea was to force the government to deliberately inflate the currency and so raise farm prices. And the reason for doing that? To get out from under the sea of debt in which they were submerged. It was a cry from the heart and it echoed and re-echoed across the heartland, coming nearer to upsetting the established order than any American political upheaval before or since. 

The passion of those populist farmers and laborers was matched by that of their enemies, men at the top of the economy and government for whom debt had long been a road to riches rather than destitution. They dismissed their foes as “cranks” and “calamity howlers.” And in the election of 1896, they won. Bryan went down to defeat, gold continued its pitiless process of crucifixion, and a whole human ecology was set on a path to extinction.

The Return of Debt Servitude

When populism died, debt — as a spark for national political confrontation — died, too. The great reform eras that followed — Progessivism, the New Deal, and the Great Society — were preoccupied with inequality, economic collapse, exploitation in the workplace, and the outsized nature of corporate power in a consolidated industrial capitalist system.

Rumblings about debt servitude could certainly still be heard. Foreclosed farmers during the Great Depression mobilized, held “penny auctions” to restore farms to families, hanged judges in effigy, and forced Prudential Insurance Company, the largest land creditor in Iowa, to suspend foreclosures on 37,000 farms (which persuaded Metropolitan Life Insurance Company to do likewise). A Kansas City realtor was shot in the act of foreclosing on a family farm, a country sheriff kidnapped while trying to evict a farm widow and dumped 10 miles out of town, and so on.

Urban renters and homeowners facing eviction formed neighborhood groups to stop the local sheriff or police from throwing families out of their houses or apartments. Furniture tossed into the street in eviction proceedings would be restored by neighbors, who would also turn the gas and electricity back on. New Deal farm and housing finance legislation bailed out banks and homeowners alike. Right-wing populists like the Catholic priest Father Charles Coughlin carried on the war against the gold standard in tirades tinged with anti-Semitism. Signs like one in Nebraska — “The Jew System of Banking” (illustrated with a giant rattlesnake) — showed up too often.

But the age of primitive accumulation in which debt and the financial sector had played such a strategic role was drawing to a close. 

Today, we have entered a new phase. What might be called capitalist underdevelopment and once again debt has emerged as both the central mode of capital accumulation and a principal mechanism of servitude. Warren Buffett (of all people) has predicted that, in the coming decades, the United States is more likely to turn into a “sharecropper society” than an “ownership society.”

In our time, the financial sector has enriched itself by devouring the productive wherewithal of industrial America through debt, starving the public sector of resources, and saddling ordinary working people with every conceivable form of consumer debt.

Household debt, which in 1952 was at 36% of total personal income, had by 2006 hit 127%. Even financing poverty became a lucrative enterprise. Taking advantage of the low credit ratings of poor people and their need for cash to pay monthly bills or simply feed themselves, some check-cashing outlets, payday lenders, tax preparers, and others levy interest of 200% to 300% and more. As recently as the 1970s, a good part of this would have been considered illegal under usury laws that no longer exist. And these poverty creditors are often tied to the largest financiers, including Citibank, Bank of America, and American Express.

Credit has come to function as a “plastic safety net” in a world of job insecurity, declining state support, and slow-motion economic growth, especially among the elderly, young adults, and low-income families. More than half the pre-tax income of these three groups goes to servicing debt. Nowadays, however, the “company store” is headquartered on Wall Street.

Debt is driving this system of auto-cannibalism which, by every measure of social wellbeing, is relentlessly turning a developed country into an underdeveloped one.  

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are back.  Is a political resistance to debt servitude once again imaginable?

North Korea is now more than a blank square on Google Maps. The company has revised its maps application and added what it says is the most detailed plan of one of the most isolated countries in the world.

­Until Tuesday the only spot labeled in North Korean territory was its capital Pyongyang. Now the update shows not only roads, railway stations, hotels and restaurants, but also the country’s several city-sized “gulags”. When zoomed in the grey-colored camps can be easily identified.

In the country’s northeast, for instance, Google has labeled what it calls the “Hwasong Gulag.” It’s cut through by a street called Gulag 16 Road, after the Gulag 16 Checkpoint that is also labeled on the new map. The first user reviews are mostly ironic. One of the “tips” suggests avoiding the checkpoint if “cavity searches” is not “your cup of tea” and proceeding straight to the gulag.  

According to a Google post, the map is a work of “a community of citizen cartographers” that voluntarily have been working on it through an interface known as Google Map Maker since 2009. In the case of North Korea, where access to the full-blown internet is restricted, almost all of a limited number of volunteers were working from outside of the country. They used information that was already public, bringing together details from analog and satellite maps. The data was fact-checked in a similar process to that used by Wikipedia.

“As a result, the world can access maps of North Korea that offer much more information and detail than before,” Jayanth Mysore, a senior product manager at Google Map Maker said in the statement posted Monday.  

However, the new map is said to have less information than other maps created by private efforts with the help of a different Google product, the satellite image program Google Earth. One of the maps was created by Curtis Melvin, who runs the North Korea Economy Watch blog. He also spent years spotting landmarks in North Korea.

In addition to a lack of information, the map fails to provide routes from one spot to another.

“We know this map is not perfect,” Google said in a statement, calling for people from around the world to continue helping to improve the maps’ quality.

As for who is to benefit from the new service the Google Map creators expect that it is most likely to be users from South Korea.

“While many people around the globe are fascinated with North Korea, these maps are especially important for the citizens of South Korea who have ancestral connections or still have family living there,” Mysore wrote.

With the two countries still technically at war, decent maps of the North are reportedly almost impossible to obtain in South Korea.

The release of the maps comes just weeks after Google Chairman, Eric Schmidt, visited Pyongyang. But his visit was unrelated to the map roll-out, a Google spokesman said.

Before (Image from Google Maps)

After (Image from Google Maps)

Protesters have taken to the streets in the US city of Anaheim to demand an investigation into the police department’s alleged use of excessive brutality, Press TV reports.

A group of community members in the California city staged the rally outside the Anaheim police department to protest at police brutality and excessive force, calling on federal investigators to examine the recurring fatal police shootings.

“A lot of these people don’t have family members or friends that were killed but it’s just an outraged community,” said Louise Sanchez, with the Anaheim Crusaders, adding that the “police department will see more [protests] if something doesn’t get done.”

Activists criticized the district attorney’s office for failing to cite a single officer with wrongful homicide in connection with shootings that occurred while on duty.

“They call it ‘justified homicide’. There was no investigation. They kicked around the crime scene. They let him go,” said Corie Cline whose brother was killed by Anaheim police five years ago.

“It’s gotten worse. It wasn’t like this, years ago. There is a lot of racial profiling going on. You look a certain way and you get treated different. You get pulled over, you get harassed,” said Sanchez.

Protesters went on to demand an investigation into the police department’s long history of violence, with five fatal shootings occurring just in the past 12 months.

“They will reopen [all cases] and they will see that all the evidence has been mixed around. I want justice. We want transparency and most of all we need to keep it peaceful,” said Cline, adding that the yearlong protests will continue until “our voices get heard.”

GMA/PKH

The confrontation of the two branches of power in Russia between September 21 and October 4, 1993 resulted in forceful termination of the Soviet type power structure, in existence since 1917 (RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko)

Russian lawmakers have urge stability in the development of the country’s political system and say that anything other than should end in punishment.

“Stability is most important. It largely depends on us, what the political process [in Russia] will be like,” said Vladimir Vasiliyev, the head of the United Russia’s fraction in the Duma.

Revolution “mercilessly devours anyone who is keen on it,” the MP added speaking at a meeting of the recently created Council of Non-parliamentary Parties. He said that in the past the country has gone through a turbulent period of transition from the Soviet era to a new type of state.

It’s estimated up to two million Russians every year choose to live abroad and the main reason for that is “lack of stability,” Vasiliyev admitted.

Any breaches of the law will “certainly be punished,” as one person’s freedom ends where another person’s freedom begins, the majority party member emphasized.

Russia “doesn’t need any revolutions again,” even if parties will have to give up their political ambitions for that, agreed Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of Liberal-Democrats.

Members of the parliament along with representatives of about 30 political parties that have no seats in the Duma gathered on Tuesday to have their say on amendments to the Russian electoral law.

Earlier in December, President Vladimir Putin suggested the return to a mixed system of parliamentary elections. That would mean that half of the seats in the 450-member house would be filled on a proportional basis based on the number of votes each party gets. The other half of deputy mandates would go to candidates elected through direct voting.

The country’s political life has been active following the 2011 Duma election, when thousands took to streets to protest alleged vote fraud. The government, for its part, vowed to organize a dialogue with the opponents. The creation of the Non-parliamentary Parties’ Council was aimed to set up such a dialogue.

As part of an ongoing political reform, several crucial laws — including that on simpler registration for political parties — were adopted. As a result of that, the number of parties has increased dramatically.

It would appear that the hike in taxes on 77% of Americans that was heralded as a success, has dented confidence just a little. As the efficient stock market moves to all-time nominal highs in many cases, Consumer Confidence just fell off a cliff. The conference board printed at the worst level in 13 months – so all those 2012 gains are gone – and fell month-over-month by the most since the August 2011 fiscal cliff debacle. For every income levels (except those earning under $15k) confidence plunged with the $35k-$50k bracket crashing the most. It would appear that the driver of 70% of the US economy is not buying the new normal being fed to us daily by any and every media outlet possible. No matter how much the market is held up by mysterious runs in FX markets or volatility compression, it would appear that – just as we have been noting – the underlying macro fundamentals will eventually be priced in, as this does not bode well for retail sales.

Worst print in 13 months, biggest drop in 17 months…

Perhaps it is time for some reality-reversion…

and the other reality…

Chart: Bloomberg

WASHINGTON – January 29 – Demand Progress is praising the leadership of the House Oversight Committee — Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) — for demanding a briefing from the Department of Justice on the prosecution of Demand Progress co-founder Aaron Swartz. Their letter calling for such a briefing may be found here:

http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2013-01-28-DEI-EEC…

A renown technologist and Internet activist, Swartz tragically committed suicide earlier this month. He was being threatened with decades in prison for downloading too many academic journal articles. Swartz’s friends and family believe that the heavy-handed prosecution by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and her deputy Stephen Heymann helped compel him to take his own life.

According to Demand Progress executive director David Segal, “We commend Representatives Issa and Cummings for taking the first steps in an investigation into Aaron’s prosecution. We believe that a non-partisan inquiry into prosecutors’ handling of Aaron’s case will air important facts, demonstrate the over-breadth of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — under which he was prosecuted, and might even reveal misconduct on the part of the prosecutors who led the crusade against him.”

Additionally, Demand Progress has demanded that the Obama administration issue a response to an online petition — housed on the White House’s website — that calls for the firing of Ortiz. The petition broke through the 25,000 signature threshold which is supposed to guarantee a response from the President more than two weeks ago, but the White House has yet to issue a statement. Internet users can join in Demand Progress’s calls for a response — and for Ortiz’s firing — by visiting:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/wh_ortiz/

The White House petition may be found here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-…

According to Segal: “Thousands of Internet users have demanded answers. Congress is demanding answers. It’s time for the White House to respond and let us know if they’re going to do justice by Aaron and fire Ortiz.”

WASHINGTON – January 29 – Demand Progress is praising the leadership of the House Oversight Committee — Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) — for demanding a briefing from the Department of Justice on the prosecution of Demand Progress co-founder Aaron Swartz. Their letter calling for such a briefing may be found here:

http://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/2013-01-28-DEI-EEC…

A renown technologist and Internet activist, Swartz tragically committed suicide earlier this month. He was being threatened with decades in prison for downloading too many academic journal articles. Swartz’s friends and family believe that the heavy-handed prosecution by U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz and her deputy Stephen Heymann helped compel him to take his own life.

According to Demand Progress executive director David Segal, “We commend Representatives Issa and Cummings for taking the first steps in an investigation into Aaron’s prosecution. We believe that a non-partisan inquiry into prosecutors’ handling of Aaron’s case will air important facts, demonstrate the over-breadth of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — under which he was prosecuted, and might even reveal misconduct on the part of the prosecutors who led the crusade against him.”

Additionally, Demand Progress has demanded that the Obama administration issue a response to an online petition — housed on the White House’s website — that calls for the firing of Ortiz. The petition broke through the 25,000 signature threshold which is supposed to guarantee a response from the President more than two weeks ago, but the White House has yet to issue a statement. Internet users can join in Demand Progress’s calls for a response — and for Ortiz’s firing — by visiting:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/wh_ortiz/

The White House petition may be found here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/remove-united-states-district-…

According to Segal: “Thousands of Internet users have demanded answers. Congress is demanding answers. It’s time for the White House to respond and let us know if they’re going to do justice by Aaron and fire Ortiz.”

The irony of this little Sean Hannity rant is almost too much for one sitting. While calling President Obama “the Anointed One”, calling him a radical left-wing failure, and ranting about how the President wants to take away free speech, Hannity breathlessly (and shamelessly) claims that Fox News is the “only media channel that has delivered fair and balanced coverage” of the president.

He’s serious. He delivers that message with bright-eyed ferocity in response to the president’s fairly mild remarks to The New Republic in an interview last week. According to Hannity, the reason the country is divided is because President Obama’s rhetoric is too polarizing.

In Hannity’s world, the fact that someone dares to disagree with the Supreme Conservative Voices in this country means they’re a polarizing force responsible for all of the division in this country. No one else, and especially not Fox News, is responsible for any of the divide.

He ends with this: “While he’s so busy bashing the first and second amendments of the constitution, sorry, Mr. President, we’re going to continue on this program to do our part to save America from your radical agenda.”

Gee, that’s not divisive at all. Not even a little bit, right? The unbalanced rants of Sean Hannity are all the evidence anyone needs of who it is who divides, and who doesn’t.

We could tell readers’ that earlier today, just like two weeks ago when Beijing was blanketed by the worst smog on record, the official reading of Beijing air quality moved from “hazardous (at a 24 hour exposure at this level)” to the laughable “Beyond Index” reading (which maybe means Beijing needs a bigger index)…

… or we could just show these two pictures of Beijing before and after the smog: both taken at the same time, at the same place, with the only difference being the latest onslaught of what is now becoming a weekly occurrence of the worst breathing conditions recorded in any industrialized country. 

For those who want to learn more, here is the SCMP:

Key index from US Embassy shoots above 350 and authorities maintain ‘yellow’ smog warning amid growing calls for action against pollutants.

Air pollution went from bad to worse in Beijing, after residents of the capital and surrounding areas again found themselves inundated in thick smog, leading to broader calls for a solution.

On Tuesday morning, the US embassy’s air quality index (AQI) reading for Beijing stood at 495 and “hazardous” at 11am, after having reached 517, or “beyond index”, at 6am.

The index rates anything over 150 as “unhealthy”, over 300 as “hazardous”, while a reading above the upper limit of 500 is regarded as “beyond index”.

Meanwhile, the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre gave the figure at 10am as 393, indicating the air in the capital was “severely polluted”.

The centre says pollution across Beijing is expected to persist because there is little wind to disperse pollutants. It advises city residents to stay indoors as much as possible.

Yesterday municipal weather authorities retained the “yellow” smog warning as visibility remained below 3,000 metres.

Air quality index readings in much of downtown Beijing, as measured by the local environmental watchdog and the US embassy, shot above 350 yesterday – a significant increase from Sunday.

The US embassy’s air quality readings, published hourly on its Twitter feed, showed the level of PM2.5 rose drastically throughout the day to 496 at 4pm- far above the “hazardous” level of 300 micrograms per cubic metre.

The Beijing Municipal Environmental Centre, which is under the city’s Environmental Protection Bureau, rated air quality in most of the city as being seriously polluted, as PM2.5 readings fluctuated between 340 and 360.

When the level of PM2.5 in the air surpasses 100, it is deemed unhealthy for people with heart or lung disease, older adults and children, and those groups should reduce prolonged or heavy exertion, particularly outdoors, according to advice given by the US Embassy.

The smog also appeared to have spread farther to southeastern regions, with flight disruptions being reported yesterday morning at 10 mainland airports, including in Hebei’s Shijiazhuang and Henan’s Zhengzhou .

Visibility at the Shijiazhuang airport was reduced to around 100 metres, forcing the cancellation of at least seven flights, and in Zhengzhou more than 10,000 passengers were stranded by 11.30am, as up to 150 flights were either cancelled or delayed, China National Radio reports.

The good news for China is that unlike Japan it will not have to worry about such a petty concern as an aging population: all it needs to do is tell the plebs that the air is good and everyone should enjoy the lovely yellow day and poof: there go a few trillion in underfunded future pensions and entitlement benefits.

Nick Clegg took his revenge on David Cameron today by successfully killing Tory hopes of redrawing the electoral map in a way that would aid the prime minister’s reelection, prompting a serious rift between the coalition parties.

Lib Dem and Labour MPs cheered as they narrowly defeated by 334 votes to 292 an attempt by the Conservative Party to change the number and size of constituencies before 2015.

In an unprecedented move reflecting the split between coalition parties on the issue, Cameron agreed to suspend the requirement for government ministers to exercise collective responsibility for the vote.

To successfully win the vote, the prime minister needed to convince the six SNP MPs and the eight DUP MPs to join him — however he failed to get them on side.

Earlier this month Clegg ordered his peers to vote against their coalition colleagues in the House of Lords and side with Labour in order to successfully delay the planned boundary review until after 2015.

The changes would have seen see the number of MPs cut from 650 to 600. It is thought the new constituency borders would have helped Cameron win a crucial extra 20 seats.

The Conservative Party argues the current arrangement is unfair, as the party has to win a greater share of the national vote in order to win the same number of MPs as Labour.

The 2015 general election will now be conducted on the same constituency boundaries as the 2010 election that produced the current coalition.

Clegg initially supported the boundary review. But after Tory MPs killed off proposals to reform the House of Lords he took revenge by instructing his MPs and ministers to vote against it.

Tory MPs are furious at the deputy prime minister’s “betrayal”, arguing the Lib Dems were granted a referendum on changing the electoral system in exchange for supporting the boundary review.

Portsmouth North MP Penny Mordaunt told the Commons “there was never any obligation for Conservatives to support Lords reform” as she attacked the “spite, pettiness and self-interest”.

She said the Lib Dems had “exchanged their legendary sandals for flip-flops to keep their options open” for a coalition with Labour after 2015.

The Conservative leader of the Commons, Andrew Lansley, told MPs the Lib Dem alliance with Labour in the Lords was an “abuse of the parliamentary process”.

He said for unelected peers to try and “manipulate” the basis on which the Commons was elected was a “democratic travesty”.

According to the Labour Party four Tory MPs, David Davis, Philip Davies, Richard Shepherd and John Baron, voted with the Lib-Lab alliance.

Before the vote Philip Davies told HuffPost UK that while he was unimpressed with Clegg’s behaviour, he did not want to see his constituency be erased by the boundary review.

“How he has behaved is abysmal, It’s like a primary school child. It suits me on this issue but I don’t endorse his tactics,” he said.

Also on HuffPost:

Iran is close to becoming self-sufficient in producing jet fuel with the renovation of Abadan Oil Refinery, the oldest crude oil treatment facility in the Middle East.

Next week, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is expected to inaugurate the final phase of the development of Abadan Refinery in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

Along with the Residual Fluid Catalytic Cracking (RFCC) unit which will also come on stream at Shazand Refinery in central Iran to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in early February, Abadan Refinery will be producing 30 million liters per day (mlpd) of gasoline conforming with Euro-4 and Euro-5 standards.

Iran is currently a leading producer of jet fuel for passenger and cargo planes. The gasoline production unit of Abadan Oil Refinery would allow the production of fuel for helicopters, crop dusters and trainers.

The alkylation unit of Abadan Refinery is forecasted to produce 2 mlpd of fuel for helicopters.

Deputy Minister of Oil Alireza Zeighami said the Abadan Refinery upgrade would enhance the country’s gasoline octane to 95, raise sulfur and liquefied gas, and cut fuel oil production to 2.7 mlpd in the facility.

He put at nearly one billion dollars the total costs for design, manufacturing, installation and operation of the project and an adjacent power plant.

Iran plans to inaugurate three mega-projects at Shazand, Lavan and Abadan refineries by the end of the current Persian calendar year (ending March 20, 2013) to enhance the production of the country’s premium gasoline from 12 mlpd to 25 mlpd.

Iran attained self-sufficiency in fuel production after its international suppliers stopped selling gasoline under US pressure.

KA/SS

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has reiterated the Iranian authorities’ warning to regional countries against attempts to sow discord among them.

“Arrogant [powers] have said time and again that they seek to create a Greater Middle East and their sole objective is to save the Zionists and dominate the region once more,” Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with the visiting Chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI) Ammar Hakim in Tehran on Tuesday.

Ahmadinejad noted that the ongoing crises in the region are linked to the Western conspiracies which aim to guarantee their grip on the regional states.

Stressing the need for regional nations to be vigilant against the enemies’ plots aimed at stoking conflict among them, the Iranian president said, “Solidarity, integrity and attention to people’ conventional rights constitute the best solution to countering the enemies’ conspiracy.”

Ahmadinejad stated that the regional governments should act in a way to support all people and restore their rights.

“Governments should be standard-bearer in defending rights and prosperity of all people. No discrimination should be made between different ethnicities and groups of people.”

For his part, Hakim stated that arrogant powers are intent on triggering ethnic and sectarian conflict in Iraq to reach their own spiteful objectives in the war-wrecked country.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said, “Today the main policy of the global arrogance to counter [the wave of] Islamic Awakening is to sow discord and pit Muslims in Islamic countries against each other.”

KA/SS

Former General Aleksei Pukach of the Interior Ministry, charged with Ukrainian journalist Georgy Gongadze murder, seen listening to the reading of his sentence at the Pechersky district court, Kiev (RIA Novosti / Grigoriy Vasilenko)

Aleksey Pukach pleaded guilty to killing reporter Georgiy Gongadze in 2000 on the orders of then Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko.

On Tuesday the Pechory district court in the Ukrainian capital Kiev ruled Pukach was guilty of Gongadze’s murder and sentenced the former police general to life in prison.

Gongadze’s case touches upon the highest echelons of power in Ukraine and triggered the events that led to the so called Orange Revolution in 2004.

Soon after the journalist’s beheaded body was found in a forest near Kiev in 2000 an agent of the Ukrainian President’s security service, Nikolay Melnichenko leaked a number of audio recordings claiming that Leonid Kuchma, who was president at that time, asked police commanders “to sort Gongadze out”. The recordings were one of the most powerful tools used by the opposition in the ousting of Kuchma in 2004, dubbed by the media as the Orange Revolution.

The authenticity of the tapes provided by the former presidential bodyguard has been questioned, but eventually the Ukrainian court recognized the recordings as genuine.

Soon after the regime changed former Interior Minister Yuri Kravchenko killed himself leaving a note in which he claimed to be a victim of Kuchma’s political intrigue. However, the investigation into the murder case continued and led to a group of former policemen who became the main suspects. In 2008 three of them were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for taking part in the killing, but the ring leader, former General Aleksey Pukach, remained at large till 2009.

After Pukach was detained he started cooperating with investigators and pleaded guilty to strangling Gongadze on Kravchenko’s orders. During the trial he said that he did not intend to kill the journalist, but did so after Gongadze refused to stop his relentless criticism of the authorities, and after the killing Pukach said he cut off the head to hide the traces of the crime. Pukach also told the court that after the murder he went to the Interior Minister to report the killing.

The ex-general also claimed that he believed that Gongadze was a CIA agent with a mission to prevent Kuchma’s re-election as President.

The ex-general also said he thought the original orders came from Leonid Kuchma and the former head of t Ukrainian parliament Vladimir Litvin, but could not produce any evidence to support these claims. Both Kuchma and Litvin strongly deny their complicity in the murder.

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index is unique among other economic data indicators for recommending that analysts focus solely on its Non-seasonal adjusted data series, as this is what the report uses in its own headline figures. It adds that “for analytical purposes, S&P Dow Jones Indices publishes a seasonally adjusted data set covered in the headline indices” – a far cry from the BLS, whose Arima X 12 models are the basis of the data “moves” on a monthly basis: moves which are based not so much in the underlying data but on the seasonal adjustment and fudging the government employees apply to it. And it is the unadjusted Case Shiller data that showed that in November, the 20 City Composite index posted its second consecutive monthly price decline in a row. Yes: on a year over year basis home prices did rise some 5.5%, but on the other hand, “average home prices across the United States are back to their autumn 2003 levels for both the 10-City and 20-City Composites.” And while the price decline into the year end is somewhat seasonal, it certainly does not fit with all the other economic data released by the government showing a housing picture so bright not even the tiniest drops in prices were allowed.

And in what is the biggest paradox for homebuyers in New York, Case Shiller reported that of the 20 cities tracked, home prices rose everywhere… except New York, yet oddly enough it is in NY that the uber-wealthy from China and Russia come to park their money and buy any $50 million + available duplex, triplex and quadruplex regardless of price, and where the bubble at the ultra expensive end of the market is raging like never before (not to mention the record December Hamptons real estate prices).

Perhaps just as importantly, the bubble is back in the west:

In the 12 months ended in November, prices rose in 19 of the 20 cities and fell in New York. In 19 cities prices rose faster in the 12 months to November than in the 12 months to October; Cleveland prices rose at the same pace in both time periods. Phoenix led with the fastest price rise — up 22.8% in 12 months as it posted its seventh consecutive month of double-digit annual returns.

Keeping it real, Vegas – the biggest housing bubble pop in history, saw home prices rise 10% Y/Y, while Detroit was up 11.9%. One word (Un)sustainable.

But maybe this time it is different.

Source

WASHINGTON – January 29 – On the fourth anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the American Civil Liberties Union is urging members of Congress to support and pass the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 84/H.R. 377) — the next step in the fight for pay equity. Its reintroduction by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) comes on the heels of President Obama’s inaugural speech highlighting equal pay for women as a priority for his next term.

Signed four years ago today by President Obama, the Ledbetter Act restored the law to ensure that the time limit for bringing pay discrimination claims would renew with each discriminatory paycheck, thereby giving women a reasonable amount of time to file after learning of discrimination. The Paycheck Fairness Act, on the other hand, which updates and strengthens the Equal Pay Act of 1963, would give women the tools they need to challenge the wage gap itself.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women who work full time, on average, earn 77 cents for every dollar men earn. Women of color fare far worse, with African American women earning 64 cents and Latinas 55 cents for each dollar earned by a white man.

“Fifty years after the signing of the Equal Pay Act, unacceptable disparities in what men and women earn for the same work persists,” said Deborah J. Vagins, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office and Co-Chair of the National Paycheck Fairness Coalition. “In addition, many workers can still be fired for asking about their wages at work. In fact, Lilly Ledbetter worked at a company where employees could not share wage information. The Paycheck Fairness Act would give workers the help they need to be treated fairly, including strengthening remedies for discrimination against women and protecting employees’ jobs when they seek information about their wages. If you don’t know about discrimination, you can’t do anything about it. This ongoing injustice is particularly troubling when you consider that nearly 40 percent of women are primary breadwinners in their households.”

If Congress does not move the Paycheck Fairness Act forward, the ACLU urges the President to sign an Executive Order that would protect people employed by federal contractors from retaliation for disclosing or asking about their wages.

For additional information, read our factsheet on the Paycheck Fairness Act, letter to Members of Congress in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act, and letter to President Obama on an Executive Order on retaliation against wage disclosure.

(Photo: Tilman Cornelius Dette)

Back in the ’60s, Frances Moore Lappé realized that hunger is caused by a scarcity of democracy, not food. Then, a collective of courageous women farmers showed her how to change that.

In the late ’60s, my life changed forever. I asked, Why are millions of people going hungry? Every other species seemed to have figured out how to feed itself and its offspring. So what’s up with us?

Headlines screamed, “scarcity! There’s just not enough!” But lo and behold, as I added up the figures, one truth jumped out. There was enough food for all; and today, it’s even truer.

So over the decades after Diet for a Small Planet came out, I tugged away at layer after layer of “whys” and finally I came up with a sound bite I loved: Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy.

What does it mean?

At root, the problem is one of concentrations of social power so extreme that, from far-flung fields to the global supermarket, people are deprived not only of food, but of dignity and confidence in their own proven capacities.

My sound bite made sense to me, but what good was its “truth” without examples of people actually acting on it? What good was it without real-life proof of people seizing the root and transforming human relationships into true “living democracies”?

Certainly, I knew the weak notion of democracy I’d grown up with–democracy equals markets-plus-elections–wasn’t it. So what did I mean? Where is democracy emerging that’s vital, engaging, and empowering enough actually to get to the root of needless hunger?

Actually, the answer is: in many places, mostly invisible.

Never would I have imagined that one day I’d be sitting and sharing heart-to-heart with leaders embodying multiple dimensions of living democracy and simultaneously ending–not “alleviating”–hunger in their communities. 

Yet, this fall, there I was. In northern India, I celebrated withNavdanya its 25 years spreading empowering, ecologically renewing farming practices to hundreds of thousands of farmers. Then, in southern India, a few hours from Hyderabad, I sat surrounded by a dozen women in brilliant saris on a straw mat, gazing at beautifully arranged mounds of diverse seeds from their own fields.

These women make up the Deccan Development Society (DDS), a network of 5,000 women in 70 villages. They are farmers growing organic, diverse food crops and creating lives of courage, dignity, inclusion, and ongoing creativity.

I first asked the most basic questions. What was it like 20 years ago?

“We were so poor that in the rainy season our hut floors would turn to mud and we had to pile up branches to sleep on. We were always hungry. We depended on government ration cards. Sometimes the big landowner would pay us for a job with some grains and that would be the only food for our children. We were so poor we had only one sari–not even a second one to change into when we bathe.

My husband was a gambler, he was not ever here. I lived on sorghum and broken rice. Our life was dictated by bigger people. We had to suffer, even if they beat us. It was a dark time.”

And what changed?

“We started meeting, talking. Every week now, at nine in the evening our sanghams [groups of women] come together and make decisions together. We tell each other our problems. If someone was abused, all of us go together to confront him. And now if there is a conflict in our village, they call on us. Through the sanghams, we’ve reclaimed the land. We don’t use any chemicals. We grow as many as 25 crops on an acre or two.”

“What about the village food security solution I’d read about,” I asked, “where you come together as a village and reach consensus on storing enough food so the most vulnerable families get what they need in the lean season?”

“We don’t need to do that anymore. Every family has food security now.

The next day I walked into the fields that these women and their families farm. I learned more about their years of effort to rid the fields of rocks, create water conservation trenches, and establish synergistic cropping patterns. The soil still looked pretty dry and rocky to me, but proof of the women’s deep knowledge of how to make it productive anyway was waving above my head–yellow, white, brown, and red millet; and lower down, oil seeds and gram. There, too, were essential plants for natural pest control.

Like most of Indian farms, there’s no irrigation here. Rain matters a lot. So I asked, “Aren’t you worried about climate change bringing more drought?”

No. We know what to do. If rainfall is cut by half, we know which seeds will work. If it drops more, we have other seeds.”

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I learned how DDS women enhance biodiversity by saving and sharing seeds; how they create common plots for medicinal plants and learn and teach the healing arts.

A few years ago, DDS calculated that the women’s leadership has meant the production of almost 3 million extra meals each year.

Their 3,000-member cooperative market is growing by at least 20 percent a year. And DDS women also run their own “media trust,” learning and teaching videography through which they are documenting their journey, as well as their own community radio station that broadcasts tips on ecological farming, health, raising trees, and other relevant information, right along with traditional music.

DDS has calculated that the women’s leadership has meant the production of almost 3 million extra meals each year, as well as almost 350,000 additional days of employment in their villages. And that same leadership is re-balancing gender relationships and radically reducing domestic abuse.

We have achieved food sovereignty, they told me. But what struck me were these words: “From the sanghams what we’ve gained most is courage.”

And with courage comes dignity, there before me in full force in the pride of their gleaming smiles.

Today in India 46 percent of children are still stunted by malnutrition, and this state, Andhra Pradesh, has long been known both for its heavy use of agricultural chemicals and high rates of suicide by farmers trapped in debt, because buying seeds, fertilizer, and pesticides can typically eat up half a small farmer’s income .

All true. But the women of DDS, and millions of people like them in India and around the world, prove to me that there is a solution to world hunger. They live it.

I see now that it happens when we break free of imposed disconnection, find our courage, and combine our creativity. Then democracy is no longer something done “to us” or “for us.” It is our way of life.

(L-R) Ramzi, Walid bin Attash and Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, three of the alleged conspirators in the 9/11 attacks, attend court dressed in camouflage during hearings in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba January 28, 2013 in this Pentagon-approved court sketch (Reuters / Janet Hamlin)

The first day of a pretrial hearing for five men accused of plotting the September 11 attacks was swirling with intrigue on Monday after the audio feed at a Guantanamo war crimes court was abruptly cut off.

The incident prompted the military judge to ask whether someone outside the courtroom was censoring the hearing.

Observers were listening to the trial behind a glass window when the feed was suddenly cut. The audio went silent when David Nevin, a lawyer for Khalid Sheik Mohammed — the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks — asked if the lawyers and judges needed to meet in closed session before considering a request by the defense.

In previous hearings for alleged Al-Qaeda operatives sentenced to CIA prisons, a court security officer controlled a button which muffled audio to spectators when secret information was disclosed. During the censoring process, a red light flashes and observers hear nothing but static.

But that wasn’t the case this time around, as the judge’s reaction made clear once the sound was restored moments later.

“If some external body is turning things off, if someone is turning the commissions off under their own views of what things ought to be, with no reason or explanation, then we are going to have a little meeting about who turns that light on or off,” Army Colonel James Pohl told the courtroom.

Pohl seemed to be addressing the prosecution team, saying that Nevin had only referred to the caption of an unclassified document asking the judge to preserve as evidence the secret CIA prisons where the defendants say they were tortured, Reuters reported.

Nevin and the other defense attorneys said they wanted to know whether there was a third party monitoring the proceedings, and whether that entity could be listening to private communications between the lawyers and their clients, the Washington Post reported.

Justice Department lawyer Joanna Baltes said she could explain the reason behind the audio cut — but not in public. Pohl said he would meet in closed session with the lawyers and reopen the public part of the hearing on Tuesday. If the reason behind the cut could be explained to the public, he would do so then.

Mohammed and his four co-defendants are accused of training and aiding the hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field on September 11, 2001.

They could be sentenced to death if convicted on charges including terrorism, attacking civilians and murdering 2,976 people.

The men were among the suspected Al-Qaeda captives who were moved across borders without judicial review, and held and interrogated in secret CIA prisons overseas during the presidency of George W. Bush.

The CIA has acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to the controversial interrogation practice known as waterboarding. The defendants also claimed they were subjected to threats, sleep deprivation and being chained in painful positions.

The defense lawyers have argued that the CIA’s treatment of the defendants constituted illegal pretrial punishment, and “outrageous government misconduct” that could justify dismissal of the charges, or at the very least spare the defendants from execution if convicted.

There are currently 166 detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, including Mohammed. In 2009, US President Barack Obama ordered the prison to be shut within a year. However, it is still open and operational.

Guantanamo remaining open is yet another example of Congress overpowering the president — the prison was bundled together with the National Defense Authorization Act, which serves as the overall US defense budget. Obama has the power to veto the entire act, but not to individually challenge the administration of Guantanamo Bay.

Obama has threatened such a veto several times, but backed down on every occasion.

A naked man seen walking around like a zombie had beheaded his mother because he thought she looked like a witch, the Old Bailey heard.

Daniel Coriat, 44, was arrested hiding in a wheelie bin at a local train station.

He told police he was the son of God and had been living in the bin since coming down from the sky, said Sarah Plaschkes QC, prosecuting.

Coriat, of Forest Hill, south London, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Elizabeth Coriat, 76, was found on her bed at the flat they shared in March, last year.

She had been mutilated and decapitated with various weapons.

Mrs Coriat had told an advice worker that her mentally ill son could turn nasty when he was not taking his medication.

Miss Plaschkes said Coriat was seen completely naked outside the flat the morning after his mother was last seen alive.

“He had a blank, vacant stare. He was walking like a zombie.” she told the court.

Context: As yet there are no context links for this item.

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

We’re continuing our discussion about whither the Middle East, particularly Palestine, and what kind of economies are going to be built there.Now joining us from Geneva is Raja Khalidi. He’s spent most of his professional career with the UN Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, where he’s currently chief, Office of the Director, Division on Globalization and Development Strategies. He speaks here on his own behalf–his opinions are not necessarily those of UNCTAD. Thanks for joining us again, Raja.RAJA KHALIDI, SENIOR ECONOMIST, UNCTAD, GENEVA: Nice to be back.JAY: So let’s pick up the conversation. The forces at play in Palestine are a reflection of the same kind of struggle going on throughout the Middle East, but it has its own specific form. Back in the day of Yasser Arafat, certainly in the early days, there was a kind of more socialistic vision, you could say, for Palestine. It was the idea that, you know, not simply building a capitalist Palestine was the objective; it was independence plus a certain amount of social agenda. What’s the nature of that struggle now?KHALIDI: Well, it’s a great, you know, issue, because–you know, for me to say something about, because, you know, one of the first studies I did as an economist was back in 1980, ’81, ’82, when I participated in a UN study on Palestinian economic institutions in Lebanon. That’s when the PLO, of course, was at its apex, and it had a whole infrastructure, in fact–economic, social, consumer cooperatives [incompr.] production, factories, farms, employment, vast employment sort of network, trade union federations, etc.So, you know, I think, if anything, the PLO, the Palestinians were never closer to having a state with an active public sector than they were, unfortunately, in another country, in Lebanon in the early 1980s. Then, you know, in many ways it’s something that I think even Arafat after ’94 was dreaming of, that he could have that sort of control of the economy when–you know, that he assumed administration of under the Oslo Accords in 1993. However, the PLO was quickly trapped into several things. Globalization, you know, it was on the–the wave was definitely still building. The neoliberal policies that we’ve now come to question and calls neoliberal policies in those days were, you know, probably looked at very differently, had an extraordinary reach and influence among policymakers.The other thing is that the only–you know, the United Nations was involved in the reconstruction, etc., after ’94, assisting the Palestinian Authority to become a government or prepare to become a state. But, you know, the main drivers of the process, of course, were the IMF and the World Bank. And, you know, we know what sort of light-touch regulation, you know, private sector determined, market-based economy they advocated then–and less so, perhaps, now, but certainly then. And this was part of the terms of the deal, quite simply. You know.The deal was that you get administration of the West Bank and Gaza,very small parts of the West Bank and Gaza, but much of the population, Palestinian population in return, and some limited, you know, playing with tax regimes and certain aspects of trade, banking, various other things that had been exclusively within the hands of the occupation authority until then, in return for buying into the Israeli economy, i.e. you become part of that economy, effectively, through a customs union, which is the Paris Protocol, and you attach yourself to its fortunes as a people, as an occupied territory, supposedly, in an interim period that was supposed to lead–. Of course, after five years of Oslo we were supposed to have achieved Palestinian independence in 1999, 2000. That was the implicit, if not some explicit understandings, at least on the part of the PLO, certainly not on the part of a lot of other people. So what happened was that they basically said, look, guys, you know, let’s cut our losses, let’s do, you know, what is–not cut our losses; let’s do what is expected of us; you know, let’s play the good soldier; and we don’t know, we’ve never run a state before; let’s take the advice of these people and do what they say. And so that was the beginning of the process of liberalization, if you wish.But it was liberal to begin with. There hasn’t–I mean, what we’ve had since then, especially under the most recent Palestinian government since 2005, under Prime Minister Fayyad, is a much more elaborate version, a much more drawn-out and, you know, more pervasive version of the same policies that really were bought into by the PLO in the ’90s. I would add, though–and I think this is important–is that this was–again, you know, they were very conscious of the need to build a state and the need to build a strong public role in that state. But I think they really were quite naive about, you know, whether–the extent to which it would be possible. And the early visions, you know, of the ’94-’95 were very much those of an economy, market economy, open economy, but one where you have a very strong, an assertive role of government, because you’re talking about an economy which is supposedly recovering after occupation and war. It’s an economy which needs, you know, protection, it needs rebuilding, it needs, you know, agriculture, it has to be protected, you have to build your infant industries, all of those things.I think they really believe, to a certain extent, that they can do some of those things, i.e. carry–the baggage of the revolutionary period they brought with them when they arrived back in Palestine, they thought they could actually, you know, wear some of that stuff in the new circumstances. But it turned out they couldn’t. And once once that was the deal, I think, you know, with someone like Prime Minister Fayyad, who comes from the IMF and the World Bank in government, you know, his being there has helped them solve, you know, to be honest, a lot of their financial problems. But it’s been at the–I mean, you know, it’s kept the PA in business, let’s say, as the employer of last resort for the last two or three years, but it’s been at, I think, a terrible cost to the economy. Now, the cost to the economy is about–is not only the most, you know, sort of extreme episodes we’ve had of structural adjustment and attempts to further privatize, perhaps, what remains of some public utilities or public services or public assets, which has been continued in the last couple of years, but you have a lack of any sense–Palestinian policymakers do not seem to have the sense that they can change things by changing their policies. They see themselves as locked in by Oslo, which is a broader agreement. It’s not just an economic agreement. It’s a political agreement–which has failed, of course, [because] there’s no process anymore, and it’s a security agreement which has been successful. So, you know, the economic part of it is only part of it, is only one part of a broader sort of deal that if they’re going to start changing it, even if they believe they should–and I think that, you know, the protest of this last year in February against the income tax law, which were protests led both by middle income and lower income, but also the business sector because of–I think some of the provisions were ill-considered; and then further protest, much more widespread, in September about the cost of living, about inflation, about the energy prices and fuel prices, all of which are to do with this relationship with the Israeli economy.JAY: The other thing in Palestine which doesn’t get talked about very much in the West bank, and also in Gaza–when I was in Ramallah, I was absolutely blown away by the number of gorgeous condos and big villas and many members, leading members of the PA living in these and Fatah living in these great big houses. But also there’s a whole class of millionaires in Gaza and the West Bank, and they have quite entrenched interests. And I would assume some of them are actually doing okay under the status quo.KHALIDI: Yeah, sure. There’s been an extraordinary–these last few years have been an extraordinary opportunity for, you know, what I would call, so to speak, the cowardly capital, in reference to the previous–reference to the courageous capital (I’ve used this term in some work I’ve done), a lot of hot money that came in, quick bucks, you know, be it in the startups, you know, restaurants and retail trade and various services. But in real estate you have some major investments made by big capitalists, Palestinian, particularly, but with certain Arab partners. I mean, you have different forms of excessive consumption or capitalist aggrandizement, let’s say. The excessive consumption comes because you have 150,000 salaried PA employees whose salaries are used to deduct for bank loans, car loans, consumption loans, which has fueled the credit bubble, and in particular in the West Bank in the last couple of years a private credit bubble.And then you have a class of entrepreneurs who I think, you know, one should not put down, because they’ve survived against all odds, they’ve built up, you know, accumulated their capital gradually and, I think, more or less fairly, if one can use that term, and have struggled to survive and are good examples of, you know, what one could call national capital. And then you have–I won’t say vulture capital, but we have a class of Palestinian investors who it’s not so much because they’re making money; it’s more to do with the sort of values that their moneymaking are bringing into the country. I mean, if you drive down those same roads that you mentioned, you’ll see big public signs, for example, exhorting, you know, taxpayers to pay their–or “citizens”, quote-unquote, to pay their, you know, utility bills on time, exhorting good governance, a whole set of neoliberal slogans which have creeped into discourse and are very–. You know, they had the first Palestinian real estate conference. Now, this first Palestinian real estate conference is done–was supposedly an academic, you would assume, policymaking conference. It was underwritten by this real estate development company called Rawabi, which is building this model city outside of Ramallah, etc., etc. You know. So there’s, one would say, even conflicts of interest. So there’s a whole culture that’s been coming in with a lot of this capital, which I think is not–I don’t want to say it’s alien to Palestinian society, but it’s not really what Palestine needs.JAY: Now, let me ask you a question to wind things up. When I was in the West Bank and I met with a lot of activists and other people, there’s a real debate going on about what’s next for the Palestinian movement, you know, mass civil disobedience, is it really two states or one state that people should be fighting for. But in terms of a vision, a different kind of vision for the economy, how things are owned and how things are distributed, what do you think people might be asking, demanding, wanting? I mean, what is the alternative for Palestine?KHALIDI: The last few years, especially, of relative security and the good life, in the West Bank especially, have, you know, made people very wedded to what they have. And that’s reasonable, I think, for a people that have been, you know, under war, occupation, etc., for so many years. And we should not begrudge them that, and I don’t, to be honest.On the other hand, I think Palestinians are as thirsty for national liberation, independence, some form of real independence, freedom, simply freedom, and dignity as they are for the good life. And I think that as long as it’s unresolved and as long as you continue to have an aggressive colonial–settler colonial regime under which you’re living, you know, however good the life is and however much the, you know, Palestinians try to just put up with it and not somehow rebel, it’s just–I don’t see any history to tell us that that’s what’s going to happen. And the region, I think, is another reason to expect that this is not sustainable, namely, that, you know, the policies that in Arab countries, and many postcolonial countries around the world, in fact, came these neoliberal policies, liberalization, privatization, etc., that came as a result of the failure of some previous postcolonial socialist experiments, the, you know, central planning, etc. All of these governments who have now reached–or these regimes (it’s broader than the governments) have reached, I think, the logical sort of conclusion of the failure of many of these policies. Oddly enough, in the Palestinian context,these same policies have been applied in a colonial situation, which ultimately, as they fail around the region–and I think they’re failing also; we’ve seen signs of their own internal failure in the narrow Palestinian context–as they fail, then, you know, the people who, however much they might be wedded to the benefits of some of those policies or some of the benefits of those policies, you know, they’re going to start–there’s an identification process between the two. So as people will again reconsider whether they’re willing to live indefinitely under military occupation in the West Bank, under siege in Gaza, under segregation in Jerusalem, as they reconsider that over the coming years or months, I think they’ll realize that, you know, in rejecting that sort of a continued indignity and lack of freedom, that the policies that they’ve become accustomed to also should be reconsidered. And I think we saw that again in the demonstrations of September. We saw, you know, explicit public–you know, and this was not just some left-wing activist, active, like, left-wing group. This was widely based popular demands for the abrogation of the Paris Protocol, the economic agreement, because people understood the link between their misery and a certain specific agreement and accord. And I think that shows an awareness of how–you know, and the Palestinians, if–you know, all of the Arab people, given the amount of political change they’ve witnessed over 50 (whatever it is) years, but especially the Palestinians, you know, they’re very aware and they’re very responsible. They don’t–I don’t think they’re–you know, they’ve learned some things, some lessons from their experience, and I don’t think they will embark easily on another intifada. And I would be the last to predict it around the corner, as many–you know, if you look at the headlines these days, you’ll see it every other week. But on the other hand, I don’t see this as a sustainable economic project, I don’t see it as a sustainable human project. I mean, you know, as you said, one state, two states, three states, we don’t know. Ultimately the UN’s–you know, has described this as a one-state reality, regardless of whether, you know, [incompr.] the right solution [unintel.] there’s still a possibility for a two-state solution, or whether inevitably the one-state reality will impose a one-state solution.JAY: I know we’re going to get email about this. When you say “good life,” what are you talking about? You’re talking about somewhat better economic conditions in the West Bank. You’re not talking about good life in Gaza, right?KHALIDI: No, I was talking specifically about the West Bank, mainly about its cities. And when I talked about the private credit boom or bubble, it’s very much in those areas. Gaza’s a very different situation, certainly.JAY: Okay. Thanks very much for joining us. This is just the first in a series of interviews we’re going to do with Raja. So if you have questions or comments, please write in, and I think he’ll come back and respond to them. Thanks for joining us again, Raja.KHALIDI: Thank you very much.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (Nev) repeated pronouncements that the Republican stranglehold on the Senate’s filibuster could no longer be tolerated, that is exactly the final outcome of recent reform efforts. With the success of important Obama legislative initiatives like depending on a Democratic Senate for enactment, what was Harry Reid thinking? Reid’s stunning flip in favor of retaining the most egregious elements of the Republican filibuster clearly jeopardizes the President’s legislative agenda.

Since the 2010 Congressional election when Senate Democrats lost their 60th vote to Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the minority Republicans played hardball requiring a 60 vote majority to bring any legislation to the Senate floor for a vote. Even with a clear advantage of 59 — 41 votes, Senate Democrats remained inexplicably unable to assert their legislative resolve as the business of running the government fell into disarray and public support for Congress dropped to historic lows.

As recently as the day after the 2012 election which kept the Senate majority in Democratic hands (56-44), Reid indicated that the filibuster rules were being abused by Republicans and that he would act to change them. With that encouragement, reform-minded Senators Tom Udall (NM) and Jeff Merkley (Ore) took up the banner as they had two years ago to require that any Senator who wanted to filibuster a bill must personally appear on the Senate floor to defend their filibuster and to inform the country why their filibuster was needed to stop what they considered to be an ill-conceived act. The current rules allow any Senator to ‘hold’ a bill without having to be publicly identified or to provide any explanation for that hold.

Yet given public anger at Congressional gridlock and the Senate’s inability to function as Republicans brazenly brought public business to a near-halt, last week Reid formalized a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky) by stating that he was “not ready to get rid of the 60 vote threshold.”

What is unfathomable is Reid’s disregard for improving the Senate’s stature or making it an efficient, effective legislative body to assure passage of the President’s most important legislative issues. Yet to be explained is why the Udall-Merkley proposal could not muster a simple majority of 51 Democratic votes for adoption or why every Democrat in the Senate voted (86-9) to adopt the Reid McConnell watered -down ‘reform.’ Only Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt) and 8 ultra-conservative Republicans were in opposition. It is with no small irony that the vote to continue the requirement for a Super-Majority of 60 votes was adopted with the requirement of 60 votes.

Even as Republicans remain mired in a disconnect from political reality and despite reports of a bi-partisan agreement on an immigration reform ‘blueprint’, there is little reason to expect that the party of Lincoln will not continue to effectively stonewall every reasonable legislative initiative addressing the country’s most critical problems. And as Senate Democrats continue to stumble into an era of lost principles, there will be no one to blame but themselves.

Renee Parsons was a lobbyist for Friends of the Earth in Washington, D.C. focusing on nuclear energy issues. While at FOE, she was responsible for a TRO that stopped the Dept of Energy from conducting an experimental drilling program at 12 locations along the perimeter of Canyonlands National Park as a possible high-level nuclear waste repository. Her efforts included opposing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and organizing the coalition that successfully defunded the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. She also served as staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2005, she was elected to the Durango City Council (Colorado) and served four years as Councilor and Mayor.

Despite Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (Nev) repeated pronouncements that the Republican stranglehold on the Senate’s filibuster could no longer be tolerated, that is exactly the final outcome of recent reform efforts. With the success of important Obama legislative initiatives like depending on a Democratic Senate for enactment, what was Harry Reid thinking? Reid’s stunning flip in favor of retaining the most egregious elements of the Republican filibuster clearly jeopardizes the President’s legislative agenda.

Since the 2010 Congressional election when Senate Democrats lost their 60th vote to Scott Brown of Massachusetts, the minority Republicans played hardball requiring a 60 vote majority to bring any legislation to the Senate floor for a vote. Even with a clear advantage of 59 — 41 votes, Senate Democrats remained inexplicably unable to assert their legislative resolve as the business of running the government fell into disarray and public support for Congress dropped to historic lows.

As recently as the day after the 2012 election which kept the Senate majority in Democratic hands (56-44), Reid indicated that the filibuster rules were being abused by Republicans and that he would act to change them. With that encouragement, reform-minded Senators Tom Udall (NM) and Jeff Merkley (Ore) took up the banner as they had two years ago to require that any Senator who wanted to filibuster a bill must personally appear on the Senate floor to defend their filibuster and to inform the country why their filibuster was needed to stop what they considered to be an ill-conceived act. The current rules allow any Senator to ‘hold’ a bill without having to be publicly identified or to provide any explanation for that hold.

Yet given public anger at Congressional gridlock and the Senate’s inability to function as Republicans brazenly brought public business to a near-halt, last week Reid formalized a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky) by stating that he was “not ready to get rid of the 60 vote threshold.”

What is unfathomable is Reid’s disregard for improving the Senate’s stature or making it an efficient, effective legislative body to assure passage of the President’s most important legislative issues. Yet to be explained is why the Udall-Merkley proposal could not muster a simple majority of 51 Democratic votes for adoption or why every Democrat in the Senate voted (86-9) to adopt the Reid McConnell watered -down ‘reform.’ Only Senator Bernie Sanders (Vt) and 8 ultra-conservative Republicans were in opposition. It is with no small irony that the vote to continue the requirement for a Super-Majority of 60 votes was adopted with the requirement of 60 votes.

Even as Republicans remain mired in a disconnect from political reality and despite reports of a bi-partisan agreement on an immigration reform ‘blueprint’, there is little reason to expect that the party of Lincoln will not continue to effectively stonewall every reasonable legislative initiative addressing the country’s most critical problems. And as Senate Democrats continue to stumble into an era of lost principles, there will be no one to blame but themselves.

Renee Parsons was a lobbyist for Friends of the Earth in Washington, D.C. focusing on nuclear energy issues. While at FOE, she was responsible for a TRO that stopped the Dept of Energy from conducting an experimental drilling program at 12 locations along the perimeter of Canyonlands National Park as a possible high-level nuclear waste repository. Her efforts included opposing the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and organizing the coalition that successfully defunded the Clinch River Breeder Reactor. She also served as staff in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 2005, she was elected to the Durango City Council (Colorado) and served four years as Councilor and Mayor.

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that any amount of radiation — no matter how small — can cause cancer and other serious health effects.

(Current safety standards are based on the ridiculous assumption that everyone exposed is a healthy man in his 20s — and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body. In the real world, however, even low doses of radiation can cause cancer. Moreover, small particles of radiation — called “internal emitters” — which get inside the body are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation. See this and this. And radiation affects small children much more than full-grown adults.)

But the Department of Energy — the agency which is responsible for the design, testing and production of all U.S. nuclear weapons, promotes nuclear energy as one of its core functions, which has been covering up nuclear accidents for decades, and has used mutant lines of human cells to promote voodoo, anti-scientific arguments — proposes letting radiation into our silverware.

Counterpunch notes:

Even the deregulation-happy Wall St. Journal sounded shocked: “The Department of Energy is proposing to allow the sale of tons of scrap metal from government nuclear sites – an attempt to reduce waste that critics say could lead to radiation-tainted belt buckles, surgical implants and other consumer products.”

Having failed in the ‘80s and ‘90s to free the nuclear bomb factories and national laboratories of millions of tons of their radioactively contaminated scrapand nickel, the DOE is trying again. Its latest proposal is moving ahead without even an Environmental Impact Statement. Those messy EISs involve public hearings, so you can imagine the DOE’s reluctance to face the public over adding yet more radiation to the doses we’re already accumulating.

Congressman Markey writes:

A Department of Energy proposal to allow up to 14,000 metric tons of its radioactive scrap metal to be recycled into consumer products was called into question today by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) due to concerns over public health. In a letter sent to DOE head Steven Chu, Rep. Markey expressed “grave concerns” over the potential of these metals becoming jewelry, cutlery, or other consumer products that could exceed healthy doses of radiation without any knowledge by the consumer. DOE made the proposal to rescind its earlier moratorium on radioactive scrap metal recycling in December, 2012.

The proposal follows an incident from 2012 involving Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in America recalling tissue holders made in India that were contaminated with the radio-isotope cobalt-60. Those products were shipped to 200 stores in 20 states. In response to that incident, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson advised members of the public to return the products even though the amount of contamination was not considered to be a health risk.

This is not the first time this has happened.

As the Progressive reported in 1998, radioactive scrap metal was ending up in everything fromsilverware to frying pans and belt buckles:

The Department of Energy has a problem: what to do with millions of tons of radioactive material. So the DOE has come up with an ingenious plan to dispose of its troublesome tons of nickel, copper, steel and aluminum. It wants to let scrap companies collect the metal, try to take the radioactivity out, and sell the metal to foundries, which would in turn sell it to manufacturers who could use it for everyday household products: pots, pans, forks, spoons, even your eyeglasses.

You may not know this, but the government already permits some companies under special licenses, to buy, reprocess and sell radioactive metal: 7,500 tons in 1996, by one industry estimate. But the amount of this reprocessing could increase drastically if the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the burgeoning radioactive metal processing industry get their way.

They are pressing for a new, lax standard that would do away with special permits and allow companies to buy and resell millions of tons of low-level radioactive metal.

***

The standard the companies seek could cause nearly 100,000 cancer fatalities in the United States, by the NRC’s own estimate.

(A couple of years later, Congressman Markey successfully banned most radioactive scrap … but now DOE is trying to bring it back.)

Radioactive scrap is a global problem. As Bloomberg reported last year:

“The major risk we face in our industry is radiation,” said Paul de Bruin, radiation-safety chief for Jewometaal Stainless Processing, one of the world’s biggest stainless-steel scrap yards. “You can talk about security all you want, but I’ve found weapons-grade uranium in scrap. Where was the security?”

More than 120 shipments of contaminated goods, including cutlery, buckles and work tools such as hammers and screwdrivers, were denied U.S. entry between 2003 and 2008 after customs and the Department of Homeland Security boosted radiation monitoring at borders.

The department declined to provide updated figures or comment on how the metal tissue boxes at Bed, Bath & Beyond, tainted with cobalt-60 used in medical instruments to diagnose and treat cancer, evaded detection.

***

“The general public basically isn’t aware that they’re living in a radioactive world,” according to Ross Bartley, technical director for the recycling bureau, who said the contamination has led to lost sales. “Those tissue boxes are problematic because they’re radioactive and they had to be put in radioactive disposal.”

Abandoned medical scanners, food-processing devices and mining equipment containing radioactive metals such as cesium-137 and cobalt-60 are picked up by scrap collectors, sold to recyclers and melted down by foundries, the IAEA says.

Dangerous scrap comes from derelict hospitals and military bases, as well as defunct government agencies that have lost tools with radioactive elements.

Chronic exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cataracts, cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A 2005 study of more than 6,000 Taiwanese who lived in apartments built with radioactive reinforcing steel from 1983 to 2005 showed a statistically significant increase in leukemia and breast cancer.

***

India and China were the top sources of radioactive goods shipped to the U.S. through 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Bartley, a metallurgist who has tracked radioactive contamination since the early 1990s, said there’s no evidence the situation has improved.

***

Two years after an Indian scrap-metal worker died from radiation exposure, the world’s second-most populous country hasn’t installed alarms, the Ministry of Shipping said in December.

***

“The same thing could easily happen again tomorrow,” said Deepak Jain, 65, who owns the yard where the worker died. “We have no protection. The government promised a lot, but has delivered absolutely nothing.”

Indeed, we are being bombarded with low-level radiation from all sides:

• Above-ground nuclear tests created “background” levels of radioactive cesium and iodine for the first time

• Countries dump everything from radiation from nuclear meltdowns to radioactive submarines in the ocean

• In Japan, radioactive crops are being mixed into non-irradiated foods

• The U.S. apparently signed a pact with Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food is not being tested for radioactive materials

• Much of our food is now intentionally irradiated

(The government has even treated some people as guinea pigs.)

What can we do? Counterpunch notes:

You can tell the DOE to continue to keep its radioactive metal out of the commercial metal supply, commerce, and our personal items. You can demand a full environmental impact statement. Comment deadline is Feb. 9, 2013. Email to:scrap_PEAcomments@hq.doe.gov (with an underscore after “scrap_”). Snail mail to: Jane Summerson / DOE NNSA / PO Box 5400, Bldg. 401K. AFB East / Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

 A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed.

But the President is exactly right. Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity. That’s because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans are becoming poorer, they’re less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can’t get out of first gear. 

That’s a big reason why the recovery continues to be anemic, and why the International Monetary Fund just lowered its estimate for U.S. growth in 2013 to just 2 percent. 

Almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 7 out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage – like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains.

It’s not a zero-sum game. Wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares of a rapidly-growing economy than with the large shares they now possess of an economy that’s barely moving.

At this rate, who’s going to buy all the goods and services America is capable of producing? We can’t return to the kind of debt-financed consumption that caused the bubble in the first place.

Get it? It’s not a zero-sum game. Wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares of a rapidly-growing economy than with the large shares they now possess of an economy that’s barely moving.

If they were rational, the wealthy would support public investments in education and job-training, a world-class infrastructure (transportation, water and sewage, energy, internet), and basic research — all of which would make the American workforce more productive.

If they were rational they’d even support labor unions — which have proven the best means of giving working people a fair share in the nation’s prosperity.

But labor unions are almost extinct.

The decline of labor unions in America tracks exactly the decline in the bottom 90 percent’s share of total earnings, and shrinkage of the middle class.

In the 1950s, when the U.S. economy was growing faster than 3 percent a year, more than a third of all working people belonged to a union. That gave them enough bargaining clout to get wages that allowed them to buy what the economy was capable of producing.

Since the late 1970s, unions have eroded — as has the purchasing power of most Americans, and not coincidentally, the average annual growth of the economy.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of 2012 only 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector were unionized. (That’s down from 6.9 percent in 2011.) That’s the lowest rate of unionization in almost a century.

What’s to blame? Partly globalization and technological change. Globalization sent many unionized manufacturing plants abroad.

Manufacturing is starting to return to America but it’s returning without many jobs. The old assembly line has been replaced by robotics and numerically-controlled machine tools.

Technologies have also replaced many formerly unionized workers in telecommunications (remember telephone operators?) and clerical jobs.

But wait. Other nations subject to the same forces have far higher levels of unionization than America. 28 percent of Canada’s workforce is unionized, as is more than 25 percent of Britain’s, and almost 20 percent of Germany’s.

Unions are almost extinct in America because we’ve chosen to make them extinct.

Unlike other rich nations, our labor laws allow employers to replace striking workers. We’ve also made it exceedingly difficult for workers to organize, and we barely penalized companies that violate labor laws. (A worker who’s illegally fired for trying to organize a union may, if lucky, get the job back along with back pay — after years of legal haggling.)

Republicans, in particular, have set out to kill off unions. Union membership dropped 13 percent last year in Wisconsin, which in 2011 curbed the collective bargaining rights of many public employees. And it fell 18 percent last year in Indiana, which last February enacted a right-to-work law (allowing employees at unionized workplaces to get all the benefits of unionization without paying for them). Last month Michigan enacted a similar law.

Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart, America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union.

Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart, America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union. They’re not in global competition and their jobs aren’t directly threatened by technology.

The average pay of a Walmart worker is $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits.

Walmart is a microcosm of the American economy. It has brazenly fought off unions. But it could easily afford to pay its workers more. It earned $16 billion last year. Much of that sum went to Walmart’s shareholders, including the family of its founder, Sam Walton.

The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

But how can Walmart expect to continue to show fat profits when most of its customers are on a downward economic escalator?

Walmart should be unionized. So should McDonalds. So should every major big-box retailer and fast-food outlet in the nation. So should every hospital in America.

That way, more Americans would have enough money in their pockets to get the economy moving. And everyone — even the very rich — would benefit.

As Obama said, America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

 A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed.

But the President is exactly right. Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity. That’s because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans are becoming poorer, they’re less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can’t get out of first gear. 

That’s a big reason why the recovery continues to be anemic, and why the International Monetary Fund just lowered its estimate for U.S. growth in 2013 to just 2 percent. 

Almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 7 out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage – like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains.

It’s not a zero-sum game. Wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares of a rapidly-growing economy than with the large shares they now possess of an economy that’s barely moving.

At this rate, who’s going to buy all the goods and services America is capable of producing? We can’t return to the kind of debt-financed consumption that caused the bubble in the first place.

Get it? It’s not a zero-sum game. Wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares of a rapidly-growing economy than with the large shares they now possess of an economy that’s barely moving.

If they were rational, the wealthy would support public investments in education and job-training, a world-class infrastructure (transportation, water and sewage, energy, internet), and basic research — all of which would make the American workforce more productive.

If they were rational they’d even support labor unions — which have proven the best means of giving working people a fair share in the nation’s prosperity.

But labor unions are almost extinct.

The decline of labor unions in America tracks exactly the decline in the bottom 90 percent’s share of total earnings, and shrinkage of the middle class.

In the 1950s, when the U.S. economy was growing faster than 3 percent a year, more than a third of all working people belonged to a union. That gave them enough bargaining clout to get wages that allowed them to buy what the economy was capable of producing.

Since the late 1970s, unions have eroded — as has the purchasing power of most Americans, and not coincidentally, the average annual growth of the economy.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of 2012 only 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector were unionized. (That’s down from 6.9 percent in 2011.) That’s the lowest rate of unionization in almost a century.

What’s to blame? Partly globalization and technological change. Globalization sent many unionized manufacturing plants abroad.

Manufacturing is starting to return to America but it’s returning without many jobs. The old assembly line has been replaced by robotics and numerically-controlled machine tools.

Technologies have also replaced many formerly unionized workers in telecommunications (remember telephone operators?) and clerical jobs.

But wait. Other nations subject to the same forces have far higher levels of unionization than America. 28 percent of Canada’s workforce is unionized, as is more than 25 percent of Britain’s, and almost 20 percent of Germany’s.

Unions are almost extinct in America because we’ve chosen to make them extinct.

Unlike other rich nations, our labor laws allow employers to replace striking workers. We’ve also made it exceedingly difficult for workers to organize, and we barely penalized companies that violate labor laws. (A worker who’s illegally fired for trying to organize a union may, if lucky, get the job back along with back pay — after years of legal haggling.)

Republicans, in particular, have set out to kill off unions. Union membership dropped 13 percent last year in Wisconsin, which in 2011 curbed the collective bargaining rights of many public employees. And it fell 18 percent last year in Indiana, which last February enacted a right-to-work law (allowing employees at unionized workplaces to get all the benefits of unionization without paying for them). Last month Michigan enacted a similar law.

Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart, America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union.

Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart, America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union. They’re not in global competition and their jobs aren’t directly threatened by technology.

The average pay of a Walmart worker is $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits.

Walmart is a microcosm of the American economy. It has brazenly fought off unions. But it could easily afford to pay its workers more. It earned $16 billion last year. Much of that sum went to Walmart’s shareholders, including the family of its founder, Sam Walton.

The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

But how can Walmart expect to continue to show fat profits when most of its customers are on a downward economic escalator?

Walmart should be unionized. So should McDonalds. So should every major big-box retailer and fast-food outlet in the nation. So should every hospital in America.

That way, more Americans would have enough money in their pockets to get the economy moving. And everyone — even the very rich — would benefit.

As Obama said, America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

Robert Reich, one of the nation’s leading experts on work and the economy, is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. Time Magazine has named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including his latest best-seller, Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future; The Work of Nations; Locked in the Cabinet; Supercapitalism; and his newest, Beyond Outrage. His syndicated columns, television appearances, and public radio commentaries reach millions of people each week. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, and Chairman of the citizen’s group Common Cause. His widely-read blog can be found at www.robertreich.org.

The Government is set to announce a sweeping set of childcare reforms as it tries to reduce the burden on parents struggling to pay soaring nursery fees.

British families spend an average of 27% of their income on childcare – the second highest proportion in the world. But when it comes to the quality of care provided, the UK is said to be behind other European countries.

As part of the plans, nurseries and childminders will be allowed to look after more children.

The current ratio of one member of staff to every four two-year-olds will be increased to one carer for every six toddlers.

Nurseries will also be allowed to loosen ratios for under-twos, with one carer being allowed to look after four instead of three children.

Citing the example of France, Education Minister Elizabeth Truss will argue that easing the rules on ratios can give nurseries the “headroom to pay higher salaries”.

She is expected to tell an event at the Policy Exchange think-tank: “We have learned from other countries that deliver better value and better-quality childcare.

“We have looked across Europe and beyond. The aim is not to replicate another country’s approach but to learn from and apply best practice.”

Ministers also want youngsters to start being taught reading and maths at a younger age to reassure parents that their children are receiving a proper education.

And in return for deregulation and higher pay, Ms Truss will insist that nursery workers have tougher academic standards, including potential carers needing at least a grade C in English and maths to begin the two-year Early Years Educator Qualification.

Ms Truss said: “We want to see more of a continuum between childcare and the education system, we want to see more teachers in early years leading high quality group settings and also more people with English and maths GCSE going into early years.

“So this is about raising the quality and making sure our young children get the absolute best.”

Rachel Parangi, a mother-of-two, told Sky News: “The cost of childcare is a burden, it’s like a mortgage, in fact, it’s more than my mortgage – so yes it is expensive.

“It’s a price you have to pay for quality childcare. When you’re at work you want to know that someone is looking after your children.”

FIFA President Sepp Blatter (AFP Photo / Philippe Desmazes)

More than two years after FIFA awarded the 2022 World Cup to Qatar the influential French magazine France Football is alleging the gulf kingdom bribed its way to hosting the event.

­The 15-page article published on Tuesday and titled ‘The Qatargate’ reveals evidence pointing towards Qatar buying the right to host the 2022 World Cup.

The magazine claims African Confederation President Issa Hayatou of Cameroon and Jacques Anouma of Ivory Coast who both took part in the voting were accused of taking bribes by a former Qatari bid employee Phaedra Al Majid.

It was also revealed that Qatar reportedly poured around $1.25mn into the 2010 African Confederation Congress to gain exclusive access to the four Africans on the FIFA executive committee. One of them, Nigerian Amos Adamu, was later suspended from the executive committee following allegations made by the Sunday Times.

The magazine describes a meeting between the then French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the incumbent UEFA President Michel Platini and the Qatari crown prince Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani in 2010. Platini later opted for Qatar during the vote, while the crown prince has since bought Paris St. Germain, making it one of the strongest football clubs in Europe, and launched beIN Sport in France.

The magazine says it will hand the evidence to FIFA so a supplementary investigation in the Qatar bid can be launched.

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore. And welcome to this week’s edition of The Wilkerson Report with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.

Larry Wilkerson was the former chief of staff for U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s currently an adjunct professor of government at the College of William & Mary and a regular contributor to The Real News. Thanks for joining us.COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.JAY: So I’ve been wanting to ask you about this for a couple of weeks now. What do you make of President Obama’s nomination of Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense?WILKERSON: I think the president has made a pretty astute move putting John Kerry in the State Department and, hopefully, Chuck Hagel in the Department of Defense. He’s covered his bases, so to speak, with national security issues with Chuck Hagel’s appointment, and he’s done the same thing with John Kerry at State. Both have almost unimpeachable credentials with regard to national security policy, and so I think it’s a good move on both counts.JAY: Now, he had to know that this was going to infuriate, first of all, one gentleman named Netanyahu, AIPAC and such, and the whole neocon constituency, ’cause, I mean, Chuck Hagel became a very strong critic of the Iraq War, and he’s been very unwilling to jump on board sort of hysteria about Iran, and they don’t like that.WILKERSON: That’s true. I like it a great deal, and I think 60 to 70 percent of Americans will appreciate it also, because that group of Americans, who constitute the bulk of Americans, of course, are not interested in another war in the Middle East, a war which would probably be catastrophic, as former secretary of defense Robert Gates called it. And so I think President Obama has made a move that is in line with his electoral mandate. After all, he won for another four years. And he’s selecting people whose views more or less reflect the views of a majority of Americans.JAY: But why are they so antagonistic to Hagel? I mean, he is a Republican. He caucused with them. They know him well. But they’re really pulling out their guns.WILKERSON: That’s the problem–they do know him well, just as they knew George Voinovich of Ohio well and Olympia Snowe and others–Susan Collins, and other Republicans who are of the–what I shall call the Nelson Rockefeller framework or the Lawrence Wilkerson framework or the Colin Powell framework. They’re people who think critically. They’re people who are interested in the national outcome of this country’s efforts in the world, both foreign and domestic. They’re people who believe in allies, believe in friends, believe in talking and acting diplomatically with enemies or potential enemies. They’re sane people, in other words. I don’t know, Paul, but you may have checked the Republican Party lately. It’s got a lot of crazy people in it. It’s got a lot of extremists in it. That’s why they lost the election. That’s why they’ll lose the next election if they don’t correct their problems. So I’m wonderful with this idea that we’ve got some Republicans who [are] moderate in their outlook and who are nonetheless going to be in positions of power.JAY: Now, I mean, the group that seems to really be opposing it is sort of not the kind of Tea Party types; it’s the old-guard neocon foreign policy guys, you know, Lindsey Graham and his gang of people, I guess the old Bush gang Karl Rove type people. What is it about Hagel? What has he done specifically that they’re so worried about?WILKERSON: It’s the John Boltons, it’s the Douglas Feiths, it’s the Elliott Cohens, its others who believe that American military power should be used almost as the sole instrument of American policy. And they’re irritated because Chuck Hagel doesn’t believe that way. They’re irritated because in the past Hagel has shown that he has a very balanced view towards the Israeli-Palestinian issue, that he knows all the guilt isn’t on the Palestinian and Arab side, that some of it’s on the Israeli side.He’s very balanced on the Iran issue. That is to say, he believes diplomacy should run its full course before any option looking like military force is turned to. [snip] also a person who understands, I think, that we are frittering away our military power on the fringes of our empire, and that that’s the way empires in the past have gone the route of the dodo. And he doesn’t want the American enterprise to go that way. So he’s very concerned about our getting our economic house in order, the ultimate bastion/foundation of our power in the world in general, and very [inaud.] in getting our foreign policy issues straight so that we don’t further diminish the ability of our domestic scene to correct itself.We’ve got a lot of work to do in this country, rebuilding infrastructure, addressing climate change, coming up with alternative energy sources, and leading the world, more or less, in this effort, so at the same time we restore our economic power while we’re leading the world in a way that will be sustainable to the end of this century. These are huge challenges confronting us. And only now do I see, you know, these brief inklings of recognition of some of these challenges beginning to blossom in the White House, maybe even in that Luddite group of congressmen, many of whom deny that global warming and climate change is even changing.So the challenges that are confronting us are huge, and we don’t need people who are so focused on what the neocons are focused on in positions of power. And I’m delighted to see people who have a wider vista and a more moderate approach to foreign and security policy in ministerial positions. It’s–this is a great change.JAY: Now, you once gave a speech–I think it was at the Samuel Adams awards that we taped that year, and you said that there’s kind of two roads here for people in positions of power who look at the current American empire. You said that there’s a fact here, which is the empire is going to come to an end over the next few decades, but sooner than later, and it can either manage that, where United States becomes a kind of a–more of a coequal player in the global scene, or you can manage it in a way that you kind of strike out and make, you know, every attempt to defend something that can’t be defended, and that gets very dangerous. What does Hagel’s appointment tell you, not so much about him, but even more about President Obama in that context?WILKERSON: I hope it tells me that he’s beginning to show he recognizes some of these long-term and far more serious challenges, for example, than Iran. Whether Iran has a nuclear weapon or not, it pales in significance when confronted with some of these other challenges.Richard Haass has a new book that’s coming out, Foreign Policy Begins at Home, and in that book I’m sure Richard is going to talk about how we need desperately to repair our home ground in order to have any hope of having an effective foreign and security policy. I think Senator Hagel believes that. I think Senator Kerry believes that. I hope–I hope–that President Obama believes that. [snip] no question about it. There are going to be 3 billion people, many of them in India and China, who are going to come into the middle class and are going to want the standard of living that that connotes.What we’re talking about is six to nine planets’ worth of resources just to satisfy those desires. We don’t have those six to nine planets’ worth of resources. So we’d best get busy building the kind of sustainable, the kind of regenerative agriculture, for example, that goes along with that sustainability, and building the kind of infrastructure, technologically and otherwise, that can accommodate this new, massive entry into the middle class, or we’re going to have by 2050 nothing but war and anarchy and chaos and, I’m sorry to say, probably a whole lot of death.JAY: So when you assess these personalities–President Obama, Hagel, Kerry–the question comes up about how much they can, even if they do believe in a more rational foreign policy–. And I take your point: I think at least the appointment of Hagel says something about Obama vis-à-vis Iran, that he’s not wanting to jump on the go to war with Iran bandwagon. But if you look at Kerry, I mean, Kerry began as this critic of Vietnam, but seems to come, like, full circle–or half a circle, maybe not full circle, ’cause he’s not back to being the critic–I mean, this is the guy that said, even if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he’d still vote for supporting it. But he’s even going further than some of the Republicans and others that voted at the time.WILKERSON: I think it’s mostly an effort to shore up what (at least until, maybe one can say, the killing of bin Laden) had been very, very weak foundation for the Democrats on national security. I know for someone who knows about Harry Truman, FDR, and all that they represented in those times, that seems nonsensical, but let’s face it. Since George McGovern and his run for the presidency in–what was it?–1968, I guess, the Democrats have really had problems bolstering their national security bona fides. They’ve had a tremendous problem competing with the Republicans in the realm of national security.And I think that accounts for some of the more, shall we say, out-of-character remarks from time to time from Democrats, because they’re trying to reestablish those bona fides. And in a time of post-9/11, it’s a very critical thing, politically, for some of them to do. So I think that accounts for some of the more bellicose remarks, if you will, coming from people like John Kerry. I hope it doesn’t represent a change in his basic outlook, because the basic outlook is that military force should be the last, the absolute last resort after you have exhausted political, economic, financial, diplomatic, informational, cultural, and all other aspects of national power. Military power should only be the last resort.JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Larry.WILKERSON: Thanks for having me, Paul.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

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Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay in Baltimore.

Lanny Breuer, who’s head of the Criminal Justice Division at the Justice Department, has announced he’s stepping down. According to The Washington Post, quote, Breuer is widely credited with aggressively going after white-collar crime in the aftermath of the crisis. Well, a recent PBS documentary suggests a somewhat different description of how Breuer has done on this front. Here’s a clip towards the end of the film.~~~MARTIN SMITH, CORRESPONDENT, PBS FRONTLINE: You gave a speech before the New York Bar Association, and in that speech you made a reference to losing sleep at night worrying about what a lawsuit might result in at a large financial institution. Is that really the job of a prosecutor, to worry about anything other than simply pursuing justice?LANNY BREUER, ASSIST. ATTORNEY GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: Well, I think I am pursuing justice, because if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bring that case there’s some huge economic effect, if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly, it’s a factor we need to know and understand.TED KAUFMAN, FMR. U.S. SENATOR (D-DE): That was very disturbing to me, very disturbing. That was never raised at any time during any of our discussions. That is not the job of a prosecutor, to worry about the health of the banks, in my opinion. The job of prosecutor is to prosecute criminal behavior. It’s not to lie awake at night and kind of decide the future of the banks.NARRATOR (VOICEOVER): So far in civil proceedings the government has levied several billion dollars in penalties for misconduct in a crisis that’s cost investors and homeowners many hundreds of billions of dollars. But to date not one senior Wall Street executive has been held criminally liable by the Department of Justice for activities related to the financial crisis.~~~JAY: Now joining us to talk about the record of the Justice Department in relation to this type of crime or fraud and prosecuting or lack of it is James Henry. James is a leading economist, attorney, investigative journalist who’s written extensively about global issues. He served as the chief economist at the international consultancy firm McKinsey & Company. As an investigative journalist, his work has appeared in numerous publications like Forbes, Nation, and The New York Times. Thanks for joining us again, James.JAMES S. HENRY, ECONOMIST, LAWYER, AND INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: You’re quite welcome.JAY: So talk a bit about this, this conundrum, you could say, that Brewer says he was faced with, more or less that if he goes after executives from the big banks, even though he kind of acknowledges it was probably fraud and the FBI agent or FBI official in the film says, you know, if he thinks it was not unintentional the way banks did things–a pretty understated way to say it. But Breuer says he couldn’t have done it, because the systemic implications were just too big–not his words, but that’s what he’s saying.HENRY: Yeah. I mean, that’s what he made a statement in September of last year in a speech, saying that he was kind of up nights worrying about what would happen to these massive institutions if he indicted some of these senior executives criminally. I think a lot of outsiders would say that’s nonsense, that, you know, you could clearly just put some of the executives in jail–and I think that’s what they were actually expecting–without jeopardizing the institutions themselves. Maybe some of these institutions deserve to be corporately indicted and made examples of, and maybe the entire–you know, kind of the salutary effect on the banking system would be great enough to justify putting one of them out of its misery because of the effect it would have on all the others.So I think there’s at least a strong argument that this Justice Department, when it came to large financial institutions, was asleep at the switch. And we have no indictments or prosecutions of any individual senior Wall Street executive in the last four years.JAY: What for you is the sort of two or three most outstanding examples of fraud that should have been prosecuted?HENRY: Well, we now see a lot of private lawsuits going on from investors in some of the securitized mortgage packages and people who bought things like CDOs from Goldman Sachs at the same time Goldman Sachs was shorting these securities themselves. So these private suits and the law firms that have been prosecuting them have managed to turn up, you know, reams of evidence of real fraud. And it’s all emerging in the course of these private law suits which are about to unfold.It’s ironic, given all that evidence, that the Justice Department, with its thousands of attorneys, and, you know, the SEC be able to help out as well, couldn’t come to a similar kind of finding, couldn’t turn up the whistleblowers that even in the PBS documentary, you know, investigative journalists were able to surface in a matter of weeks. And the New York State attorney general’s office has piggybacked already on some of these private lawsuits and has–pursuing its own investigations of some of the largest firms on Wall Street, including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citibank, Bank of America.These major institutions have basically walked away from justice when it comes to the federal government, and it’s been left to the private lawsuits and to the SEC, to the state of New York, to actually piggyback on these private lawsuits and make these cases. It begs the question of, you know, whether or Lenny Breuer and his team was really doing their job when it came to these major financial institutions. They seem to have a soft place in their hearts. And that also extends to other kinds of corporate crime, for example the settlements that they engaged in with HSBC and the money laundering, the tap on the wrist that UBS got for being at the heart of the Libor scandal. It’s not just the bank crises; it’s also these other kind of shenanigans. So, many of us have been expecting the Justice Department to act here, but they haven’t.JAY: So let’s talk a little bit about the bigger picture here. The power of finance seems to be such, the biggest financial institutions, their hold over Congress, their hold over the Obama administration, their hold over the Justice Department, it seems to be so deep and profound that they can’t be regulated, they can’t be prosecuted. Where does this lead? Where does this go?HENRY: I think you can’t even get them out of the Treasury Department. I mean, Obama’s pick for the successor to Tim Geithner this month is taking office at the Treasury, the secretary of Treasury, is Jacob Lew, who is the guy who was running Citibank’s global private banking department in 2006, you know, and then moved on to the White House chief of staff. But here we have, right at the core of power, another senior Wall Street executive.Now, I think Ted Kaufman, who was a senator from Delaware in 2010, then retired, and was a big proponent of prosecutions, basically said that, you know, Wall Street calls the shots in Washington. Dick Durbin said they own this town. And I think that’s not only due to financial influence and contributions; it’s also due to the fact that there’s this revolving-door policy of basically gifting the Treasury Department to former executives from the major banks. You know, we have Bill Daley from JPMorgan, vice chairman of JPMorgan, serving as Obama’s chief of staff. It’s hard to imagine those folks being tough on the institutions that have provided their bread and butter. And so the track record is entirely consistent with this evidence that we see from the Justice Department’s failure to prosecute any of these major institutions.JAY: I mean, I don’t think it’s anything new with the Obama administration, but Barack Obama the candidate was heavily financed by Wall Street. Everyone was kind of surprised in the primaries that he was actually raising more money than Hillary Clinton was on Wall Street.HENRY: You know, Wall Street’s contributions from 1990 to 2008 was an average of $2,500 per day per congressman. You know, it’s just hard to compete with that kind of immediate financial clout.And I think there’s also a kind of insidious influence on just the ideology. You know, we’ve had presidential candidate after presidential candidate basically arguing for hands off when it comes to financial regulation–don’t really have a good explanation from those folks about what went wrong in 2008. I guess it was, you know, just bad weather. But, you know, to this day, we really haven’t had a fundamental, deep examination of the role of the private sector financial institutions in the policies that led to that very, very costly collapse that we’re still paying for.JAY: Isn’t some of this kind of so inherent in the way the global capitalist system works right now–and it’s not new, but it’s reached new heights, meaning that the size of the global economy’s just so big, there is so much capital moving back and forth, the enterprises, global companies, are so big and operate on such a scale that you need banks that can operate in massive ways? On the other hand, when they get so big, you can’t regulate them–they’re essentially above the law. I mean, it’s a conundrum, is it not?HENRY: If one of these institutions were indicted corporately and made an example of and exposed to the world for their behavior, you’d have a very, very profound effect on the behavior of the whole industry, because they all–you know, they say that bankers could exchange strategies and no one would care, ’cause they all basically pursue the same strategies.JAY: But that’s sort of my point, like, if one of them was indicted, if some modest legislation was passed. But my point is you can’t even pass the modest reforms. You can’t even indict one institution. You can’t–the power finance has over the politics, you can’t even get, you know, simple, modest things changed in terms [crosstalk]HENRY: Yeah, I think that’s the dilemma, that this has been an issue where it’s very difficult to mobilize masses of Americans to understand. You know, it’s not like on the gun control issue we seem to be making some progress now because people are outraged at a relatively simple situation and they can understand what they need to do about it; in the case of the banking institutions, everyone believes it’s so terribly complicated that we have to defer to, you know, the Illuminati. So that’s kind of the problem.And then this is an ideal case for presidential leadership. This is exactly where the president should be focusing his attention, because he does have the intellectual horsepower and support in his own team to get this kind of legislation done.JAY: So far what we’ve seen, he appoints and nominates these people, not prosecute.HENRY: I think his basic interest is not in economics. It’s in more political issues. And he’s kind of put the Treasury on autopilot. He’s trusted to Tim Geithner to run the Treasury. And, you know, he’s the technocrat who’s been not only head of the New York Fed, but also was a senior official at the IMF. So it’s not an area that Obama really wants to worry about in addition to everything else in foreign policy and, you know, the complicated domestic issues that he faces anyway.So he wanted, I think, to assume–part of his stance here has been to say, okay, let Treasury run the economy. And that’s been a mistake.JAY: Yeah. Well, it’s been a mistake for most Americans. It may have been the right call for some of the mavens of Wall Street, but it wasn’t a very good call for anybody else.HENRY: You know, as many of his, you know, people on his political team have been saying, well, this will help us raise money from Wall Street. And indeed it has. I mean, he basically raised a lot more than people expected, given that Romney was in the race, from the very people that have made this economic crisis.JAY: Right. Thanks for joining us, James.HENRY: You’re quite welcome.JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

End

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A rally by Move to Amend Ohio, the state chapter of the national coalition seeking to amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate constitutional rights. (Credit: Progress Ohio/cc by 2.0)ATLANTA, Georgia – There is a growing national movement to establish a 28th amendment to the constitution of the United States to address the issue of unlimited corporate spending in elections, although the groups working on the issue diverge on what exactly the amendment should say.

One national coalition called Move to Amend (MTA) is led by David Cobb. A Green Party candidate for president in 2006, Cobb has been touring the country calling for a constitutional amendment to “clearly establish that money is not speech, a corporation is not a person, all corporations are subject to regulation, all campaign contributions will be disclosed, and (that) allows for no loopholes,” according to the MTA website.

But passing a constitutional amendment is a daunting task, requiring the support of two-thirds of the U.S. House and Senate, followed by ratification by three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures.

Cobb believes that it will take about 10 years to build a grassroots movement to successfully lobby for the enactment of the amendment, but that it can be accomplished eventually.

“It’s a lot of work, but so was the Civil Rights Movement, so was women’s suffrage,” Cobb told IPS.

“A small group of ruling elites has hijacked every one of the institutions in this country — the media and both political parties. There’s a corporatised culture and we have to change the power structure. The only way we see is to build a mass, multiracial movement,” he said.

“Move to Amend is a coalition coming together specifically to work together for (abolishing) corporate personhood. We’ve got 258,000 people who are participating with us specifically on this project. There’s lots of work going on now, and it’s coalescing.”

The effort to amend the U.S. constitution has in part been a reaction to the controversial ruling of the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which found that the first amendment to the U.S. constitution, on freedom of speech, prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions.

In the ruling, corporations were essentially viewed as having the same rights as people, thus coining the term corporate personhood.

Activists held rallies across the U.S. earlier this month to protest the third anniversary of the Citizens United ruling. 

Data from the 2012 national elections have begun to reveal an unprecedented amount of spending in the elections, about six billion dollars, much of which is untraceable due to a new phenomenon called SuperPACs, political action committees that have literally no limit to how much they can spend, as well as shadow corporations, which are created for the sole purpose of funneling money into elections.

One of the main organising strategies by MTA and other groups to support an eventual constitutional amendment is to get local councils and commissions at the city and county levels to adopt resolutions in support of such an amendment.

According to the MTA website, there are at least 183 municipal government resolutions, 19 local ordinances, and three state-level resolutions in Hawaii, Montana, and Vermont that have passed to ban corporate personhood.

In addition, there are 79 local resolutions and 10 state resolutions that have also passed, but that MTA considers partial resolutions because they do not completely address the issue of corporate constitutional rights.

Most recently, on Jan. 22, the city council in Conway, Arkansas, passed a resolution with unanimous support.

MTA is itself a coalition of hundreds of organisations, and MTA has dozens of affiliates in cities throughout the U.S.

Other organisations that are working on this issue nationally include United for the People, which is also a coalition and which also has affiliates; in addition to Free Speech for the People, People for the American Way, and Public Citizen.

There has been some disagreement, though, among members of congress and various advocacy groups as to what the exact language of the constitutional amendment should be.

At least six different members of congress introduced legislation in 2011 to amend the constitution to in one way or another address the issue of unlimited corporate spending in U.S. elections.

Meanwhile, different organisations are supporting different versions of the bill. For example, Free Speech for the People is supporting the Edwards proposal and the McGovern proposal. People for the American Way is supporting the Udall proposal. And Public Citizen is supporting the Deutch proposal, which is the counterpart in the House to the Sanders proposal in the Senate.

Move to Amend presents on its website what it believes to be the strongest version of the proposed amendment, adding, “It is our belief that we need to operate on the assumption that once an Amendment comes out of Congress we won’t get another shot. So we MUST get it right!”

“I work on many issues. When you get to the bottom of just about every issue, you come up against the wall of the unholy alliance of money, corporate interest, and politicians,” Stacey Hopkins, lead organiser for United for the People Georgia and council organiser for MoveOn Atlanta, told IPS.

“I was active in doing voter registration, and we saw where dark money groups were backing voter suppression efforts around the country,” Hopkins said.

“We’ve also seen groups backing efforts to repeal Section Five of the Voting Rights Act, and as an African American, this is something that I take very personally,” Hopkins said.

© 2012 IPS North America

I read the news today, oh boy…

Obsidian Wings wonders what happened with Dubya’s attempt to reform immigration. Did MiniTrue flush it?

Rubber Hose worries about what happens to laws and regulations previously passed during what are now illegal recess appointments.

Juanita Jean’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon looks at the sexism of Conservative Christian radio hosts Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner. The operative word is “looks.”

Bonus track: This Day In Science Fiction examines the predictions of yesteryear as they play out today… In The Future!

Round-up by Tengrain of Mock, Paper, Scissors who also blogs at Dependable Renegade. Send tips to: mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com

These days, it’s almost mandatory for public figures to laud our men and women in the military with praise and gratitude. “Thank you for your service,” rolls off the tongues of Republicans and Democrats alike.(Photo: AFP)

Certainly that’s the storyline fed us by politicians: our veterans are heroes — a thin green line between existential threats to our country and our freedom.

Odd then, that the principles these men and women ostensibly fought and died defending are being traded away like so much second hand junk at a garage sale. Let’s examine how.

Republican Hypocrisy of the Highest Order

Don’t look now, but Republicans are engaged in a systematic effort to disenfranchise voters. Yeah, that’s right–the Party that has sanctimoniously and aggressively wrapped itself in the flag for some 30 years now, is undercutting the one person, one vote principle that is the cornerstone of democracy.

See, as their attempts to use faux patriotism, fear, hate, greed and anger to forge a winning coalition began to unravel in the face of changing demographics, they started trying to prevent people who disagreed with them from voting. 

For Republicans, one person, one vote has given way to our people vote, yours don’t. 

It started in 2000 in Florida with a systematic attempt to exclude voters who were likely to vote for Democrats. It continued to 2004, where Ohio’s Secretary of State rigged distribution of voting machines so that Democratic leaning precincts were plagued with long lines and even longer delays in voting. 

In 2012, they tried to use trumped up fears about voter fraud to put voter ID laws in place that made it more difficult for seniors, minorities, and students to vote. Of course, these groups tend to vote for Democrats. How much voter fraud was there to justify this assault on freedom? Almost none.

Yet Republicans were ready to exclude tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of voters to fix a problem that barely existed. Land of the free? Not so much.

And now we have the latest Republican assault on democracy — tying the electoral college to gerrymandered districts. Gerrymandering has already disenfranchised voters. In 2012, 1,156,550 more people voted for Democratic candidates in House races than for Republicans, yet Republicans won the House. 

This latest scheme — endorsed by RNC Chair Reince Priebus would apply this anti-democratic strategy to presidential elections as well. If states with Republican governors and legislatures such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio had adopted this tactic, Mitt Romney would be President, despite losing the popular vote by nearly 5 million.

Yup, Republicans sure love freedom and democracy — unless of course, it interferes with their attempts to gain power.

And what about those heroes everyone loves to point to — the millions of men and women who, over the course of our history have been wounded, maimed, and killed defending freedom? Screw ‘em. 

Democrats, Cowards or Conspirators?

Of course, Democrats are doing their own bit to eviscerate our freedoms. 

Remember the Patriot Act, with all its illegal and immoral provisions violating the spirit or letter of the Bill of Rights? Well, four years after winning the election, it’s still in effect. Warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention of citizens, the whole panoply of horrors hatched by Bush. In fact, recently these abuses have been expanded.

In 1759, Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Home of the brave? Hardly. When a rag-tag group of stateless terrorists armed only with scavenged weapons and improvised explosives can frighten us into relinquishing essential freedoms, then we have become the home of the terrified. 

So here we are. Since the founding of our nation, nearly 750,000 people have died in battles, most defending the principles embedded in the Constitution. Yes, this document has not always been inclusive, and yes, many of these wars were more about aggression and expansion than defense of freedom. 

But until lately, our history has been marked by an expansion of rights to more and more people over the years. 

But no more. Republicans are trying to rig the system so the majority no longer wins, and Democrats are thumbing their noses at the Bill of Rights.

And where is the mainstream media on all this? If not quite silent, certainly herded into incoherence with cries of “balance” and fear of being accused of being “partisan.”

Here’s the deal. Tyranny more often comes silently from within than it does from heralded assaults from without. And a coup can be executed with money and fear as readily as it can be with arms and aggression.

So it is that a nation that once served as a beacon of freedom slips inexorably toward a third rate banana republic in which power, ambition, wealth, greed, fear and ignorance trump the Enlightenment principles upon which it was founded.

RIP, heroes.

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

These days, it’s almost mandatory for public figures to laud our men and women in the military with praise and gratitude. “Thank you for your service,” rolls off the tongues of Republicans and Democrats alike.(Photo: AFP)

Certainly that’s the storyline fed us by politicians: our veterans are heroes — a thin green line between existential threats to our country and our freedom.

Odd then, that the principles these men and women ostensibly fought and died defending are being traded away like so much second hand junk at a garage sale. Let’s examine how.

Republican Hypocrisy of the Highest Order

Don’t look now, but Republicans are engaged in a systematic effort to disenfranchise voters. Yeah, that’s right–the Party that has sanctimoniously and aggressively wrapped itself in the flag for some 30 years now, is undercutting the one person, one vote principle that is the cornerstone of democracy.

See, as their attempts to use faux patriotism, fear, hate, greed and anger to forge a winning coalition began to unravel in the face of changing demographics, they started trying to prevent people who disagreed with them from voting. 

For Republicans, one person, one vote has given way to our people vote, yours don’t. 

It started in 2000 in Florida with a systematic attempt to exclude voters who were likely to vote for Democrats. It continued to 2004, where Ohio’s Secretary of State rigged distribution of voting machines so that Democratic leaning precincts were plagued with long lines and even longer delays in voting. 

In 2012, they tried to use trumped up fears about voter fraud to put voter ID laws in place that made it more difficult for seniors, minorities, and students to vote. Of course, these groups tend to vote for Democrats. How much voter fraud was there to justify this assault on freedom? Almost none.

Yet Republicans were ready to exclude tens of thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — of voters to fix a problem that barely existed. Land of the free? Not so much.

And now we have the latest Republican assault on democracy — tying the electoral college to gerrymandered districts. Gerrymandering has already disenfranchised voters. In 2012, 1,156,550 more people voted for Democratic candidates in House races than for Republicans, yet Republicans won the House. 

This latest scheme — endorsed by RNC Chair Reince Priebus would apply this anti-democratic strategy to presidential elections as well. If states with Republican governors and legislatures such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio had adopted this tactic, Mitt Romney would be President, despite losing the popular vote by nearly 5 million.

Yup, Republicans sure love freedom and democracy — unless of course, it interferes with their attempts to gain power.

And what about those heroes everyone loves to point to — the millions of men and women who, over the course of our history have been wounded, maimed, and killed defending freedom? Screw ‘em. 

Democrats, Cowards or Conspirators?

Of course, Democrats are doing their own bit to eviscerate our freedoms. 

Remember the Patriot Act, with all its illegal and immoral provisions violating the spirit or letter of the Bill of Rights? Well, four years after winning the election, it’s still in effect. Warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention of citizens, the whole panoply of horrors hatched by Bush. In fact, recently these abuses have been expanded.

In 1759, Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Home of the brave? Hardly. When a rag-tag group of stateless terrorists armed only with scavenged weapons and improvised explosives can frighten us into relinquishing essential freedoms, then we have become the home of the terrified. 

So here we are. Since the founding of our nation, nearly 750,000 people have died in battles, most defending the principles embedded in the Constitution. Yes, this document has not always been inclusive, and yes, many of these wars were more about aggression and expansion than defense of freedom. 

But until lately, our history has been marked by an expansion of rights to more and more people over the years. 

But no more. Republicans are trying to rig the system so the majority no longer wins, and Democrats are thumbing their noses at the Bill of Rights.

And where is the mainstream media on all this? If not quite silent, certainly herded into incoherence with cries of “balance” and fear of being accused of being “partisan.”

Here’s the deal. Tyranny more often comes silently from within than it does from heralded assaults from without. And a coup can be executed with money and fear as readily as it can be with arms and aggression.

So it is that a nation that once served as a beacon of freedom slips inexorably toward a third rate banana republic in which power, ambition, wealth, greed, fear and ignorance trump the Enlightenment principles upon which it was founded.

RIP, heroes.

John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson’s book reviews are featured on Climateprogess.org.

Tim Mathieson, the partner of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, has inexplicably responded to a question no-one ever asked with an answer no-one ever expected.

What type of doctor should you look for if you are going to get your prostate checked?

Asides from a professional one, Mathieson also suggests ensuring the medical practitioner is a “small Asian female doctor”.

In just a few words, Mathieson managed to potentially offend a huge majority of the world’s population in just three words.

In his defence, the poorly conceived comments were in the context of promoting awareness of prostate cancer.

At a reception for the West Indies cricket team at Gillard’s official residence in Canberra, he said: “We can get a blood test for it, but the digital examination is the only true way to get a correct reading on your prostate so make sure you go and do that, and perhaps look for a small Asian female doctor is probably the best way.”

Gillard, who became in internet hit last year with an anti-sexism rant against an opposition MP, can be seen in the background, her face practically turning to granite.

She told ABC radio after the gaffe: “Obviously, there’s various ways of getting that message across, but he’s certainly acknowledged that the joke cracked last night was in poor taste.”

Mathieson later said in a statement: “It was meant as a joke and on reflection I accept it was in poor taste,” he said in a brief statement issued by the Prime Minister’s office.

“I apologise for any offence caused.”

Our collective action in Idle No More has shown that there is support among Canadians for a movement that embodies principled opposition to the destruction of the land and the extension of social justice to Indigenous peoples. When we as Indigenous people have a political agenda that’s consistent with our Original Teachings — to have a respectful relationship with the land and the natural environment and to have a respectful relationship among all of the nations that share this land — we have seen that this is a powerful draw for many people in our own nations and in the broader society.

But it is clear too that the movement has plateaued. Much of the passion, urgency and attention Idle No More generated is dissipating in the wake of Chief Theresa Spence’s fast and the “13 Point Declaration” supported by Chief Spence, the Assembly of First Nations and the two Canadian opposition parties – which to many people in the movement represents a cooptation of the movement’s demands by the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations in support of their ongoing negotiations and long-running bureaucratic processes.

The question in the minds of many people in the movement who are committed to more serious and transformational goals is how do we revive the momentum driving us towards fundamental change that we had at the start of the movement? I think that the only way to keep this movement going is for us to see our actions in Idle No More as part of a larger and long-standing commitment to the restoration of Indigenous nationhood.

We need to focus our activism on the root of the problem facing our people collectively: our collective dispossession and misrepresentation as Indigenous peoples. Now is the time to put ourselves back on our lands spiritually and physically and to shift our support away from the Indian Act system and to start energizing the restoration of our own governments. Our people and our languages and our ceremonies should be saturating our homelands and territories. Our leaders should answer to us not to the Minister of Indian Affairs or his minions. Our governments should be circles in which we all sit as equals and participate fully and where all of our voices are heard, not systems of hierarchy and exclusion legitimized and enforced by Canadian laws. Restoring our nationhood in this way is the fundamental struggle. Our focus should be on restoring our presence on the land and regenerating our true nationhood. These go hand in hand and one cannot be achieved without the other.

Idle No More has been a good and necessary thing. Like thousands of others over the last couple of months, I am proud to have been a whole-hearted participant in educating the wider public, making the connection between our Native rights and the democratic rights of all citizens, and arguing for the protection of the environment under the Idle No More banner. But the limits to Idle No More are clear, and many people are beginning to realize that the kind of movement we have been conducting under the banner of Idle No More is not sufficient in itself to decolonize this country or even to make meaningful change in the lives of people.

Those of us in the movement need to ask ourselves this hard question: what have we accomplished through Idle No More? There’s been politicization of some Native people. There’s been some media attention. There have been rallies and demonstrations. Great art and music has been produced. These are all good. But in terms of meaningful change in the lives of people and the struggle for justice, things are no different now than when this whole thing started. The federal government has not responded or felt the need to address in any way the challenge we’ve presented so far. We are in danger of becoming institutionalized and predictable as a movement, or worse, becoming kind of a giant Facebook rant that like all Facebook rants is a closed circle easily ignored which has no real relation to things actually happening in people’s lives. What this means if we are committed to making change and achieving justice for our people is that we need to alter our strategies and tactics to present more of a serious challenge on the ground to force the federal government to engagement our movement and to respond to us in a serious way.

I believe that what our movement needs is a mobilization of people on the basis of Indigenous Nationhood, led by traditional chiefs and clan mothers, medicine people, elders and youth, to start acting on our inherent rights on the land and to demand respect for our traditional governments. In practical terms, we need to go beyond demonstrations and rallies in malls and legislatures and on public streets and start to reoccupy Indigenous sacred, ceremonial and cultural use sites to re-establish our presence on our land and in doing so to educate Canadians about our continuing connections to those places and how important they are to our continuing existence as Indigenous peoples.

If we do this we can, once again, make the Assembly of First Nations, the mainstream media, the opposition parties hear the true voice of Indigenous people in this country and if we are strong and tenacious in demonstrating our commitment to these goals, we can force the federal government to take us seriously.

Now is the time to transgress, reoccupy, rise… as Original Peoples.

© 2012 Gerald Taiaiake Alfred

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is a Kahnawake Mohawk author, educator and professor at the University of Victoria where he specializes in studies of traditional governance, the restoration of land-based cultural practices, and decolonization strategies. His books include Peace, Power, Righteousness: An Indigenous Manifesto and Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors: Kahnawake Mohawk Politics and the Rise of Native Nationalism. Read more of his work on his website. Follow him on twitter: @Taiaiake

more Gerald Taiaiake Alfred

The euphemisms will come fast and furious. Our soldiers will be greeted as “heroes” who, as in Iraq, left with their “heads held high,” and if in 2014 or 2015 or even 2019, the last of them, as also in Iraq, slip away in the dark of night after lying to their Afghan “allies” about their plans, few here will notice.Sunset in Afghanistan.

This will be the nature of the great Afghan drawdown. The words “retreat,” “loss,” “defeat,” “disaster,” and their siblings and cousins won’t be allowed on the premises. But make no mistake, the country that, only years ago, liked to call itself the globe’s “sole superpower” or even “hyperpower,” whose leaders dreamed of a Pax Americana across the Greater Middle East, if not the rest of the globe is… not to put too fine a point on it, packing its bags, throwing in the towel, quietly admitting–in actions, if not in words –to mission unaccomplished, and heading if not exactly home, at least boot by boot off the Eurasian landmass.

Washington has, in a word, had enough. Too much, in fact. It’s lost its appetite for invasions and occupations of Eurasia, though special operations raids, drone wars, and cyberwars still look deceptively cheap and easy as a means to control… well, whatever. As a result, the Afghan drawdown of 2013-2014, that implicit acknowledgement of yet another lost war, should set the curtain falling on the American Century as we’ve known it. It should be recognized as a landmark, the moment in history when the sun truly began to set on a great empire. Here in the United States, though, one thing is just about guaranteed: not many are going to be paying the slightest attention.

No one even thinks to ask the question: In the mighty battle lost, who exactly beat us? Where exactly is the triumphant enemy? Perhaps we should be relieved that the question is not being raised, because it’s a hard one to answer. Could it really have been the scattered jihadis of al-Qaeda and its wannabes? Or the various modestly armed Sunni and Shiite minority insurgencies in Iraq, or their Pashtun equivalents in Afghanistan with their suicide bombers and low-tech roadside bombs? Or was it something more basic, something having to do with a planet no longer amenable to imperial expeditions? Did the local and global body politic simply and mysteriously spit us out as the distasteful thing we had become? Or is it even possible, as Pogo once suggested, that in those distant, unwelcoming lands, we met the enemy and he was us? Did we in some bizarre fashion fight ourselves and lose? After all, last year, more American servicemen died from suicide than on the battlefield in Afghanistan; and a startling number of Americans were killed in “green on blue” or “insider” attacks by Afghan “allies” rather than by that fragmented movement we still call the Taliban. 

Whoever or whatever was responsible, our Afghan disaster was remarkably foreseeable. In fact, anyone who, from 2006 on, read Ann Jones’s Afghan reports at TomDispatch wouldn’t have had a doubt about the outcome of the war. Her first piece, after all, was prophetically entitled “Why It’s Not Working in Afghanistan.” (“The answer is a threefold failure: no peace, no democracy, and no reconstruction.”)  From Western private-contractors-cum- looters making a figurative killing off the “reconstruction” of the country to an Afghan army that was largely a figment of the American imagination to up-armored U.S. soldiers on well-guarded bases whose high-tech equipment and comforts of home blinded them to the nature of the enemy, hers has long been a tale of impending failure. Now, that war seems headed for its predictable end, not for the Afghans who, as Jones indicates in her latest sweeping report from Kabul, may face terrible years ahead, but for the U.S. After more than 11 years, the war that is often labeled the longest in American history is slowly winding down and that’s no small thing.

So leave the mystery of who beat us to the historians, but mark the moment. It’s historic.

© 2012 TomDispatch.com

January 29, 2013  |  

America’s long and steady march toward a fully disposable workforce continues apace, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week. Union membership is at its lowest point in nearly a century, with just 11.3% of all workers — the same level it was in 1916. To put this in proper historical perspective, union members are as rare today as they were at a time when being one could get you shot to death in a mining camp by the Colorado national guard.

Not that there is a great public outcry to return to the halcyon days of garment factory fires and tubercular slaughterhouses, or workers rallying to demand their bosses take away their pensions and bathroom breaks. Surveys show that most people wish they had more, not less input into their working conditions, and that a majority of non-union workers would choose to join a union, given the opportunity. Most do not get that opportunity, whether due to outright intimidation, or the ongoing shift of large parts of the economy toward part-time, temporary, low-wage and no-benefit jobs.

Union decline is nothing new: it began in the US in the mid 1950s and has been accelerating since the mid 70s. What’s new this year is why: while deunionization was long linked to deindustrialization, now union losses are concentrated in government, the last bastion of organized labor. Decades ago, facing factory closings, many unions shifted to the public sector, organizing what were then seen as stable jobs: teachers, firefighters, cops, state-funded healthcare and childcare workers.

Then came the recession, and a new breed of Republican governors who seized the moment as a chance to punish their political opponents. One of the sharpest declines has occurred in Wisconsin, where Governor Scott Walker stripped most state employees of their bargaining rights (notably excluding those unions that had endorsed him).

But if labor markets are adapting to the reality of a mostly union-free America, so too is labor activism. Last year, two of the highest profile labor actions in the country — one-day “flash” strikes at fast food restaurants in New York City, and at Walmart stores nationwide — were coordinated by groups that are not traditional unions: New York Communities for Change and OUR Walmart (though both received union support). And both strikes were carried out without the traditional aim of formal union recognition.

Networks of new, grassroots workers centers — including the Restaurant Opportunities Centers, Retail Action Project, National Day Laborer Organizing Network, and National Domestic Workers Alliance — have grown in sectors which unions have found nearly impossible to organize due to their contingent or informal nature. And their victories — exposing safety and health violations, winning raises and backpay owed to workers, freeing some from virtual domestic slavery — have been achieved largely outside the purview of the body that governs union elections, the National Labor Relations Board.

Just a week before the BLS released its sobering report, Chicago passed a new law imposing some of the strictest sanctions on employers who do not pay workers the wages they are owed. It’s an illegal but lightly enforced practice — and appallingly common in many industries, where it is used to force employees to work off-the-clock, as a means to avoid paying overtime rates, or simply as a way not pay staff for work they have done.

I volunteer at one legal clinic for low-income workers called the DC Employment Justice Center. The bulk of cases I’ve seen over the past decade have involved some form of wage theft perpetrated against construction workers, cleaners, housekeepers, and restaurant kitchen staff — most of them immigrants from Central America.

British national Julian Ponder has been jailed for six years for cocaine possession in Bali.

Prosecutors in Indonesia had asked for a seven-year prison term, and he could have faced a maximum sentence of life.

Lindsay Sandiford, the British grandmother sentenced to death for smuggling cocaine worth £1.5m onto the island, said Ponder was the man she was going to deliver the cocaine to.

He was originally charged with drug trafficking, but that was later reduced to possession.

More follows…

Thieves stole a top-of-the-range 4×4 owned by Manchester United star Paul Scholes as he defrosted the windscreen.

The footballer left the engine running to melt ice on his grey Chevrolet Captiva Estate while it was parked on his driveway and nipped back inside his home in Oldham, Greater Manchester.

When he returned, the car had been stolen.

The incident happened on Monday morning between 7.45am and 8am, Greater Manchester Police said.

A spokesman said: “Police are investigating after a car was stolen while the owner was defrosting the vehicle.

“The grey Chevrolet Estate was stolen from the drive of a house in the Greenfield area of Oldham between 7.45am and 8am on Monday 28 January 2013.

“Inquiries to locate the car are ongoing.”

Police urged drivers not to leave their cars running and unattended while defrosting as it only takes a thief a few seconds to steal the vehicle.

Scholes, 38, has played his entire professional career at Manchester United, making more than 700 appearances for the club.

He has also made 66 appearances for England.

The Bad Lip Reading team have already given us their take on President Obama’s second inauguration – including Beyoncé’s rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’.

But now, they’ve tackled Ms Knowle’s epic performance in full. Ladies and gentlemen, will you please be upstanding for… ‘La Fway’!

“Last night I scratched your pig,” she warbles. “His name was Rusty,” she croons.

It’s pretty epic. And possibly more stirring than ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. But then, we are British…

Also on HuffPost:

Trevi fountain in Rome (AFP Photo / Gabriel Bouys)

One of the best-known symbols of Rome, the Trevi Fountain, will receive a much needed facelift from Italian luxury fashion brand Fendi who are financing the $3,5million restoration of the baroque masterpiece.

­The restoration of the fountain, completed in 1762, is due to take 20 months. Rome’s fountains “are there to glorify water, which is the most important thing in life,” Fendi’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld told a press conference.

The Trevi Fountain was featured in an iconic scene in Fellini’s 1960 film La Dolce Vita, starring Anita Ekberg and Marcello Mastroianni. It also appeared in Roman Holiday which starred Audrey Hepburn.

La Dolce Vita directed by Federico Fellini (image from kinopoisk.ru)

­Fendi will be the only sponsor of the pricey restoration, which will be done in stages in order not to scare off millions of tourists. A plaque noting Fendi’s contribution will be placed on the landmark once completed.

The Fountain was last restored in 1989. Last summer parts of the stonework from the fountain’s façade started to crumble after being affected by winter weather.

Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras (AFP Photo / Angelos Tzortzinis)

“The probability of Greece leaving the euro – Grexit – is now very small”, says Yannis Stournaras, the Greek Finance Minister. His words come when anti-austerity protests are intensifying, with farmers due to strike following public transport.

“Towards the last quarter of 2013, we are going to have recovery,” Stournaras told BBC News.

“We have managed to turn the economy around. From the markets, there’s much more optimism. Deposits are coming back to banks, the government is paying its arrears to the private sector and there is a change in how Europe sees us. So, all the leading indicators are positive. We are two-thirds of the way towards our target. So people can have hope,” Stournaras added.

The optimism comes at a time when general expectations for the Greek economy remain muted: analysts see its GDP contracting by about 4 — 4.3% in 2013, with a 2014 figure going down 2-3%.

As real economic indicators remain dulled in Greece, analysts are skeptical about the bold announcement. “Optimism is a good and pleasant thing, though these announcements look quite funny in the wake of the current state of the Greek economy and its perspectives that are not that positive,” Anna Bodrova of Investcafe wrote in an e-mail.

“Counting on the end of a recession in 2013 is still premature for the Athens, but doesn’t everybody have a right for hope?” Bodrova concluded.

Unemployment in Greece now remains the highest in Europe — at 26.8%, with the debt level at a sky- high 180% of GDP. Under the game plan Greece is seeking to cut it to 124% of GDP by 2020, which is expected to be reached mostly through a massive austerity package passed last year.

As for concrete measures that should help Greece realize its “economic miracle”, the Greek Finance Minister remained very diplomatic. “I would welcome a reduction of the level of debt — but there are many ways to achieve that”, he said “but it should happen in a way that minimises the loss to other parties,” Stournaras said.

Past November Greece agreed to implement a set of severe measures, including tax hikes and a 25% cut in the minimum wages in the public sector, which is expected to save Greece up to $3 billion in 2013.

After international creditors saw actual steps by Greece, they agreed to release another €34bn in bailout money to the crisis—stricken economy at the end of 2012. The European Central Bank (ECB) also kicked off a buy-out of sovereign bonds of eurozone countries to cut their yields and prevent sovereign defaults. This is smoothened analysts fears of Greece leaving the euro, with Olli Rehn, EU Commissioner saying in early January this year that “the danger of the eurozone’s split is over.”

The measures have just disguised problems of the eurozone, with Greece, Spain and Portugal still likely to leave the currency bloc according to Russia’s ex- Finance Minister Aleksey Kudrin speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Nothing has been settled, everything has been postponed. The thing is that this time will give the opportunity to these countries to get their act together, consolidate and finally settle the problems. So far it hasn’t been the case,” Kudrin concluded.

The people in Greece continue to demonstrate their anger at the sharp austerity package the country adopted last year. Most of the striking transport workers have ended their industrial action; farmers are expected to strike over changes in their tax status, the Guardian reports.

Farmers are being “eradicated” by increased taxes and higher production costs, according to Kostas Lioliopoulos of the farmers union talking to the Guardian.

“The economic crisis is killing us,” he said, adding that farmers from the region of Evros in the north to Crete in the south would wreak havoc if the governing coalition did not back down.

“The country will be paralysed if there is no progress,” said Lioliopoulos.

Electricity workers may also announce a strike, reports say.The country’s main power company, the Public Power Corporation, will strike on Thursday in support of public transport employees who were forced back to work at the end of last week, The Guardian says.

Public transport in Greece has been on strike for more than 10 days, with drivers ignoring a court ruling against the strikes. The court had ruled the strike, which stopped buses and trolleybuses in Athens, was illegal. The workers were protesting a cut in salaries, as well as show solidarity with the metro workers who terminated their nine-day protest last week after the government announced civil mobilization.

Meanwhile Yannis Stournaras says it’s necessary to bit the bullet and live through 2013.“If we implement this year’s reform programme, there will be no more austerity packages”, the Finance Minister told, “No more cuts in wages, benefits and pensions,” the minister concluded.

The British Foreign Office has announced it was aware of a “potential threat” against the country’s embassy in Tripoli, Libya.

“We are aware of reports of a potential threat against the British embassy in Tripoli and we are liaising closely with the Libyan government,” a foreign Office spokesperson said on Monday.

“There is no change to our travel advice, we still recommend against all but essential travel to Tripoli.”

The Foreign Office said it was working with the Libyan government in response to the unspecified threat against the British embassy.

Libyan officials, however, said they were not aware of such reports cited by the British embassy.

“The British embassy has not informed us of any threats towards it and there has been no coordination between us,” Libya’s Deputy Interior Minister Omar al-Khadrawi told Reuters.

This comes days after London urged British nationals to evacuate the eastern city of Benghazi due to a ‘specific, imminent threat’ against westerners.

Fears over the safety of British nationals in Africa have been highlighted after the attack on the In Amenas gas plant in Algeria claimed the lives of six Britons.

MOS/MOL/HE

British police officers are to start balloting on January 31 over the right to take industrial action, which they have been banned from for almost a century.

The Police Federation said it would need half of its members, about 65,000 officers, to secure mandate for change before the ballot closes on February 28.

About 36,000 police officers across England and Wales have so far registered to vote, The Guardian reported.

The vote follows a period of “unprecedented discontent and low morale” among police officers, the Police Federation chairman Steve Williams said.

“I believe the figure agreed would provide us with that mandate”.

The British Home Secretary, Theresa May, has made clear that any question of the right to strike is “off the table”, and claimed the police will remain the best paid of the emergency service.

More than 23,000 police officers in Britain earn a second income from none-police jobs as the country’s ailing economy takes more in-work poverty victims.

MOS/MOL/HE

New laws could be put in place to drive sweeping changes to the way English football is run, following failures by the sport’s authorities to change the governance of the game.

A committee of MPs said the Premier League wielded too great an influence over the game in England and ordered reforms.

But the culture, media and sport select committee’s said it had been “very disappointed” by the football authorities’ response to its proposals for reform made in July 2011.

Its concerns cover financial management, the balance of power between the Premier League and the Football Association, and major financial risk-taking.

The committee proposed shaking up how the FA operates and making clubs adhere to financial rules, regulated by a licensing system.

But in a follow-up report MPS said the response of the football authorities to the proposals had been “very disappointing”.

Committee chairman John Whittingdale said: “While some progress has been achieved, much greater reform in football is needed to make the game inclusive, sustainable and driven from the grass roots, where it should be.

“The proposals for reform so far simply don’t address the fundamental problems: the licensing model, the way supporters are engaged at club level and the membership of the main [FA] board, which is not fully representative or able to balance interests adequately.

“In addition, the financial proposals were hugely disappointing: the financial risk-taking by clubs is a threat to the sustainability of football as a family and community-orientated game, which it should be.

“If football cannot reform itself, the Government should introduce legislation as soon as practically possible.”

Recommendations by the committee include:

• Reducing the size of the FA board, and make FA executives and non-executive directors be in the minority compared to the “vested interests” of members appointed by the professional and amateur game;

• The Premier League and Football League should be limited to one FA board member each – the leagues currently have two apiece;

• The FA board should have fans’ representation.

• Full information on the ownership of clubs should be made publicly available;

• The FA should regulate a financial licensing system, and not leave it to the Premier League and Football League;

• If spending controls such as financial fair play are not adopted by the clubs, legislation should be brought in to impose financial discipline;

• Long-term funding plans should be agreed for Supporters Direct (SD), a group that promotes the value of supporter ownership and influence.

Sports minister Hugh Robertson insisted the warning on legislation was no empty threat. He said: “If football does not deliver the reforms then we will look at bringing forward legislation.”

In a joint statement, the FA, Premier League and Football League insisted the necessary reforms would be implemented.

It said: “Significant headway has already been made on many of these proposed reforms, not least on sustainability and transparency. The remaining reform proposals are the subject of consultation within the game and we are confident that the necessary progress will be made.”

In welcoming the report, SD chief executive David Lampitt said: “The committee has clearly been spurred on by what they called the ‘lack of direction and urgency’ of the football authorities and has recognised that a few minor changes do not add up to meaningful reform.

“A timetable for proper change is now required, backed up by government intervention if it is not delivered upon.

“It is supporters who sustain the game economically – whether through tickets or TV subscriptions – and who have the long terms interests of the game at heart.”

A local Afghan police chief has been assassinated in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Kapisa, Press TV reports.

The unknown gunmen opened fire at Syed Mushtaq Sadat, the police chief of Hesa Duwum Kohistan district, near his home in Saha-e-Jamal area on Tuesday, officials say.

Kapisa provincial governor spokesperson Qais Qaderi said that five suspects have been arrested in relation to the deadly shooting.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

The wave of attacks has been rampant in war-torn Afghanistan during the past week.

On Saturday, 11 people were killed in a roadside bomb attack targeting an Afghan police truck packed with officers and detainees in the southern province of Kandahar.

Meanwhile, at least 10 policemen have lost their lives and 18 others sustained injuries wounded in a bomb attack carried out in northeastern city of Kunduz on the same day.

Militant groups always carry out deadly attacks against Afghan forces, foreign troops and civilians.

In the first six months of 2012, over 1,140 Afghan civilians were killed and around 2,000 were wounded, mostly by roadside bombs, according to statistics released by the United Nations. Thirty percent of the casualties were women and children.

DB/HN

Saudi protesters have once again taken to the streets in Riyadh, calling for the release of prisoners detained during anti-regime demonstrations.

The demonstrators chanted slogans against the excessive use of force by Saudi forces in quelling anti-regime protests and condemned the Al Saud regime’s suppressive actions against dissidents.

According to Human Rights Watch, the Saudi regime “routinely represses expression critical of the government.”

According to Saudi activists, most of the detained political thinkers are being held by the government without trial or legitimate charges and that they were arrested for merely looking suspicious.

In October, Saudi authorities warned that they would deal “firmly” with protests after hundreds of Saudis gathered outside Tafiya prison, north of the capital, in September to demand the release of their relatives.

Amnesty International has criticized Riyadh over the warning and urged the authorities to “withdraw their threat.” In Saudi Arabia, protests and political gatherings of any kind are prohibited.

Since February 2011, protesters have held demonstrations on an almost regular basis in Saudi Arabia, mainly in Qatif and Awamiyah in Eastern Province.

The demonstrations turned into protests against the Al Saud regime after November 2011 when Saudi security forces killed five protesters and injured many others in the province.

AO/HN

A decision to send an EU force to train soldiers in Mali is expected to be made in Brussels soon.

The deployment would include a small British contingent, likely to number in the ‘tens’.

Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence are still saying there is no question of combat troops but the Prime Minister has told President Francois Hollande that he is ready to offer more support for the French mission.

The two leaders spoke on Sunday night and Sir Kim Darroch, the Government’s national security adviser, was in Paris for further talks on Monday.

The plan for an EU training mission in west Africa was made late last year but minds were focused when the French military began its mission in Mali.

The UK has already sent two C-17 transport aircraft to help ferry troops and equipment around.

One has left after flying for the initial weekend of the conflict while the second remains on indeterminate loan.

Last Friday, it was announced that a Sentinel aircraft had taken off for Mali to provide surveillance and intelligence gathering capabilities.

It is understood that Britain will add further support to the French mission along these lines.

In recent days, French forces have pushed deep into the north of the country, entering the towns of Gao and Timbuktu.

President Hollande has said they are “winning this battle” and French soldiers appeared to meet little resistance as they seized Timbuktu from Islamists as part of their offensive against the radicals who have controlled the country’s vast desert north for 10 months.

Speaking from the historic city of Timbuktu, Sky News Special Correspondent Alex Crawford said any British soldiers would help Malian troops prepare for a future without French troops through training and logistical expertise.

She estimated around 30 or 40 British troops would be sent “to bolster” the Malian forces, which she described as “very depleted”.

Philip Hammond has denied comparing gay marriage to incest, ahead of a crunch vote on allowing same-sex weddings.

The defence secretary and Conservative MP was accused making the comments during a meeting with students on Friday.

Joe Rayment, chairman of the Royal Holloway Students’ Union who was present during the talk, said Hammond’s remarks came when confronted about his opposition to same-sex marriage.

He said: “I asked him what right the state has to tell two people who are in love that they can’t get married. He said: ‘Well, we don’t allow siblings to get married either.’

“We said something along the lines of the fact that homosexuality is nothing like incest. But he skirted over it and he did not apologise for using that comparison.”

Also present at the meeting was the union representative for the university’s gay community, Jack Saffery-Rowe.

Writing on a blog that night, Saffery-Rowe said: “When questioned why I shouldn’t have the same rights as a heterosexual couple, he brushed the question aside as a ‘silly game’ talking about human rights.

“And when asked why the state should be allowed to say who can and who cannot have their relationship recognised by the law, he retorted that you wouldn’t allow ‘two siblings who loved each other to get married’.

“He equated the love of a same-sex couple with incest…”

A spokesman for Hammond told The Guardian: “It’s untrue. He didn’t equate equal marriage to incest.”

Hammond is alleged to have made the comparison ahead of a Commons vote on same-sex marriage next week, an issue he has previously described as “too controversial”.

Students at the University of London Royal Holloway’s Egham campus in Surrey had planned to lobby the minister after he made clear he is against David Cameron’s plans to allow gay couples to marry.

According to Pink News, Hammond, who was at the university to talk about British security, was confronted by around 70 students waving pro-gay marriage placards.

Rupert Murdoch has offered a “major apology” for a “grotesque” cartoon in the Sunday Times that has sparked claims of anti-Semitism.

The chairman and CEO of News Corporation commented on Twitter on the Gerald Scarfe image, which appears to show Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of Palestinians.

Mr Murdoch said in his tweet: “Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times.

“Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon.”

The political cartoon, which was published on Holocaust Memorial Day, shows Mr Netanyahu holding a trowel and carries the lines: “Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?”

Jewish community leaders said they were disturbed by parallels they saw between the red-tinged drawing and historical anti-Semitic propaganda.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it had lodged a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission.

They said in a statement that the depiction of a Jewish leader using blood for mortar “is shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press”.

In a statement, the paper’s acting editor Martin Ivens said: “The paper has long written strongly in defence of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist.

“We are, however, reminded of the sensitivities in this area by the reaction to the cartoon, and I will, of course, bear them very carefully in mind in future.”

Plane crashes in Kazakhstan with 6 crew members, 15 passengers on board

A plane has crashed in Kazakhstan with six cabin crew members and 15 passengers on board, Interfax reported, quoting local Emergency Ministry workers.

The plane crashed near Alma-Aty, the largest city in the country.

Thick fog may have caused the crash, local media reported.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Brazil’s midfielder Kaka (AFP Photo / Gabriel Bouys)

The Russian Premier League fat-cats Anzhi Makhachkala are close to signing Real Madrid star Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, commonly known as Kaká, according to the Spanish media.

The reports suggest the deal could be reached on Tuesday. The source mentioned last week’s meetings between the Russian club’s sporting director Roberto Carlos and Real’s management in Madrid as indirect proof.

This winter the 30 year old, who seems to have completely lost the trust of Jose Mourinho and a place in Real Madrid’s starting 11, could have joined either AC Milan where he became famous, or Turkish giants Galatasaray.

However, the Italian side withdrew from talks due to financial reasons, while the Turks preferred Dutch star Wesley Snejder to the 2007 Ballon d’Or winner.

With the transfer period concluding in Europe on January 31, and Russia’ open till March, Anzhi is now the most likely destination for Kaka.

The Makhachkala side currently sit second in the Premier League close on CSKA Moscow’s heels, have already proven they can afford any player, at least in terms of finance.

At-home cosmetic procedure parties should be banned, according to leading doctors.

So called “botox” or “filler parties” – where groups of friends receive cosmetic treatments at home – are “wholly incompatible” with professional standards, the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) said.

New guidance issued by the RCS says treatments should only be carried out on licensed premises with resuscitation equipment available in case of emergency.

Many companies offer “at home” cosmetic treatments, with special discounts for the event host.

But the RCS said such parties are “entirely at odds” with the standards set out in its new Professional Standards for Cosmetic Practice.

The standards also state popular cosmetic treatments can be delivered by people with no medical qualifications – including laser treatment and injectable anti-wrinkle treatments.

The RCS recommends that only doctors, dentists or nurses who have undergone the appropriate training should be allowed to perform the treatments.

And only qualified medical doctors should be allowed to carry out invasive procedures such as breast surgery or liposuction.

They also suggest that time-limited discounts on cosmetic surgery should be banned to prevent people from impulsively buying procedures.

RCS president Professor Norman Williams said: “While the colleges and professional organisations involved in cosmetic practice are neither regulators nor legislators, the profession has a responsibility to provide standards to which we would expect our members to work.

“We have serious concerns that not all those who offer cosmetic procedures are adequately qualified, or that patients are getting accurate information prior to treatment.

“We hope these standards will feed into the ongoing review of the industry led by the NHS Medical Director, Sir Bruce Keogh, and improve quality of care for patients going forward.”

Steve Cannon, chairman of the working party which developed the guidance, added: “As the majority of cosmetic procedures are not available on the NHS, we must ensure that commercial interests do not compromise patient safety.

“With the demand for cosmetic surgery and non-surgical treatments rising year on year, it is crucial that the highest level of professionalism is maintained amongst practitioners.”

Sugary drinks should be taxed at up to 20p a litre, say health campaigners — with the proceeds helping to pay for free school meals.

Food and farming charity Sustain said the Government could raise £1bn a year from the duty, while also saving lives by cutting excessive consumption of unhealthy drinks.

The report has been backed by more than 60 organisations, including the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Friends of the Earth, the National Heart Forum and the Royal Society for Public Health.

Diet-related illness is now costing the NHS £6bn every year, said the report.

Sustain urged Chancellor George Osborne to introduce the duty in his March 20 Budget and to channel most of the cash raised into a Children’s Future Fund for programmes to improve children’s health.

Money could be spent on campaigns to encourage youngsters to eat more fruit and vegetables, the report said.

The group’s campaigns manager, Charlie Powell, said: “Sugar-laden drinks are mini-health time bombs, contributing to dental diseases, obesity and a host of life-threatening illnesses which cost the NHS billions each year.

“We are delighted that so many organisations want to challenge the Government to show it has a public health backbone by including a sugary drinks duty in Budget 2013.

“It’s a simple and easy-to-understand measure which will help save lives by reducing sugar in our diets and raising much-needed money to protect children’s health.”

Sustain chairman Mike Rayner, of Oxford University’s Department of Public Health, added: “Just as we use fiscal measures to discourage drinking and smoking and help prevent people from dying early, there is now lots of evidence that the same approach would work for food.

“Our obesity epidemic causes debilitating illness, life-threatening diseases and misery for millions of people. It is high time Government did something effective about this problem.”

Iranian Cultural Week has been held in the country’s Consulate General office in Ethiopia to introduce the Persian civilization and heritage.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi along with several officials attended the opening ceremony held in the Iranian office in Addis Ababa on January 28.

A book titled Iran compiled in Amharic language (a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia) was also unveiled during the ceremony.

The festival through displaying many Persian art pieces in various forms such as calligraphy, painting, carpet weaving, inlaid and illumination has represented Iranian national treasure.

To coincide with Iran’s cultural week, Addis Ababa University’s Arts College is hosting Iranian Film Week.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was invited to Ethiopia along with the leaders and officials from 54 African Union (AU) member states to attend the 20th AU Summit held on January 27 and 28.

FGP/FGP

Data Privacy Day 2013: Twitter reveals US government makes 80% of info requests

Twitter has released its second transparency report, which demonstrated a frightening increase in requests for user data by the US government and ignited serious concerns over privacy and free expression.

­The list disclosed data requests from over 30 nations, and revealed that the US government was responsible for 815 of the 1,009 information requests in the second half of 2012 — just over 80 percent of all inquiries.

Twenty percent of all US requests were ‘under seal,’ meaning that users were not notified that their information was accessed.

The overall number of requests worldwide also steadily increased last year, rising from 849 in the January to June 2012 period to 1009 in the July to December 2012 period.

Twitter’s legal policy manager Jeremy Kessel blogged that, “it is vital for us (and other Internet services) to be transparent about government requests for user information.”

“These growing inquiries can have a serious chilling effect on free expression — and real privacy implications,” he wrote.

He went on to express hopes that the publication of the transparency data would be helpful in two ways — “to raise public awareness about these invasive requests,” and “to enable policy makers to make more informed decisions.”

The majority of US requests were subpoenas, which comprised 60 percent of government demands for information. Subpoenas usually seek user information such as email addresses affiliated with accounts and IP logs. A user’s whereabouts can generally be located by the IP address they are using.  

Twitter complied with US government requests 69 percent of the time, according to the report.

Twitter released its transparency report on January 28, dubbed ‘Data Privacy Day.’ The US National Cyber Security alliance said it founded the day to “empower people to protect their privacy.”

According to Twitter’s report, several other governments made over 10 requests each for personal information, including Brazil, Canada, France, Japan and the UK. Japan ranked the second-highest on the list after the US; however, the US made 753 more demands for information than Japan.  

Google released a statement marking the occasion, saying that the company “[doesn’t] want our services to be used in harmful ways,” and that it is “important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information.”

Earlier this month, France ruled that Twitter must disclose to authorities the identities of people writing anti-Semitic tweets using the hashtags #UnBonJuif [A Good Jew] and #UnJuifMort [A Dead Jew]. The social networking platform will be fined 1,000 euros a day until it complies.

The publication of the survey came shortly after Google published its own transparency report, which showed a similarly disturbing 25 percent rise in data requests from government authorities. The report also revealed that the US had made the most requests for private information to Google of any government: Over 8,438 in the second half of 2012.

UK-based rights group Privacy International later commented that “Google, Facebook and Twitter are highly vulnerable to government intrusion.”

“I am alarmed by the number of government requests and concerned that so many are done with merely a subpoena,” said John Simpson, a consumer advocate with the California-based group Consumer Watchdog. “A warrant should be required.”

US senators from both dominant political parties have announced agreement over a plan for the country’s immigration reform just before President Barack Obama is set to reveal his own, more liberal scheme, on the issue.

Following weeks of negotiations, a group of Republican and Democratic senators outlined a far-reaching blueprint in a joint news conference on Monday to overhaul US immigration laws, insisting that it is time to correct “our broken immigration system.”

The move came just a day before Obama is set to declare on Tuesday his own proposals on fixing the nation’s controversial immigration policy and facilitating the legalization of the nation’s more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living and working “illegally” throughout the country, often subjected to harassment and abuse by US police and immigration officers as well as employers and anti-immigrant groups and individuals.

The measures reportedly include increased border security through the use of drones and other surveillance systems, tighter immigration requirements, stricter employment checks and tougher measures, including deportation, against immigrants with even minor criminal.

The efforts come following an unprecedented voter turnout of immigrant US citizens during the country’s last presidential and congressional elections in November 2012, when Obama won the backing of overwhelming majority of migrant voters on his repeated pledge to overhaul and fix the nation’s immigration laws and streamline the process of legalization for the millions of existing undocumented immigrants.

Furthermore, the development comes after other attempts to pass immigration reform packages through the US Congress failed in 2007, during the administration of George W. Bush, and in 2010, during Obama’s first presidential term mainly due to fierce opposition by Republican lawmakers who have traditionally leaned against immigration.

Despite the claimed bipartisan support for the new bid to reform US immigration laws, the proposal is still expected to face sharp opposition in the US Congress.

A number of key Republicans who have long opposed such comprehensive reform bid in the past have reiterated that their worries on the issue have not faded, according to local press reports.

Texas Congressman Lamar Smith, who just concluded a term as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which oversees immigration issues, criticized the recent agreement on immigration reform, saying in a statement that “by granting amnesty, the Senate proposal actually compounds the problem by encouraging more illegal immigration.”

Furthermore, Republican Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama and David Vitter of Louisiana, who had helped lead efforts to foil comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2007, again expressed “deep reservations” about the recent plan during a Senate session.

Meanwhile, Obama reportedly intends to provide some details of the White House immigration reform plans during a Tuesday appearance in Las Vegas. His address in expected to set off a public drive by the administration in support of the most comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration law in the past 30 years.

US-based Human Rights Watch, however, has expressed concerns the reform plan will bring new pressures on illegal immigrants and make their waiting time even longer.

“The wait under the existing system already can be almost 20 years, because of the limited number of family-based immigration visas available. The wait could become even longer if legalization is to be contingent on the border being deemed secure,” the group said in a statement.

A coalition of immigration advocates, meanwhile, announced plans on Monday for a huge rally in support of comprehensive immigration reforms on April 10 in Washington.

MFB/GVN/MFB

Iran’s Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says the successful mission of Pishgam (Pioneer) spacecraft, which successfully carried a monkey into space, is the first step for Iran towards sending humans into space.

“Sending a spacecraft and returning it is the first step towards sending humans to space in later stages,” Vahidi said on Monday.

On Monday, Iran launched Pishgam (Pioneer) spacecraft, which took a primate to the altitude of 120 kilometers, and returned it safely to Earth.

Iran sent its first bio-capsule of living creatures into space in February 2010, using the indigenous Kavoshgar 3 (Discoverer 3) carrier.

The country successfully launched its first indigenous data-processing satellite, Omid (Hope), into orbit in 2009.

As part of a plan to develop its space program, Iran successfully launched its second satellite, dubbed Rassad (Observation), into the earth’s orbit in June 2011. Rassad’s mission was to take images of the Earth and transmit them along with telemetry information to ground stations.

Iran also sent its indigenously-built Navid-e Elm-o Sanat (Harbinger of Science and Industry) satellite into orbit in February 2012. The records made by the telecom, measurement and scientific satellite could be used in a wide range of fields.

Iran is one of the 24 founding members of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which was set up in 1959.

The Iranian defense minister said Iran would also inaugurate the country’s space observatory, named after Shia’s sixth Imam, Imam Sadeq (PBUH), in February.

MYA/MA/HJL

Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the long-term credit ratings of six top Canadian banks as the global financial crisis takes its toll on consumer debt and housing prices.

The rating agency said on Monday that it lowered by one notch the ratings of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, Caisse Centrale Desjardins, National Bank of Canada, and Toronto-Dominion Bank.

The banks now have a rating range between AA1 and AA3, which despite the downgrade still puts them as the world’s economically-sound financial institutions.

The downgrade came as Canada suffers from record-high consumer debt and soaring house prices, according to the agency.

“Today’s downgrade of the Canadian banks reflects our ongoing concerns that Canadian banks’ exposure to the increasingly indebted Canadian consumer and elevated housing prices leaves them more vulnerable to unpredictable downside risks facing the Canadian economy than in the past,” said Moody’s Vice President David Beattie.

Last year, the ratio of Canadian household debt reached a record 165 percent, and housing prices rose 20 percent.

Another rating agency, Fitch, also on Monday voiced concerns over the debt situation in Canada.

The new lowered ratings have hit the economic confidence in Canada.

GVN/SAB/HN/HJL

Britain is sending up to 330 military personnel to help train a West African intervention force in Mali, Downing Street has said.

The move was announced a day after David Cameron assured French President Francois Hollande he was “keen” to assist operations against Islamist fighters in the former colony.

On Tuesday, Downing Street also confirmed that the UK would offering up to 40 troops as part of EU training mission in Mali.

Britain has also offered a roll-on roll-off ferry to help transport equipment to the French force in Mali, the Number 10 spokesman added.

The offer of assistance came after the prime minister told Francois Hollande on Sunday night that Britain fully supports the French government’s actions, “to deny terrorists a safe haven in Mali”.

A French soldier, second from right, shakes hands with a resident of Timbuktu, north Mali.

The soldiers could be sent to assist with logistics, surveillance, intelligence and transport alongside the proposed EU mission to train the Malian army.

Downing Street has insisted that troops would not be involved in combat.

Cameron and Hollande spoke earlier this week as French troops secured the key city of Timbuktu.

As insurgents retreated, they set fire to a library containing precious manuscripts thousands of years old, according to reports.

Malian soldiers stationed at the entrance of of Gao, Northern Mali

Cameron’s official spokesman outlined the PM’s phone call with Hollande to reporters last night, saying: “The French president gave an update on the progress that French and Malian forces have been making and also thanked the Prime Minister for the UK transport assistance.

“The prime minister made clear that we fully support the French government’s actions, working with the Malian government at their request, to deny terrorists a safe haven in Mali.

The UK is offering:

• 200 personel for training in West Africa countries.
• 40 troops as part of EU training mission in Mali, but not for force protection.
• The use of a “strategic roll on roll off” ferry to take French equipment from France to Africa.
• A joint logistics HQ in Mali but France said it did not need it at this time.
• The extended the use of one C17 transport plane by three months.
• Allowing “allies” to fly air-to-air refuelling jets out of Britain.

“The prime minister went on to explain that we are keen to continue to provide further assistance where we can, and depending on what French requirements there may be.

The RAF has already provided two heavy-lift C17 transport planes and a Sentinel surveillance aircraft to assist France’s operation, and National Security Adviser Sir Kim Darroch has been sent to Paris to discuss what further help may be offered.

Lindsay German from Stop The War Coalition told the Huffington Post UK she feared British intervention in the conflict may escalate even further.

She said: “We fear intervention may escalate to much higher levels, dragging in more and more troops.

“That’s what happened in Vietnam; it started off with advisors being sent and then turned into full blown war. We’re not saying what happened in Vietnam is happening here, but intervention could escalate in the same way. “

Chadian soldiers patrol the streets of Gao, Northern Mali

Shadow Defence Secretary Jim Murphy said it was important the government made it clear what role Britain was playing in the conflict.

He told the Mirror: “We support the mission in Mali but it’s important the government keeps the public and parliament informed about all major decisions so there is clarity about British aims in the region.”

Meanwhile Bernard-Henri Levy, one of France’s best known philosopher’s and a champion for intervention in conflict zones, has described the British response to the Mali crisis as “spineless”.

“The English airplanes were with the French airplanes to liberate Libya. Where are they today when we need to liberate Mali and stop the creation of a Jihadist state on Europe’s doorstep?” he was quoted as saying.

Former head of the Army General Sir Mike Jackson backed the government’s position but warned that nations involved may face a “protracted guerrilla warfare”.

“It doesn’t really surprise me that the British government feels it needs to be seen to be helping,” he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

“We cannot let states fail because we know from recent history that failed states just lead to really difficult circumstances, instability.”

He added: “What Mali and France, and indeed other countries who may choose to assist may face, of course, is a protracted guerrilla warfare taking place away from the conurbations.”

Members of Canadian aboriginal communities and human rights activists have rallied in several cities in Canada and around the world against Ottawa’s policies violating the rights of the aboriginals.

Supporters of “Idle No More,” a protest movement campaigning for the rights of the aboriginals in Canada, demonstrated Monday in 30 Canadian cities, including Montreal, Halifax, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Calgary, despite the country’s freezing winter weather.

Some 300 protesters marched on Parliament Hill in Ottawa as MPs returned to the House of Commons after the six-week-long winter break, urging the MPs to take action on the rights of the indigenous people.

Similar demonstrations were held in several states across the United States, including Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Washington State, and North Carolina.

Also in Europe, Idle No More supporters rallied in London, Paris, and the Swedish city of Malmo.

The organizers of the movement said in a statement on the Idle No More website that the day of action would “peacefully protest attacks on Democracy, Indigenous Sovereignty, Human Rights and Environmental Protections when Canadian MPs return to the House of Commons on January 28th.”

The movement began last November after Attawapiskat First Nations Chief Theresa Spence began a hunger strike over the violation of aboriginals’ rights. Spence ended her strike on Thursday after indigenous groups and opposition parties signed a deal spelling out a list of demands they would present to the government.

The declaration calls for the government to improve housing and schools as well as to acknowledge treaty rights for Canada’s 600 native tribes.

The protests over the past two months had prompted the United Nations to urge Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government to set up talks in accordance with the standards expressed in the organization’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Since December 14, 2012, indigenous peoples in Canada have held demonstrations against the government which, on that day, approved Bill C-45 through parliament to change the rules about aboriginal lands.

SAB/HN/HJL

Tehran has condemned meddlesome remarks by the US about the latest round of talks between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the country’s nuclear energy program.

“Talks between Iran and the IAEA are making headway and if anyone intends to express his viewpoints in this regard, it should speak on behalf of itself, not as the guardian or the spokesperson of the agency,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Monday.

Salehi’s remarks come more than a week after US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said that Washington was disappointed that Iran “once again missed an opportunity” to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Iranian foreign minister said the talks with the UN agency focus on “legal and complicated issues” that are progressing.

On January 17, Iran and the UN nuclear agency wrapped up two days of talks in Tehran and agreed to hold a new round of talks in the Iranian capital on February 12.

However, the IAEA announced on January 21 that the next round of the talks with Iran would be held in Tehran on “February 13 rather than February 12.”

Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA Ali Asghar Soltanieh and the agency’s deputy director general Herman Nackaerts led the talks, which focused on finding a structured framework for mutual cooperation.

The United States, Israel, and some of their allies have repeatedly accused Iran of pursuing non-civilian objectives in its nuclear energy program.

Iran argues that as a committed signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA, it is entitled to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

YH/MA/HJL

Another push to support the Syrian opposition has taken place in Paris, as the Western-backed Syrian National Coalition (SNC) met with its sponsors to secure more funding and weapons in a bid to bring peace to Syria, SNC’s vice president told RT.

­However, the renewed attempt on Monday to broker a political transition in Syria and put an end to the country’s 22-month-long conflict brought no visible success.

RT caught up with Syrian National Coalition Vice President George Sabra, and asked him what he thinks is needed to bring about peace in Syria.

“We need some new weapons against airplanes,” Sabra told RT’s Maria Finoshina. “You know Bashar Al Assad sends planes to damage villages and cities and civilians. We need to protect ourselves our children from killing every day.”

RT: So to help the Syrian people and to help end the Syrian crisis, you need weapons and money? Is that correct?

George Sabra: Yes, sure. Sure. And we need political support also. Who can cooperate with the man who killed more than 60,000 people? We are concerned, but we are not afraid, because the majority of fighter groups in Syria are not extremists and not terrorists, only fighting for freedom and dignity.

RT: And what about Al Nusra group from Iraq? Are these people fighting for freedom and democracy as well?

GS: They are fighting for freedom and democracy, but maybe we will face some problem with them. Anyway, they are a small part of the revolution in Syria.

RT: But these people are recognized even by the French President as extremists and terrorists…

GS: All over the world you can find extremists, but they are not the real picture, only a small part of it, please recognize that.

RT: So you are absolutely sure that you’ll be able to control them, these people

GS: Sure, very sure, very sure about that.

Though Sabra claims that extremists make up only a small number of the rebels and are easy to contain, historian Gerald Horne does not agree, and argued that a similar scenario played out in Libya.

“We are reassured by [the SNC vice president] that if dissidents come to power they’ll be able to handle the Al Nusra front, but the Libyan dissidents said the same thing when they worked with NATO in 2011 about toppling Colonel Gaddafi,” Horne said.

NATO’s push for a similar intervention in Syria suggests that Western powers have not learnt “even the most recent lessons of history,” he added. “Now we see that in Benghazi, which was the cradle of the revolt against Gaddafi, the North Atlantic countries have asked their nationals to flee because of presumed impending terrorist attacks launched by those they just helped into power.”

Horne believes that most of what the Syrian National Coalition’s representatives are saying should be taken “with a grain of salt,” as they have no hesitation “putting civilians in harm’s way by launching attacks from crowded urban communities.”

Horne was also struck by the fact that SNC leader stated they would not be involved in any negotiations with the Assad regime.

“The way wars end is that you negotiate with those who are shooting at you,” Horne said. “And this is how this war should end. But if they refuse to negotiate that tends to suggest that this conflict will continue indefinitely.”

Scores of Iraqis will come to the High Court on Tuesday seeking an “independent” public inquiry into allegations that British interrogators abused, killed and tortured civilians in Iraq.

Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), acting on behalf of 180 Iraqis, allege there were a number of unlawful killings as well as incidents of torture from March 2003 to December 2008 in British-controlled detention facilities.

Two judges sitting in London will hear accusations that civilians were subjected to a number of techniques to disorientate and debilitate them, including deprivation of sleep, food and water.

Sir John Thomas and Mr Justice Silber will be told there was also hooding, forced nudity, sexual humiliation and repeated and lengthy interrogations.

The three-day application is the second legal challenge in a case in which PIL say there was systemic abuse, as opposed to ill treatment by “a few bad apples”.

Phil Shiner, of Public Interest Lawyers, outside the High Court

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond plans to investigate the claims through the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), which includes members of the Royal Navy Police (RNP).

However PIL are seeking judicial review on the grounds that the RNP lack sufficient independence, because numerous Royal Navy officers were involved in interrogations with the UK Joint Forward Interrogation Team (JFIT).

PIL says a number of unlawful killings and cases of inhuman and degrading treatment were linked to JFIT’s activities as interrogators sought to extract information.

They argue justice requires a fully independent public inquiry.

Ministry of Defence lawyers are opposing the application.

A spokesman recently said: “The IHAT is the most effective way of investigating these unproven allegations rather than a costly public inquiry.”

A man has died after being hit by a large metal sign that fell from a William Hill shop.

The man, believed to be in his 20s, was treated at the scene in Camden, north London, on Monday afternoon before being taken to hospital, where medics were unable to save him.

He has not yet been named.

“Every effort was made to resuscitate him at the scene and on the way to University College Hospital,” a London Ambulance Service spokeswoman said.

The 30ft sign, which had covered the length of the betting shop, was seen on the pavement. Police erected a forensic tent to cover the scene and taped off the surrounding area.

Ioana Nita, 21, was working at a nearby restaurant when she heard a “very loud noise”.

“Me and a colleague went outside and saw the guy lying on the floor,” she said.

“Five guys picked up the sign and it was put on the side. His hands were covered in blood and he wasn’t moving.

“Lots of people were in a circle around him, then the ambulance arrived and they were trying to get him back to life, pressing on his heart.”

She added: “I just want to go home and cry. I don’t know how that can happen. The sign is huge. Everyone said he was just walking past the shop.”

Ken Osbourne, 28, who works at the nearby Woody Grill restaurant, said: “I saw the guy lying down in the road, covered in blood.

“Hundreds of people walk past here every day. It could’ve been me or any one of them.”

Health and safety investigators entered a flat above the shop to take photographs of the sign. Flowers have been left at the scene.

A William Hill spokeswoman said: “There is an urgent investigation under way and we are still establishing facts and liaising with authorities.

“As such, we don’t have a comment to make at this time.”

CCTV shows an armed robber being beaten up and then consoled by his would-be victim as he sobs on the floor.

The footage shows the masked suspect initially threatening the petrol station attendant, Robert B, 20, with a knife, demanding money.

Robert B, who works at the station in Oldenburg in Germany, pushes the alarm button and rushes next door to grab a baseball bat.

He hits the bat over the attacker’s head repeatedly until he drops his knife. Then in an unusual twist, the robber is seen hugging and pleading with his victim to stop.

According to Bild.de , he said: “Please let me go. I have a wife and kids.”

The bleeding, whimpering robber — who is seen crouched on the floor — is then handed a paper towel by the sympathetic worker.

Bild.de reports Robert B as saying: “Later the police told me that he was lying. He wanted to spend the money for drugs.”

According to the report the robber will go to jail for at least five years.

Leave it to enterprising Americans to always find a loophole in the midst of ever-expanding government regulation.

While thousands of Seattle residents lined up for hours to trade their handguns, rifles and family heirlooms away in exchange for up to $200 in gift cards as part of the city’s latest gun buyback program, gun collectors who have seen prices for assault rifles and firearms accessories almost triple since November took advantage of a huge opportunity.

Police stood in awe as gun enthusiasts and collectors waved wads of cash for the guns being held by those standing in line for the buyback program.

…

Police officers in Seattle, Washington held their first gun buyback program in 20 years this weekend, underneath interstate 5,  and soon found that private gun collectors were working the large crowd as little makeshift gun shows began dotting the parking lot and sidewalks.

Some even had “cash for guns” signs prominently displayed.

People that had arrived to trade in their weapons for $100 or $200 BuyBack gift cards($100 for handguns, shotguns and rifles, and $200 for assault weapons) soon realized that gun collectors were there and paying top dollar for collectible firearms. So, as the line for the chump cards got longer and longer people began to jump ship and head over to the dealers.

John Diaz, Seattles Police Chief, wasn’t pleased with the turn of events stating “I’d prefer they wouldn’t sell them,” but admitted it’s perfectly legal for private individuals to buy and sell guns, FOR NOW. Mayor Mike McGinn said at a news conference the private transactions are a loophole that needs to be closed. “There’s no background checks, and some (guns) could be exchanged on the streets that shouldn’t be in circulation.”

But Schuyler Taylor, a previous gun retailer attending the event in hopes of buying weapons, asked “Why not offer them cash versus a gift card? I’m still taking the guns off the streets; they’re just going in my safe.”

DCexposed via What Really Happened?, Before It’s News, Daily Paul

Pictures from the Gun buyback turned gun show in Seattle:

As lawmakers and gun control advocates further press the issue of disarmament, law abiding American gun owners who see those very same politicians refusing to disarm their own armed security details and exempting themselves from gun control legislation they mandate upon the rest of us, are starting to push back.

New York gun owners are organizing and resisting the new registration requirement recently forced down their throats by the State legislature.

Calls for defiance are taking hold across the entire spectrum of gun owners, with even elected law enforcement officials now rejecting any forced Federal or State mandates that they deem unconstitutional.

In Milwaukee, and to the fury of Mayor Tom Barrett, Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. launched a media ad campaign promoting a new partnership with residents of his city :

I’m Sheriff David Clarke and I want to talk to you about something personal: your safety. It’s no longer a spectator sport; I need you in the game.

But are you ready?

With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You can beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there.

You have a duty to protect yourself and your family.

Law abiding gun owners in America minded their own business and simply asked to be left alone. Now, because of the actions of criminals and psychopaths who will not disarm despite any legislative action, we have government officials on all levels and even the private sector attempting to limit how we can protect ourselves and our families from the very people who are out there committing the violence.

Sides are being taken.

And while there may be an effort to weaken certain Constitutional protections and even repeal them altogether, there are tens of millions of Americans uniting behind a single cause. They come from all walks of life, different political ideologies, and many are members of our armed forces and local police departments.

Every attempt that gun grabbers have made in an effort to disarm Americans and limit our access to firearms has been vehemently rejected, and in the case of the Seattle impromptu gun show, used for the benefit of expanding gun ownership.

If certain government officials really believed in our right to bear arms and wanted to keep guns in the hands of responsible, law abiding people, they wouldn’t be trying to take them away from us. Instead, they’d be giving us a tax break for gun safes.

Pictures courtesy of statesman.com, Seattle Times, The Stranger, Guns Save Life

RIA Novosti / Ruslan Krivobok

Global investors are currently holding off on making any drastic moves as they await a series of labor reports later this week.

“People are reluctant to pull the trigger one way or the other until we get more clarity,” J.J. Kinahan, chief derivatives strategist at TD Ameritrade, told CNN Money.

A Federal Reserve meeting scheduled for this week may also serve as another motivating factor for investors, Liliya Brueva of Investcafe added.

On Monday, Russian stocks closed on a positive note: The RTS rose 1.03% to 1,635.50 and the MICEX moved up 1.22%to finish at 1,562.93.

“Our [Russian] trading received a growth impulse from the positive news from China, where industrial companies have registered increased income for the fourth consecutive month,” Brueva explained.

Industrial earnings in China surged 20.4% in Q4 after negative growth over the first three quarters, according to the country’s National Bureau of Statistics.

Trading on Wall Street was mixed on Monday: The Dow Jones declined 0.1% and the S&P 500 lost 0.2%, while the Nasdaq added 0.1%.

Earlier gains on US floors, which hit new five-year highs on the back of strong corporate earnings, were hampered by “some conflicting economic data showing worse than expected pending home sales data, which came after some strong durable goods data that had initially given markets a bit of a boost,” explained Angus Campbell, head of market analysis for Capital Spreads.

The Census Bureau reported that orders for durable goods rose 4.6% in December, an increase over the 1.6% growth forecast by economists. The index of pending home sales also fell 4.3% during the same period; the index is based on the number of hosing contracts signed in a month, but does not measure actual closings.

European stocks closed mixed on Monday: The FTSE 100 gained 0.16%, the CAC 40 rose 0.07% and the DAX lost 0.32%.

Asian markets also finished mixed: The Shanghai Composite added more than 2%, closing at its highest level since June, while the Nikkei lost about 1%. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong also traded slightly higher.

Barack Obama (R) and Hillary Clinton (AFP Photo / Jewel Samad)

(26.6Mb) embed video

Once election rivals, but now a unique US foreign policy tandem, President Obama described his partnership with the outgoing US Secretary of State as a “great collaboration.”

­In a televised joint interview on CBS’ “60 minutes,” the president could not hold back his affection for Clinton and her achievements as the chief diplomat in Obama’s first term in office. “I think Hillary will go down as one of the finest secretary of states we’ve had,” the president told American viewers as both touched on a wide range of US foreign policy issues.

In particular, Obama praised their effort in ousting Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and playing a crucial role in Egypt’s transition to democracy.

“We helped to put together and lay the groundwork for liberating Libya. You know, when it comes to Egypt, I think, had it not been for the leadership we showed, you might have seen a different outcome there,” the president said.

Clinton, now aged 65, is believed by many to be the leading contender for the 2016 presidency, but a recent public opinion poll by Pew Global shows that the White House’s approval rating in terms of foreign policy has fallen during Obama’s time in office.

In the period between 2009-2012, the overall European approval has dropped from 78 to 63 per cent, whereas the president’s boast of success in the Arab world has seen his rating plummet from 34 to 15 per cent.

Defending his policies in that part of the world, and particularly in Libya, Obama said “we are not going to be able to control every aspect of every transition and transformation” in conflicts around the world.

But both Obama and Clinton admit the conflict in Syria should be handled carefully, with the president hesitant on whether intervention would help resolve the crisis.

Journalist Afshin Rattansi told RT that Washington’s handling of the Syrian crisis and many other international issues has been a disastrous failure.

“Across Africa, the United States seems to have a policy in utter disarray; China of course is having all the running in Africa, another great success of Hillary Clinton administration.” Rattansi said. “So, we had failures there, failures in Latin America and the biggest failure presumably Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. One could perhaps say that Hillary Clinton has succeeded in destroying and attempting to destroy pro-democracy movements in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.”

Syria has been another disaster in terms of US foreign policy, Rattansi said, “quite in tune with everything that this catastrophic US Secretary of State has done all around the world.”

Watch full interview with Afshin Rattansi

I am for: clean air, clean water, public safety, public education, public transportation, public health, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Anyone who is =not= has no business being in government.

I hate the analogy that Lindsey Graham and his deficit-scold buddies use — that America is moments away from becoming Greece if we don’t Fix The Debt © now. It’s good for fear mongering to destroy our social safety nets, but not much else. But after seeing the Internation Monetary Fund implore Great Britain to ease off its austerity program so their economy could heal, I had a little change of heart.

See, one of the only reasons why many countries in Europe have suffered so much after the financial collapse has been because, instead of turning towards Keynesian policies that Paul Krugman has begged for, they’ve embraced the Conservative principles that the UK’s Cameron touted. And that decision ushered in very painful austerity measures upon the people of their nations. The effects of those decisions has been a non-existent financial recovery to their economy and an accompanying nightmare to their population.

“The IMF has never been wildly enthusiastic about Osborne’s tough austerity plan for the British economy and has been saying for at least a year that the Treasury should ease off if recovery falters. But up until now it has tended to avoid telling Osborne that his policy is failing.

No longer, it appears. “We said that if things look bad at the beginning of 2013 — which they do — then there should be a reassessment of fiscal policy”, Blanchard said.

Fiscal policy involves changes to tax and public spending, and Blanchard noted that the chancellor has the perfect opportunity “to take stock and make adjustments” in the March budget, due in less than two months.”

So in a way, Graham is right — only his formula is wrong. If we don’t want to become Greece (which can’t happen, anyway), we should never, ever consider austerity measures or conservative principles. How quickly the world forgets that it was under a conservative George Bush presidency that the global economy collapsed. Why should we ever turn to his acolytes’ beliefs to fix the problem now?

“Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders.”

— The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1930s

The Federal Reserve (or Fed) has assumed sweeping new powers in the last year. In an unprecedented move in March 2008, the New York Fed advanced the funds for JPMorgan Chase Bank to buy investment bank Bear Stearns for pennies on the dollar. The deal was particularly controversial because Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, sits on the board of the New York Fed and participated in the secret weekend negotiations.1 In September 2008, the Federal Reserve did something even more unprecedented, when it bought the world’s largest insurance company. The Fed announced on September 16 that it was giving an $85 billion loan to American International Group (AIG) for a nearly 80% stake in the mega-insurer. The Associated Press called it a “government takeover,” but this was no ordinary nationalization. Unlike the U.S. Treasury, which took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the week before, the Fed is not a government-owned agency. Also unprecedented was the way the deal was funded. The Associated Press reported:

“The Treasury Department, for the first time in its history, said it would begin selling bonds for the Federal Reserve in an effort to help the central bank deal with its unprecedented borrowing needs.”2

This is extraordinary. Why is the Treasury issuing U.S. government bonds (or debt) to fund the Fed, which is itself supposedly “the lender of last resort” created to fund the banks and the federal government? Yahoo Finance reported on September 17:

“The Treasury is setting up a temporary financing program at the Fed’s request. The program will auction Treasury bills to raise cash for the Fed’s use. The initiative aims to help the Fed manage its balance sheet following its efforts to enhance its liquidity facilities over the previous few quarters.”

Normally, the Fed swaps green pieces of paper called Federal Reserve Notes for pink pieces of paper called U.S. bonds (the federal government’s I.O.U.s), in order to provide Congress with the dollars it cannot raise through taxes. Now, it seems, the government is issuing bonds, not for its own use, but for the use of the Fed! Perhaps the plan is to swap them with the banks’ dodgy derivatives collateral directly, without actually putting them up for sale to outside buyers. According to Wikipedia (which translates Fedspeak into somewhat clearer terms than the Fed’s own website):

“The Term Securities Lending Facility is a 28-day facility that will offer Treasury general collateral to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s primary dealers in exchange for other program-eligible collateral. It is intended to promote liquidity in the financing markets for Treasury and other collateral and thus to foster the functioning of financial markets more generally. . . . The resource allows dealers to switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable.”

“To switch debt that is less liquid for U.S. government securities that are easily tradable” means that the government gets the banks’ toxic derivative debt, and the banks get the government’s triple-A securities. Unlike the risky derivative debt, federal securities are considered “risk-free” for purposes of determining capital requirements, allowing the banks to improve their capital position so they can make new loans. (See E. Brown, “Bailout Bedlam,” webofdebt.com/articles, October 2, 2008.)

In its latest power play, on October 3, 2008, the Fed acquired the ability to pay interest to its member banks on the reserves the banks maintain at the Fed. Reuters reported on October 3:

“The U.S. Federal Reserve gained a key tactical tool from the $700 billion financial rescue package signed into law on Friday that will help it channel funds into parched credit markets. Tucked into the 451-page bill is a provision that lets the Fed pay interest on the reserves banks are required to hold at the central bank.”3

If the Fed’s money comes ultimately from the taxpayers, that means we the taxpayers are paying interest to the banks on the banks’ own reserves — reserves maintained for their own private profit. These increasingly controversial encroachments on the public purse warrant a closer look at the central banking scheme itself. Who owns the Federal Reserve, who actually controls it, where does it get its money, and whose interests is it serving?

Not Private and Not for Profit?

The Fed’s website insists that it is not a private corporation, is not operated for profit, and is not funded by Congress. But is that true? The Federal Reserve was set up in 1913 as a “lender of last resort” to backstop bank runs, following a particularly bad bank panic in 1907. The Fed’s mandate was then and continues to be to keep the private banking system intact; and that means keeping intact the system’s most valuable asset, a monopoly on creating the national money supply. Except for coins, every dollar in circulation is now created privately as a debt to the Federal Reserve or the banking system it heads.4 The Fed’s website attempts to gloss over its role as chief defender and protector of this private banking club, but let’s take a closer look. The website states:

* “The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations — possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.”

* “[The Federal Reserve] is considered an independent central bank because its decisions do not have to be ratified by the President or anyone else in the executive or legislative branch of government, it does not receive funding appropriated by Congress, and the terms of the members of the Board of Governors span multiple presidential and congressional terms.”

* “The Federal Reserve’s income is derived primarily from the interest on U.S. government securities that it has acquired through open market operations. . . . After paying its expenses, the Federal Reserve turns the rest of its earnings over to the U.S. Treasury.”5

So let’s review:

1. The Fed is privately owned.

Its shareholders are private banks. In fact, 100% of its shareholders are private banks. None of its stock is owned by the government.

2. The fact that the Fed does not get “appropriations” from Congress basically means that it gets its money from Congress without congressional approval, by engaging in “open market operations.”

Here is how it works: When the government is short of funds, the Treasury issues bonds and delivers them to bond dealers, which auction them off. When the Fed wants to “expand the money supply” (create money), it steps in and buys bonds from these dealers with newly-issued dollars acquired by the Fed for the cost of writing them into an account on a computer screen. These maneuvers are called “open market operations” because the Fed buys the bonds on the “open market” from the bond dealers. The bonds then become the “reserves” that the banking establishment uses to back its loans. In another bit of sleight of hand known as “fractional reserve” lending, the same reserves are lent many times over, further expanding the money supply, generating interest for the banks with each loan. It was this money-creating process that prompted Wright Patman, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in the 1960s, to call the Federal Reserve “a total money-making machine.” He wrote:

“When the Federal Reserve writes a check for a government bond it does exactly what any bank does, it creates money, it created money purely and simply by writing a check.”

3. The Fed generates profits for its shareholders.

The interest on bonds acquired with its newly-issued Federal Reserve Notes pays the Fed’s operating expenses plus a guaranteed 6% return to its banker shareholders. A mere 6% a year may not be considered a profit in the world of Wall Street high finance, but most businesses that manage to cover all their expenses and give their shareholders a guaranteed 6% return are considered “for profit” corporations.

In addition to this guaranteed 6%, the banks will now be getting interest from the taxpayers on their “reserves.” The basic reserve requirement set by the Federal Reserve is 10%. The website of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York explains that as money is redeposited and relent throughout the banking system, this 10% held in “reserve” can be fanned into ten times that sum in loans; that is, $10,000 in reserves becomes $100,000 in loans. Federal Reserve Statistical Release H.8 puts the total “loans and leases in bank credit” as of September 24, 2008 at $7,049 billion. Ten percent of that is $700 billion. That means we the taxpayers will be paying interest to the banks on at least $700 billion annually — this so that the banks can retain the reserves to accumulate interest on ten times that sum in loans.

The banks earn these returns from the taxpayers for the privilege of having the banks’ interests protected by an all-powerful independent private central bank, even when those interests may be opposed to the taxpayers’ – for example, when the banks use their special status as private money creators to fund speculative derivative schemes that threaten to collapse the U.S. economy. Among other special benefits, banks and other financial institutions (but not other corporations) can borrow at the low Fed funds rate of about 2%. They can then turn around and put this money into 30-year Treasury bonds at 4.5%, earning an immediate 2.5% from the taxpayers, just by virtue of their position as favored banks. A long list of banks (but not other corporations) is also now protected from the short selling that can crash the price of other stocks.

Time to Change the Statute?

According to the Fed’s website, the control Congress has over the Federal Reserve is limited to this:

“[T]he Federal Reserve is subject to oversight by Congress, which periodically reviews its activities and can alter its responsibilities by statute.”

As we know from watching the business news, “oversight” basically means that Congress gets to see the results when it’s over. The Fed periodically reports to Congress, but the Fed doesn’t ask; it tells. The only real leverage Congress has over the Fed is that it “can alter its responsibilities by statute.” It is time for Congress to exercise that leverage and make the Federal Reserve a truly federal agency, acting by and for the people through their elected representatives. If the Fed can demand AIG’s stock in return for an $85 billion loan to the mega-insurer, we can demand the Fed’s stock in return for the trillion-or-so dollars we’ll be advancing to bail out the private banking system from its follies.

If the Fed were actually a federal agency, the government could issue U.S. legal tender directly, avoiding an unnecessary interest-bearing debt to private middlemen who create the money out of thin air themselves. Among other benefits to the taxpayers. a truly “federal” Federal Reserve could lend the full faith and credit of the United States to state and local governments interest-free, cutting the cost of infrastructure in half, restoring the thriving local economies of earlier decades.

Ellen Brown, J.D., developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her eleven books include the bestselling Nature’s Pharmacy, co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker, and Forbidden Medicine. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com  and www.ellenbrown.com .

Via Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The hypocrisy of the government knows no bounds. I have said repeatedly, and continue to say, that I am against all gun control at the moment because our government is extremely violent and not only do I not expect it to protect the American people in general, I believe it is far more concerned with protecting the status quo from the people. It has become crystal clear that the political and financial oligarchs are quite intentionally attempting to disarm the populace while arming themselves to the teeth in anticipation of some horrible economic event they know is inevitable. From the Blaze:

The Department of Homeland Security is seeking to acquire 7,000 5.56x45mm NATO “personal defense weapons” (PDW) – also known as “assault weapons” when owned by civilians. The solicitation, originally posted on June 7, 2012, comes to light as the Obama administration is calling for a ban on semi-automatic rifles and high capacity magazines.

Citing a General Service Administration (GSA) request for proposal (RFP), Steve McGough of RadioViceOnline.com reports that DHS is asking for the 7,000 “select-fire” firearms because they are “suitable for personal defense use in close quarters.” The term select-fire means the weapon can be both semi-automatic and automatic. Civilians are prohibited from obtaining these kinds of weapons.

That being said, it is reasonable for the Department of Homeland Security to request these rifles as they are indeed effective personal defense weapons. The agency is tasked with keeping Americans safe from those who wish to do the country harm, and its officials should be equipped with all the tools they need to do so effectively.

See the meme being pushed here? These guys want the entire population completely domesticated. They want us to depend on the government for food. For healthcare. For self-defense. Two sets of laws. One for the “rulers” and one for the “ruled.” This is the opposite of how things function in a free society.

I am sorry, but unless you think the DHS is preparing for an invasion by Al Qaeda, it is quite clear these weapons are being bought for future use against the citizenry of the United States. The writing on the wall couldn’t be clearer.

Full article here.

Beginning with the “Yes or No” questions only, everyone’s favorite talk-show host takes on The Bernank in this earth-shattering interview. While Lance Armstrong managed to keep the dream alive for over a decade as all around him showed point-blank-proof of artificial stimulation, it took Oprah to get the truth from his lips (oh and a USADA threat). It seems The Federal Reserve has been forced to ‘fess up in this entertaining interview as Bernanke sits sobbing across from Ms. Winfrey – and comes clean to years of monetary policy artificial stimulation and performance-enhancing economic-doping. Just like Armstrong, Bernanke admits that it is widespread and that this generation of central bankers “all do it” as he notes that “some retard from the FT or NYT will write excruciatingly thoughtful op-eds about how this is actually a good thing.” From the raging parties at Club-Fed to “good f##king times” with Alan Greenspan to “telling people to chillax and enjoy the good times” as the housing bubble popped, Bernanke leaves us with these chilling words: “Buy food, guns, and gold, this $hit is about to get real!” Print-strong.

January 28, 2013  |  

The Obama Administration’s gun-control agenda is unlikely to prevail unless it’s accompanied by a wrenching national struggle on two fronts: re-thinking the “well regulated” part of the Second Amendment, and curbing paid corporate gun glorification that undermines “free” speech under the First Amendment. As the president said in his inaugural address, we must re-impose rules of fair play on markets.

National Rifle Association vice-president Wayne LaPierre was right to charge that violent video-games such as Doom and Call of Duty seed social storms of fear and mistrust with gladiatorial spectacles that have been virtual instruction manuals for mass shooters in Colorado, Connecticut and Norway, who were inveterate players of those games.

But LaPierre didn’t note that game producers had “a mutually beneficial marketing relationship” with the very gun manufacturers that support his own NRA. As the New York Times reported, the games’ pictures of real guns come with embedded links to sales sites. Commercial speech like that can be regulated without violating the First Amendment.

Most of these games’ content isn’t free “speech” at all. Only the Supreme Court’s confusion of free speech with anything that profit-driven corporations pay anyone to say or depict makes it seem otherwise. Regulating some games’ marketing — or even content — would not suppress speech that a republic should protect.

The problem isn’t that the profit-driven, legally constrained corporations driving violent entertainment are malevolent; it’s that they’re civically mindless. They’re inherently incapable of free speech because the positions they take are just the result of fiduciaries — directors, managers and public relations officers — attempting to maximize stock value without regard to their own values, or anyone else’s. Advances in manipulative advertising and a narrow focus on profit have made them runaway engines that can’t be persuaded by rational or moral appeals to stop inciting exaggerated fears of armed home invasion, government takeovers, or fantasies of victory by gunplay. So long as the law and stock market demand they pursue profit, and selling guns and vengeance remains profitable, they’ll keep doing it.

The danger we’re facing isn’t majoritarian censorship of noisy argument, transgressive art, or survivalists’ politics. It’s law promoting profiteers’ own “sensor-ship,” if you will — their ever-more intrusive, intimate shaping of how people, especially of the immature and impressionable, view the world.

Rational and robust debate about the effects of gun violence is forced to compete with an eerily silent, algorithmically driven, massively funded effort to titillate and intimidate audiences — bypassing our brains and hearts on its way to our lower viscera and wallets.

We have every right to stop uses of corporate money that impair the public good, just as we can break up monopolies, require firms to pay for the pollution they cause, and stop misleading advertising.Only a few people take such messages literally, but the relentless depiction of “bad guys” who must be killed undermine hopes, along with republican politics. Lonely mass murderers may actually be attuned more acutely to these undercurrents than those who insist they don’t matter.

Nothing obligates us to let the minions of marketing manipulate our deliberations using “other people’s money,” as Justice Louis Brandeis put it in referring to corporate abuses of politics. We can change corporate law — without interfering with any actual citizen’s speech — to prevent customers’ and investors’ money from overwhelming democratic give and take by using it to pay for political and other messages driven only by the firms’ bottom lines, without regard to other priorities that citizens might share.

To do that, we need to insist on some crucial distinctions.

Wolf Richter  www.testosteronepit.com  www.amazon.com/author/wolfrichter

The state-sponsored chorus about the end of the debt crisis in the Eurozone has been deafening. It even has feel-good metrics: the Euro Breakup Index for January fell to 17.2%–the percentage of investors who thought that at least one country would leave the Eurozone within twelve months. In July, it stood at 73%. For Cyprus, the fifth Eurozone country to ask for a bailout, the index fell to 7.5%. “A euro breakup is almost no issue anymore among investors,” the statement said.

Just then, in a fight over whether or not to bail out Cyprus, top Eurocrats exposed what a taxpayer-funded con game they thought these bailouts really were–and how fragile the Eurozone was.

A debate has been raging in Germany about Cyprus. Not that the German parliament, which has a say in this, wouldn’t rubberstamp an eventual bailout, as it rubberstamped others before, but right now they’re not in the mood. Cyprus is too much of a mess. Bailing out uninsured depositors of Cypriot banks would set a costly precedent for other countries. And bailing out Russian “black money,” which makes up a large portion of the deposits, would be, well, distasteful in Germany, a few months before the federal elections.

For the tiny country whose economy is barely a rounding error in the Eurozone, it would be an enormous bailout. At €17.5 billion, it would amount to about 100% of GDP: €10 billion for the banks, €6 billion for holders of existing debt, and €1.5 billion to cover budget deficits through 2016. The new debt, a €2.5 billion loan that Russia extended in 2011, and other debt would amount to 150% of GDP, according to Moody’s. Unsustainable. So haircuts would be necessary. But whose hair would be cut?

As always, there is never an alternative to a bailout. “It’s essential that everybody realizes that a disorderly default of Cyprus could lead to an exit of Cyprus from the Eurozone,” said Olli Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. “It would be extremely stupid to take any risk of that nature.”

A risk German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble would be willing to take. He’d been saying publicly that it wasn’t certain yet that a default would put the Eurozone at risk–”one of the requirements that any bailout money can flow at all,” he said. Cyprus simply wasn’t “systemically important.” In fact, there were alternatives.

Heretic words. He needed to be shut up, apparently. And that happened at the meeting of Eurozone finance ministers a week ago, details of which sources just leaked to the Spiegel.

The meeting was marked by the transfer of the Eurogroup presidency from Jean-Claude Juncker to the new guy, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem. Cyprus was also on the agenda, but not much was accomplished, other than an agreement to delay the bailout decision until after the Cypriot general elections in February. The government has resisted certain bailout conditions, such as the privatization of state-owned enterprises and the elimination of cost-of-living adjustments for salaries. Now, everyone wanted to deal with the new government.

But what didn’t make it into the press release was that ECB President Mario Draghi, bailout-fund tsar Klaus Regling, and Olli Rehn, all three unelected officials, had formed a triumvirate to gang up on Schäuble.

That Cyprus wasn’t “systemically important” was something he kept hearing everywhere from lawyers, Draghi told Schäuble at the meeting. But it wasn’t a question that can be answered by lawyers, he said. It was a topic for economists.

A resounding put-down: Schäuble, a lawyer by training–not an economist–wasn’t competent to speak on the issue and should therefore shut up!

The two largest Cypriot banks had an extensive network of branches in Greece, the triumvirate argued. If deposits at these branches weren’t considered safe, Greek depositors would be plunged again into uncertainty, which could then infect Greek banks and cause a serious relapse in Greece.  

If Cyprus went bust, they contended, it would annihilate the flow of positive news that has been responsible recently for calming down the Eurozone.

For weeks, all signs have pointed towards an improvement, they argued. Risk premiums for Spanish and Italian government debt have dropped significantly, and balances between central banks, which had risen to dangerous levels, have been edging down. If the money spigot were turned off, this recovery could reverse, they argued. Contagion would spread and could jeopardize Ireland’s and Portugal’s return to the financial markets.

Further, Cyprus was carrying its portion of the bailout funds and therefore had a right to its own bailout–a legal argument even a mere lawyer should be able to grasp.

And so, letting tiny Cyprus default could tear up the rest of the Eurozone, they argued–saying essentially that bailouts were a delicate con game, and that Schäuble, by digging in his heels, was blowing it up.

It made for another bitter Eurozone irony: the democratically elected finance minister of a country whose taxpayers have to pay more than any other for the bailouts got shut down by unelected Eurocrats who, in a continued power grab, postulated that Cypriot banks, their bondholders, their depositors, even their uninsured depositors, even Russian “black money” depositors had a “right” to the German money (and anyone else’s). And if Schäuble refused, it would blow up the entire Eurozone. Schäuble’s response hasn’t bubbled to the surface yet. And bailout queen Chancellor Merkel, who is trying to avoid tumult ahead of her elections, has a new headache. Read… Russian “Black Money” Threatens To Boot Cyprus Out Of The Eurozone.

Reporters Without Borders has censured Bahrain for imprisoning journalists and human rights activists.

“We are sounding the alarm about the recent arrests of journalists and human rights activists in Bahrain and we condemn the government’s nearly two-year-old policy of harsh repression,” Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontières — RSF) said in a statement issued on Monday.

“The authorities clearly want to obstruct journalists and prevent the flow of information about demonstrations and their suppression by the security forces,” the statement added.

RSF cited the examples of Ahmed Humaidan, a Bahraini photojournalist, who has been in custody since December 29, 2012, and Sayed Yousif al-Muhafda, a human rights activist, who will go on trial on Tuesday on charges of circulating false news.

Al-Muhafda, who is the vice president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the head of its documentation department, was arrested on December 17 and held for a month, but was finally released on bail on January 17.

He is charged with deliberately disseminating false news on Twitter with the aim of inciting violence.

RSF has asked the Bahraini judiciary to drop the charges against al-Muhafda, saying the charges were only filed to punish him for his commitment to the free flow of information about the human rights situation in Bahrain.

Reporters Without Borders has called for his immediate release and the dismissal of all the charges against him.

Over 30 international human rights organizations, including Reporters Without Borders, have sent a joint letter to the US president, calling on him to pressure the Bahraini government to free all the human rights defenders and activists being held in the Persian Gulf kingdom.

Since mid-February 2011, thousands of pro-democracy protesters have staged numerous demonstrations in the streets of Bahrain, calling for the Al Khalifa royal family to relinquish power.

On March 14, 2011, troops from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates invaded the country to assist the Bahraini government in its crackdown on the peaceful protesters.

According to local sources, scores of people have been killed and hundreds arrested.

Physicians for Human Rights says doctors and nurses have been detained, tortured, or disappeared because they have “evidence of atrocities committed by the authorities, security forces, and riot police” in the crackdown on anti-government protesters.

GJH/HGL

A protester has been shot dead outside a police station in the Egyptian city of Port Said, according to a person working at a hospital.

“A young man called Mohammed Gharib was killed [on Monday] by gunfire during clashes outside the al-Arab police station in Port Said,” and the man died on his way to the hospital, AFP quoted the unnamed source as saying.

The protesters in Port Said are angry that people from their city were found guilty of murdering 74 people, who were killed in a riot that broke out in their town after Port Said-based Al-Masry defeated Cairo’s Al-Ahly 3-1 in a football match.

On Saturday, a judge sentenced 21 local people to death for their roles in the February 1, 2012 riot, in which 1,000 people were also injured.

Earlier on Monday, Egyptian media outlets reported that at least 11 members of the security forces were injured in Cairo in clashes between anti-government demonstrators and police.

Over the past few days, thousands of Egyptians have staged demonstrations in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said, and many other cities and towns to call on President Mohamed Morsi, who took office in June 2012, to fulfill his election promises.

The protesters are demanding that Morsi provide them with a pay rise, official contracts, and better working conditions.

The Egyptians launched the revolution against the pro-Israeli regime on January 25, 2011, which eventually brought an end to the 30-year dictatorship of Mubarak on February 11, 2011.

MN/HGL

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton holds a small US-made drone drone that the Ugandan military uses in Somalia to fight al-Qaida linked militants (AFP Photo / Pool / Jacquelyn Martin)

The US is planning to consolidate its position in Africa with a new drone outpost in Niger, with the stated purpose of providing unarmed surveillance support to French efforts in Mali and keeping tabs on al-Qaeda elements on the continent.

­In the future, though, the US command does not rule out using the base to conduct military strikes if the situation deteriorates or the extremist threat increases, military officials told The New York Times.

In the meantime, the US military’s Africa Command is reviewing the options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso.

The Africa Command’s scheme still needs the go-ahead from the Department of Defense, President Barack Obama and Niger. No final decision had been made, but a status-of-forces agreement has been reached between the two governments in Niger on Monday, providing legal protection to American troops in the African country.

If the drone base plan goes through, the facility could become home to as many as 300 American military and contractual personnel.

The United States so far has only one permanent base in Africa, in Djibouti. The drone base there is widely used for missions in nearby Yemen and allows access to Somalian and Sudanese airspace. A base in Niger would drastically shorten the response time to developing situations in the region.

The ongoing discussions about the installation follow the French military intervention in Mali and the Algerian hostage crisis, which left at least 37 foreigners dead and highlighted the threat from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

On Wednesday, outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised not to let northern Mali become a “safe haven” for extremists in the region as al-Qaeda-affiliated insurgents have become a “a very serious, ongoing threat.”

Last week, Washington sent approximately 100 military trainers to nations that are prepared to, or have already deployed, troops to Mali — including Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana.

For many years one of the best jobs on Wall Street in terms of a mix of job safety and compensation, was to be a fixed income trader-cum-salesman working for a major bank with a deep balance sheet, which could hold illiquid securities on its prop account, to dispose of as the “flow” (or clients) required, and on unsupervised and unregulated terms that were simply a verbal arrangement between the bank trader and the end client, usually a counterparty trader working for a major institutional buyside shop, including mutual or hedge funds.

Since for the most part, the buyside traders operated with other people’s money, they were largely indiscriminate on the fine pricing nuances of the acquisition (or disposition) of the securities at hand, and while to the “other people’s money” under management whether a given bond was bought for 55 or 55.75, or a given MBS was sold for 72-6 or 72-16 meant little (after all the trade was driven by a big picture view that the security would go up or down much more and certainly enough to cover the bid/ask spread, resulting in much larger profits upon unwind), the transaction price had a huge impact for the bank traders-cum-salesmen arranging said deals. Because when one is selling a $40 million MBS block, a 1 point price swing equals a difference of $400,000. Make 15 such deals per year, and one’s $1,000,000 bonus (assuming a ~15% cut on the profits) is in the bag.

It wasn’t necessarily an easy job – it required an extensive rolodex, a keen ear for who held what securities in one’s given space, constant schmoozing, and manning the phones constantly. More importantly, everyone knew how the game is played: everyone knew that the middlemen would usually skim a few basis points on the top or bottom of the bid-ask spread, in exchange for having the first call the next time a juicy security was being shopped around, or whenever one had to offload some debt in a hurry.

Keep in mind this type of trading of OTC (Over The Counter) instruments, which included and still includes most corporate bonds, Credit Default Swaps and all other derivatives, Mortgage Backed Securities, Bank Loans, Bankruptcy Claims, and other blocky piece of paper, was always vastly different from equity trading where every trade was electronically recorded, where the bid/ask spreads were negligible due to infinite competition for every trade, yet which ultimately led to the advent of such robotic predators as High Frequency Trading algorithms which do at the micro scale what the old equity specialist and current bond salesman/trader do at the macro level. In short: the highly lucrative and extremely profitable bid/ask skimming that every bond trader engaged in for years has been impossible in equities for the simple reason that the bid/ask spread on most equity-related securities is minute and the market is far deeper and (at least used to be) far more liquid.

It also explains why 4 years after the Great Financial Crisis, there is still no centralized, computerized trading portal for OTC trades, including corps, CDS, loans, etc. Doing so would mean that the banks would give up billions in additional commissions that they could charge if all such trades were facilitiated by the kind of sales coverage middlemen described above. Because while a salesman was incentivized to peel as much as they could of a given trade, they would at best pocket some 10-15% of the total spread. The rest went to the bank, and thus to management in the form a massive bonuses: comp at banks is not 40% of revenue for nothing, with some money left over for “retained earnings.”

But back to the credit traders which for years had built up their reputations in given product verticals, and which had a coverage of fiercely guarded clients, which no other salesmen at a given firm were allowed to converse with. Now was it well-known that salesguy X would pick an additional 50 bps on top of the price being quoted? Sure. After all, someone had to pay for those weekly trips to the Hustler Club, and that’s precisely what the Salesmen did. And who really cared about a little vig? Remember – it was all being down with “other people’s money.”

Well, the days of rampant skimming on top of the bid/ask spread, and with them record bonuses for bond traders and salesmen, may just ended with a whimper not a bang, and all bond traders hoping to make millions by misrepresenting what the true purchase or sale prices are to buysider clients, even if completely voluntary on both sides, may want to seek employment elsewhere.

They have Jesse Litvak to thank for it. 

Jesse is a former MBS trader from Jefferies, who got just a little too greedy, and proceeded to rip virtually all of his clients on seemingly every single trade he executed for the three years he was employed at Jefferies, lying to everyone in the process: both clients and in house colleagues, generating some $2.7 million in additional revenue for Jefferies for the duration of his tenure, and who knows how much in personal bonuses.

What excatly was the charge? The SEC summarizes it briefly as follows:

Jesse Litvak arranged trades for customers as part of his job as a managing director on the MBS desk at Jefferies. Litvak would buy a MBS from one customer and sell it to another customer, but on many occasions he lied about the price at which his firm had bought the MBS so he could re-sell it to the other customer at a higher price and keep more money for the firm. On other occasions, Litvak misled purchasers by creating a fictional seller to purport that he was arranging a MBS trade between customers when in reality he was just selling MBS out of his firm’s inventory at a higher price. Because MBS are generally illiquid and difficult to price, it is particularly important for brokers to provide honest and accurate information.

The SEC alleges that Litvak generated more than $2.7 million in additional revenue for Jefferies through his deceit. His misconduct helped him improve his own standing at the firm, as his bonuses were determined in part by the amount of revenue he generated for the firm.

A more detailed summary of what Litvak did over and over:

The MBS market operates through relationships between customers, who buy
and sell the bonds, and broker-dealers, like Jefferies, that arrange the trades. Customers seek to pay the lowest price for purchases and get the highest price on sales. It is not unusual for a customer’s view of the current market price for a security to come from the broker-dealer that is selling the security. Because of this, there is an emphasis on establishing relationships, building trust, and having a good reputation within the industry. In part because of the opacity of the market, and in part because the market relies on repeat transactions between the same parties, customers seek to avoid broker-dealers who are not honest with them. Upon learning that Litvak had lied to them about the price he paid for MBS, some customers indicated that their firms would have temporarily stopped doing business with Jefferies had they known the truth. At least one customer, upon learning that Litvak had lied, temporarily stopped doing business with Jefferies. Some customers indicated they would have sought lower prices on trades, or even tried to re-negotiate trades, had they known the truth.

As an intermediary, Litvak generally purchased MBS from one customer and then sold the same security to another customer. In those circumstances, Jefferies and Litvak typically re-sold the MBS on a riskless, principal basis; this meant that, while Jefferies would momentarily own the MBS in a principal account, it had minimal or no risk because it knew that it could re-sell the MBS to another customer. Litvak earned compensation for Jefferies by reselling the MBS at a higher price and collecting the spread (or difference) between the purchase price and the sale price. The customers were aware that Jefferies was compensated in this way, and the amount and source of the compensation were part of the negotiations around the purchase and sale of the MBS.

From 2009 to 2011, Litvak engaged in misconduct on over 25 trades. In each instance, Litvak made misrepresentations to, or otherwise misled, customers about the price at which Jefferies had purchased the MBS before re-selling it to the customer and Jefferies’ compensation for arranging the trade. In some cases, Litvak also pretended to be arranging the trade between customers when Jefferies was actually selling MBS out of its own inventory.

When Litvak offered customers MBS, he lied to them about how much Jefferies had paid (or was paying) for the securities. In order to negotiate a higher sale price to the customers, Litvak misled them into believing that Jefferies had paid a higher price for the MBS than it actually had.

By misrepresenting Jefferies’ purchase price, Litvak misled customers about the amount of compensation Jefferies would receive on the transaction. For example, if Litvak told the customer that Jefferies’ purchase price was 80 and the sale price was 80 and 4 ticks, the customer understood that Jefferies received 4 ticks in compensation. However, if Jefferies’ purchase price was actually 79 and the sale price was 80 and 4 ticks, then Jefferies received an extra point in compensation as a result of Litvak’s misrepresentation. On some occasions, Litvak and the customer explicitly agreed on the amount of Jefferies’ compensation based on the purchase price as represented by Litvak.

Sometimes, in addition to misrepresenting the price and Jefferies’ compensation, Litvak also misled his customers into believing that Jefferies was arranging a trade between two customers, when Jefferies actually was selling a MBS out of its own inventory. In these instances, Litvak pretended to be actively negotiating with an outside party to buy a MBS that he would then re-sell to his customer. Litvak communicated precise details to customers about the state of negotiations with the imaginary seller. But none of these negotiations were taking place; instead, Litvak fabricated the existence of the seller and every detail about active negotiations with it. In fact, as Litvak knew, Jefferies had purchased these MBS days (and even months) before and already held them in its inventory.

The above is the basis of SEC’s just announced case. In reality, Litvak’s biggest crime was getting too greedy. Because all of the above is well-known to everyone in the industry, and it certainly was known to Litvak’s clients, most of whom were sell-side traders and salesmen before they moved to the buyside, and certainly knew how the game is played.

And what the result of today’s civil charge against Litvak is that, for at least the foreseeable future, every single bank will come down like a brick house on any and all inhouse bond, loan, CDS and OTC salesmen and make sure that every single transaction is recorded, the entry and exit prices are fair and honest, and as represented, and in the process both banks and salespeople will make millions less in profits. This will continue at least for a year or so, or until the SEC finds some other major case to focus on, far away from the realities of modern day bond trading.

Another direct result is that courtesy of 31 page SEC complaint, the general public will now be aware just how much even very sophisticated traders were being abused as muppets by those who had the information about both sides of the trade. Because at the end of the day, as the old saying goes, the only true commodity on Wall Street is information.

Some excerpts:

While arranging a trade on May 28, 2009, Litvak lied to both the seller and buyer of $25 million of a MBS called IndyMac INDX Mortgage Loan Trust (“INDX”) 2007-AR7 2A1 (INDX 2007-AR7 2A1).

A representative of MFA Mortgage Investments, Inc. (“MFA”) told Litvak he was interested in bidding 42-00 for $25 million in the INDX MBS. After negotiating with the seller, Litvak told the MFA representative in an instant message, “I can sell to you at 42-8 . . . I Bot EM AT at 42-4.” MFA agreed to buy the MBS at 42-8.

Litvak lied to MFA about the acquisition price. He had bought the security at 41-4, not “42-4” as he had reported. The next day, Litvak admitted to a Jefferies colleague that he had lied to MFA, while also misrepresenting the purchase price to his colleague. Litvak wrote, “we bot at 41-12. Sold to him a[t] 42-8. He thinks we bot em @42-4 fyi.” Thus, he misrepresented the purchase price (41-4) both to MFA and to his own colleague.

While he was lying to the buyer, Litvak was also lying to the seller of the MBS, Third Point LLC (“Third Point”). Although he knew MFA was willing to pay 42-00 for the MBS, Litvak told a Third Point representative that the MFA representative–whom Litvak referred to as “one of my circle of trust guys”–had bid only 41-00. Litvak then reported that he had convinced MFA to raise its bid to 41-16.

Litvak acknowledged to a Jefferies colleague that he misled Third Point, writing, “So we bot [INDX] bonds from [the Third Point representative] at 41-4. . . . she thinks we sold at 41-16 . . . we really sold em at 42-8.”

Through his misconduct, Litvak generated more than $200,000 in extra profit for Jefferies on this trade.

A whole lot of lying to everyone involved to scalp a $200,000 profit.

Or this:

On December 23, 2009, Litvak approached a representative at Wellington Management LLP (“Wellington”) about purchasing a MBS called Wells Fargo Mortgage Backed Securities 2006-AR12 1a1 (WFMB 06-AR12 1a1). Litvak suggested to the representative that he was arranging a trade with an active outside party:

yo yo yo….if there is any color you can share on your wfmbs 06-ar10 4A1 from yest…maybe i can use that as leverage to go beat the guy up that owns the 06-ar12 1a1 bonds….as of late last nite it sounded like he was starting to warm up to the idea of coming off his level…..

The Wellington representative asked Litvak, “what’s the current size and offer” on the MBS, and Litvak responded, “its 3+mm current and he was offering them at 77….” About twenty minutes later, Litvak reported that the seller was not in yet: “he … usually rolls in around now…..so should know soon brotha…..” Half an hour later, Litvak told the Wellington representative that he had bought the MBS at 75-28 and provided details of the supposed negotiation:

winner winner chicken dinner…he is gonna sell em to me at 75-28 as I told him to not get cute and just sell the bonds so you can own them at 76….he said cool…..its 6.23mm orig….a’ight?

Wellington agreed to purchase $6.23 million of the MBS at 76. 42.

In actuality, Jefferies had purchased the MBS on December 14, 2009 at 70 (not “75-28”) and held it in its inventory at the time of the sale to Wellington. On December 23, 2009, Litvak concocted the supposed seller and fabricated the details of a negotiation. As he had done before, Litvak lied about the purchase price, Jefferies’ compensation on the trade, and the fact that the MBS was being sold out of Jefferies’ inventory.

Through his misconduct, Litvak made over $150,000 in additional compensation for Jefferies on this trade.

Many more lies, just to add another $150,000 in the bag.

It goes on:

On January 7, 2010, Litvak communicated with a representative at York Capital Management Global Advisors, LLC (“York”) about selling $40 million of a MBS called DLSA Mortgage Loan Trust 2006-AR1 2A1A (DLSA 2006-AR1 2A1A), held by York, to another customer. Litvak told the representative that the other customer had bid 60-24. The York representative asked Litvak how much he wanted to be compensated for the trade:

Litvak: i am happy when I get any trades…..lol…in all seriousness….i think 8/32s is great….so maybe you sell em to me at 60-28 and i sell em to him at 61- 4….something like that..but im also happy to get you 61 and just tell him to pay me 61-8…..wanna get you the highest i can…

York representative: well i want best execution obv so try to get him to 61-8!

Litvak: we are doneski gorgeous! im selling him bonds at 61-8……will buy em from you at 61 k?. . .

York representative: great! . . . .

As a result of this back-and-forth, York agreed to sell the MBS at 61.

Litvak misrepresented the resale price and the compensation he would receive for Jefferies. He did not sell the MBS at “61-8,” as stated, but at 62-12. Thus, instead of the “8/32s” he represented Jefferies would make, the firm actually was compensated 44 ticks for the trade.

Through his misconduct, Litvak made over $220,000 more for Jefferies on this trade.

More lies, another $220,000.

And on, and on, and on.

This continues to this day, and will continue tomorrow, albeit at a more modest pace for at least a few months, at every single Wall Street firm, and such skimming off the top is precisely what ends up going into both the bank’s bottom line, and the trader’s bonus.

Is it any wonder that virtually all Wall Street “professionals” are habituated sociopaths who lie for a living just to skim a few pennies (metaphorically speaking: make that millions of “other people’s” dollars in the real world). And is it any wonder that all banks demand their inner workings never see the light of day so they can operate in absolute secrecy, and exchanges like the above, and 22 more, are never read by the public.

Take these examples and multiply them by a thousand: only then will you have a sense of what truly goes on behind the scene of every Wall Street firm in the US and around the world on any given day: a shadowy netherworld populated by uber-wealthy sociopaths, whose ethics are dominated not by what is right or wrong, but who can lie the most, rip their clients off without their clients pulling the plug, and, of course, who has the biggest year-end bonus and shiniest and newest toys at the end of the year. Everything else is of tertiary importance.

And since everyone on the inside knows that only the most conniving, most sociopathic survive and, most importantly, make the most money, nobody complains, or else is shown the door.

That is how Wall Street truly works, for better or worse (we have omitted the inevitable bailout that happens once bank after bank loads up on too much prop risk and has to be bailed out by the government, but that is, by now, well-known).

The full complaint against Litvak can be found here.

Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics blog,

Things don’t look so good for China:

Will we see a Chinese financial meltdown in 2013? Or 2014? Or 2015? With global GDP growth on a definite trend downward, with such a tepid Western recovery, and with global geopolitical tensions still high, the last thing the global economy needs is a financial crisis at the heart of the BRIC growth engine. But the data implies that that may just be what we get.

To those who believe that China is immune to such a thing, recall that America suffered the Great Depression immediately previous to becoming a global superpower. China’s economy has undergone a rapid transformation in recent years:

Such a transformation is sure to necessitate some dislocation and fallout – just as America’s transformation from an agricultural to a manufacturing economy did. America ended that process as the global superpower. It remains to be seen if the same will happen for China, but controlling the world’s largest productive industrial base certainly suggests so. The other factor, of course, that presaged America’s rise was a global war…

Authored by Andrew Haldane (Executive Director, Bank of England); originally posted at VoxEU,

Have We Solved ‘Too Big To Fail’?

No.

That is not my pessimistic verdict; it is the market’s. Prior to the crisis, the 29 largest global banks benefitted from just over one notch of uplift from the ratings agencies due to expectations of state support. Today, those same global leviathans benefit from around three notches of implied support. Expectations of state support have risen threefold since the crisis began.

This translates into a large implicit subsidy to the world’s biggest banks in the form of lower funding costs and higher profits. Prior to the crisis, this amounted to tens of billions of dollars each year. Today, it is hundreds of billions (Haldane 2012). In other words, if the market’s expectations are to be believed, the regulatory response to the crisis has not plugged the ‘too-big-to-fail’ sink.

On the face of it, that sounds perplexing. Rarely a day passes without a warning from the financial industry about overbearing regulation of, in particular, the world’s biggest banks. What is certainly true is that, in the light of the crisis, regulation to quell the too-big-to-fail problem has come thick and (at least in regulatory terms) fast. This reform effort falls into roughly three categories:

(a) Systemic surcharges: of additional capital levied on the world’s largest banks according to their size and connectivity. This Pigouvian tax on systemic risk externalities is built on conceptually sound foundations (for example, Brunnermeier 2009). And, encouragingly, good economics has found its way into good public policy. Last year, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) agreed a sliding scale of systemic surcharges for the world’s largest banks. The highest surcharge was set at 2.5% of capital.

Yet therein lies the problem. Based on my estimates (Haldane 2012), a charge levied at this rate would leave the majority of the systemic externalities associated with the world’s biggest banks untouched. The reduction in default probabilities associated with lowering leverage by a percentage point or two would not offset the higher system-wide loss-given-default associated with the world’s largest banks. The systemic tax is being levied at rates which are too low to meet Pigouvian ends.

(b) Resolution regimes: In principle, orderly resolution regimes for banks could lower the collateral costs of a big bank defaulting, thereby tackling at source these systemic externalities. And significant public policy progress has been made on this front, with the FSB publishing (and the G20 approving) some Key Attributes for Effective Resolution Regimes during the course of the past 18 months. A key component of these plans is the ability to impose losses on private creditors — so-called ‘bail-in’ — rather than have those losses borne by taxpayers.

As with systemic surcharges, the issue here is not to so much the bail-in principle, but its application in practice. Bail-in, whether of big banks, sovereigns or companies, faces an acute time-consistency problem. Policymakers face a trade-off between placing losses on a narrow set of tax-payers today (bail-in) or spreading that risk across a wider set of tax-payers today and tomorrow (bail-out).

A risk-averse, tax-smoothing government may tend towards the latter path — and historically has almost always done so, most notably in response to the present financial crisis. Next time may of course be different. But the market is sceptical. For example, in the US the Dodd-Frank Act on paper rules in future bail-in and rules out future bail-out. Yet market expectations of state support for US banks are higher today than before the crisis struck and are unchanged since Dodd-Frank became law. The time-consistency dilemma, at least in the eyes of markets, is as acute as ever.

(c) Structural reform: One way of lessening that dilemma may be to act on the scale and structure of banking directly. Several recent regulatory reform initiatives have sought to do just that, notably the “Volcker rule” in the US, the ‘Vickers proposals’ in the UK and, most recently, the ‘Liikanen plans’ in Europe. While different in detail, each of these proposals shares a common objective: a degree of separation or segregation between investment and commercial banking activities.

In principle, these ringfencing initiatives confer both ex-post (improved resolution) and ex-ante (improved risk management) benefits. Because they act on banking structure, they have a greater chance of proving time-consistent. While this is a clear step forward, those benefits are only as credible as the ringfence itself. The issue raised by some is whether, in practice, the ring-fence could prove permeable. Without care, today’s ring-fence could become tomorrow’s string vest.

If each of these initiatives is necessary but none is individually or collectively sufficient to tackle too-big-to-fail, what is to be done? One solution might lie in strengthening these proposals. For example, re-sizing the capital surcharge, perhaps in line with quantitative estimates of the ‘optimal’ capital ratio (Miles et al (2012), Admati et al (2011)), would be one option for bearing down further on systemic externalities.

Another more radical option, mooted recently by a number of commentators and policymakers, would be to place size limits on banks, either in relation to the financial system as a whole or, more coherently, relative to GDP (Hoenig (2012), Tarullo (2012)). Proposals of this type typically face two sets of criticism.

The first, practical issue is how to calibrate an appropriate limit. Recent research on the link between and financial depth and growth provides a way into this question. This research has suggested that there is a threshold at which the private-credit-to-GDP ratio may begin to have a negative impact on GDP and, in particular, productivity growth (Arcand et al (2012), Cechetti and Kharroubi (2012)). By taking a view on this aggregate threshold, and on an appropriate degree of concentration within the financial system, an institution-specific threshold could be derived.

The second, empirical issue is whether size limits would erode the economies of scale and scope which might otherwise be associated with big banks. The empirical literature on these economies has, until recently, suggested they may be exhausted at relatively low balance sheet thresholds. But a number of recent papers have painted a more optimistic picture, with economies of scale found for banks with balance sheets in excess of $1 trillion (Wheelock and Wilson (2012), Feng and Serilitis (2009), Hughes and Mester (2011)).

Yet this evidence needs to be interpreted cautiously, not least because it fails to recognise the implicit subsidies associated with too-big-to-fail. These would tend to lower funding costs and boost measured valued-added for the big banks. In other words, the implicit subsidy would show up as economies of scale. Bank of England research has recently shown that, once those subsidies are accounted for, evidence of scale economies for banks with assets in excess of $100 billion tends to disappear (Davies and Tracey (2012)). Indeed, if anything, there may even be evidence of scale diseconomies, perhaps consistent with big banks being ‘too big to manage’.

Too-big-to-fail is far from gone. It is even more important it is not forgotten. Further analytical work, weighing the costs and benefits of different structural reform proposals, would help keep memories fresh and policies on the right track.

© Copyright 2010 Press TV. All rights reserved.

Taxes will have been increased almost 300 times by the coalition Government before its term of office ends in 2015, according to new research.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) said it had reviewed all of the Government’s tax policies and found 254 tax rises had already come into effect, with 45 more planned before the next election.

It calculated the amount of tax paid in Britain would rise in real terms by 15% as result. The TPA said its review of Treasury and HMRC documents had also uncovered 119 tax cuts, of which 10 are still to implemented.

Chief executive Matthew Sinclair said: “Families are struggling to bear an increasingly heavy tax burden. High taxes kill jobs, depress wages and increase prices. With nearly 300 tax rises since the Government came to power, it is no wonder everyone is feeling squeezed.

“The crisis in the public finances came after a decade of tax rises, not tax cuts, but politicians are still coming back for more. Endless tinkering at the edges of the tax system was a vice that George Osborne criticised in the last Government, but of which he is equally guilty now he is in office.

“Many of the coalition’s hundreds of changes create just as many new complications as they resolve and every one will have affected long term investments, often in quite subtle ways. That creates uncertainty which will undermine economic growth. Britain needs more lasting, strategic tax reform and less fiddling at the margins.”

The TPA said the full tax take would go from £513 billion in 2009/10 to £671 billion in 2015/16. Adjusted to 2012/13 prices, the increase is from £549 billion to £633 billion, they said.

In the detailed findings, the TPA said it was counting each change to a tax individually. It said this meant there had been 55 increases in VAT rates, and five cuts. Similarly, income tax had been increased 35 times but cut 24 times – referring variously to the position of tax bands, the level of personal allowance or reliefs, such as gift aid.

Responding to the TPA report, a Treasury spokesman said: “In 2010, the Government was faced with the challenge of restoring Britain’s worst public finances in peacetime history. We have had to take difficult decisions to deal with the deficit, including to increase some taxes, but we have done this while supporting hard-working people and businesses that create jobs through tax cuts and our programme of tax reform. The Government wants a fairer, more efficient and simpler tax system in which those with the most contribute the most.

“Since 2010, we have increased the tax-free personal allowance by £2,965, cutting the tax bills of 25 million people over the Parliament, and taking 2.2 million people out of income tax altogether by 2013. In December last year, the Chancellor cancelled the January 2013 fuel duty rise, meaning that it will have been frozen for nearly two-and-a-half years by September this year, providing £19 billion-worth of support to motorists over the parliament. We have cut corporation tax from 28% in 2010 to 21% in 2014 and our corporate tax reforms have been welcomed by business and are making the UK more globally competitive.”

Nobody tells me anything! I remember hearing that progressive activists Alex Lawson (executive director of Social Security Works, spearheading the drive to protect it) and Cliff Schecter (bloggger and progressive PR consultant) bought an AM radio station in DC, which they christened We Act Radio, but I had no idea this was where David Shuster landed after his colorful exit from MSNBC. (He’s also on CurrentTV, and I didn’t know that, either.) Good to have him back!

It’s important, though, for progressives to keep pushing away to build progressive radio. Yeah, Air America didn’t last, but a lot of their alumni (Sam Seder and Nicole Sandler, just to name a few) are still hanging in there. And as my dear departed friend Joe Bageant said in his book talk radio is the only access most poor people get to information about their government. They listen at work, where they spend the most time awake, and after a while, it seeps in and warps their brains. That’s why it’s so important for us to offer some alternative to the wingnut brainwashing:

Officially launched January 1, 2012, We Act is a 5,000 watt (“of full truth-telling power,” says Kymone) AM station that covers DC, northern Virginia, and southern Maryland, which, per FCC rules, drops to 500 watts after sunset. In the modern media landscape, however, those “terrestrial limitations” mean less than they used to. Listeners can tune in live online, or on a mobile device using the “Tune-in” app for mobile, or a host of other methods. “There are two separate individuals from New Zealand who listen to this station via some website that hosts radio shows.” Alex says.

We Act relies heavily on syndicated content from progressive radio stars like Thom Hartmann, Bill Press, Stephanie Miller, and Ed Schultz, who, Lawson points out, had no broadcast presence in Washington, DC before We Act, despite the fact that Hartmann and Press both broadcast from DC.

But what makes them special is their local connection, and their homegrown talent. “Our slogan is ‘Do Something,’” Alex says. “Our mission is to raise people’s voices, make them heard.”

The station produces about 30 hours of local programming, and in its short life, has become a fixture in the community.

“The reason we moved to Anacostia is that we wanted to be a community-based radio station,” General Manager Ron Pinchback says. “Everyone involved in this is putting in blood, sweat, tears, and money into it because we all believe in what we’re doing here, raising people’s voices.”

Among the bleeders and sweaters is David Shuster, whom Pinchback describes as a “consummate professional. From jump street, his commitment was unparalleled.”

Shuster’s involvement with We Act Radio superficially mirrors that of Keith Olbermann‘s with Current TV; both were hired to give a jolt to progressive upstart media outlets, and both were instrumental in their employers’ early successes. The comparison diverges significantly from there, however, as Shuster is not breaking We Act’s bank, and as Ron says, “There’s no ego involved.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran has sent a monkey into space on a suborbital flight and returned it to Earth safely.

On Monday, Iran launched the Kavoshgar Pishgam (Pioneer Discoverer) rocket, which took the primate to an altitude of 120 kilometers.

“In this project, we are sending a live animal, a monkey, into space. This kind of monkey’s physiology is very similar to humans. We are [using] this monkey to test life support systems and flight conditions. The capsule is completely sealed. It is equipped with machines that produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. All the vital signs will be transmitted to Earth, and cameras inside the cabin will record the event,” Iranian Space Agency Director Hamid Fazeli said.

Iran launched its first domestically manufactured satellite, the Omid (Hope), in 2009. The Islamic Republic sent its first bio-capsule containing living creatures into space in February 2010, using the domestically manufactured Kavoshgar-3 (Explorer-3) carrier.

Iran is one of the 74 founding members of the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which was set up in 1959.

NT/HGL

Given our recent discussion (here and here) of the rising importance of Africa in the world’s power and money echelons, it is not entirely surprising that the NY Times reports that US military command in Africa is actively preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase “unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups” that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region. It would appear Niger will be the most likely place for the base – from which officials envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones though, of course, they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Perhaps, actually scratch the “perhaps”, what is really happening is the US now has a drone base with which to supervise Chinese expansion in Northweast Africa, anda drone fleet to use defensively and offensively as it sees fit.

From –

And so it would appear we can draw a big red circle over northwest Africa in the map above which is where the US will literally have a bird’s eye view of all the resources that China is sequestering, and all the infrastructure that the world’s most populous nation is setting up.

Next we need a little dose of the perpetual “Al-Qaeda” bogeyman in Central, Eastern, and finally South Africa and the US will have military control over a continent that China is rapidly doing all it cen to colonize from the ground up.

Via NY Times,

The United States military command in Africa is preparing plans to establish a drone base in northwest Africa to increase unarmed surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of that country…

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The United States military has a very limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali. …

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

…

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the Intelligence Committee, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

…

General Ham said during an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been very difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

The State Department has been extraordinarily wary of allowing drones to operate in the region, fearful of criticism that the United States is trying to militarize parts of Africa…

American drones regularly conduct surveillance flights over Somalia and occasionally launch airstrikes against people suspected of being members of the Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda.

…

“Without operating locations on the continent, I.S.R. capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” General Ham said in a statement submitted to the House Armed Services Committee last March. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased ISR assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.”

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that any amount of radiation — no matter how small — can cause cancer and other serious health effects.

(Current safety standards are based on the ridiculous assumption that everyone exposed is a healthy man in his 20s — and that radioactive particles ingested into the body cause no more damage than radiation hitting the outside of the body. In the real world, however, even low doses of radiation can cause cancer. Moreover, small particles of radiation — called “internal emitters” — which get inside the body are much more dangerous than general exposures to radiation. See this and this. And radiation affects small children much more than full-grown adults.)

But the Department of Energy — the agency which is responsible for the design, testing and production of all U.S. nuclear weapons, promotes nuclear energy as one of its core functions, which has been covering up nuclear accidents for decades, and has used mutant lines of human cells to promote voodoo, anti-scientific arguments — proposes letting radiation into our silverware.

Counterpunch notes:

Even the deregulation-happy Wall St. Journal sounded shocked: “The Department of Energy is proposing to allow the sale of tons of scrap metal from government nuclear sites – an attempt to reduce waste that critics say could lead to radiation-tainted belt buckles, surgical implants and other consumer products.”

Having failed in the ‘80s and ‘90s to free the nuclear bomb factories and national laboratories of millions of tons of their radioactively contaminated scrap and nickel, the DOE is trying again. Its latest proposal is moving ahead without even an Environmental Impact Statement. Those messy EISs involve public hearings, so you can imagine the DOE’s reluctance to face the public over adding yet more radiation to the doses we’re already accumulating.

Congressman Markey writes:

A Department of Energy proposal to allow up to 14,000 metric tons of its radioactive scrap metal to be recycled into consumer products was called into question today by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) due to concerns over public health. In a letter sent to DOE head Steven Chu, Rep. Markey expressed “grave concerns” over the potential of these metals becoming jewelry, cutlery, or other consumer products that could exceed healthy doses of radiation without any knowledge by the consumer. DOE made the proposal to rescind its earlier moratorium on radioactive scrap metal recycling in December, 2012.

The proposal follows an incident from 2012 involving Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in America recalling tissue holders made in India that were contaminated with the radio-isotope cobalt-60. Those products were shipped to 200 stores in 20 states. In response to that incident, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesperson advised members of the public to return the products even though the amount of contamination was not considered to be a health risk.

This is not the first time this has happened.

As the Progressive reported in 1998, radioactive scrap metal was ending up in everything from silverware to frying pans and belt buckles:

The Department of Energy has a problem: what to do with millions of tons of radioactive material. So the DOE has come up with an ingenious plan to dispose of its troublesome tons of nickel, copper, steel and aluminum. It wants to let scrap companies collect the metal, try to take the radioactivity out, and sell the metal to foundries, which would in turn sell it to manufacturers who could use it for everyday household products: pots, pans, forks, spoons, even your eyeglasses.

You may not know this, but the government already permits some companies under special licenses, to buy, reprocess and sell radioactive metal: 7,500 tons in 1996, by one industry estimate. But the amount of this reprocessing could increase drastically if the DOE, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission … and the burgeoning radioactive metal processing industry get their way.

They are pressing for a new, lax standard that would do away with special permits and allow companies to buy and resell millions of tons of low-level radioactive metal.

A couple of years later, Congressman Markey successfully banned most radioactive scrap … but now DOE is trying to bring it back.

Radioactive scrap is a global problem. As Bloomberg reported last year:

“The major risk we face in our industry is radiation,” said Paul de Bruin, radiation-safety chief for Jewometaal Stainless Processing, one of the world’s biggest stainless-steel scrap yards. “You can talk about security all you want, but I’ve found weapons-grade uranium in scrap. Where was the security?”

More than 120 shipments of contaminated goods, including cutlery, buckles and work tools such as hammers and screwdrivers, were denied U.S. entry between 2003 and 2008 after customs and the Department of Homeland Security boosted radiation monitoring at borders.

The department declined to provide updated figures or comment on how the metal tissue boxes at Bed, Bath & Beyond, tainted with cobalt-60 used in medical instruments to diagnose and treat cancer, evaded detection.

***

“The general public basically isn’t aware that they’re living in a radioactive world,” according to Ross Bartley, technical director for the recycling bureau, who said the contamination has led to lost sales. “Those tissue boxes are problematic because they’re radioactive and they had to be put in radioactive disposal.”

Abandoned medical scanners, food-processing devices and mining equipment containing radioactive metals such as cesium-137 and cobalt-60 are picked up by scrap collectors, sold to recyclers and melted down by foundries, the IAEA says.

Dangerous scrap comes from derelict hospitals and military bases, as well as defunct government agencies that have lost tools with radioactive elements.

Chronic exposure to low doses of radiation can lead to cataracts, cancer and birth defects, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A 2005 study of more than 6,000 Taiwanese who lived in apartments built with radioactive reinforcing steel from 1983 to 2005 showed a statistically significant increase in leukemia and breast cancer.

***

India and China were the top sources of radioactive goods shipped to the U.S. through 2008, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Bartley, a metallurgist who has tracked radioactive contamination since the early 1990s, said there’s no evidence the situation has improved.

***

Two years after an Indian scrap-metal worker died from radiation exposure, the world’s second-most populous country hasn’t installed alarms, the Ministry of Shipping said in December.

***

“The same thing could easily happen again tomorrow,” said Deepak Jain, 65, who owns the yard where the worker died. “We have no protection. The government promised a lot, but has delivered absolutely nothing.”

Indeed, we are being bombarded with low-level radiation from all sides:

• Above-ground nuclear tests created “background” levels of radioactive cesium and iodine for the first time

• Countries dump everything from radiation from nuclear meltdowns to radioactive submarines in the ocean

• In Japan, radioactive crops are being mixed into non-irradiated foods

• The U.S. apparently signed a pact with Japan agreeing that the U.S. will continue buying seafood from Japan, despite that food is not being tested for radioactive materials

• Much of our food is now intentionally irradiated

What can we do? Counterpunch notes:

You can tell the DOE to continue to keep its radioactive metal out of the commercial metal supply, commerce, and our personal items. You can demand a full environmental impact statement. Comment deadline is Feb. 9, 2013. Email to: scrap_PEAcomments@hq.doe.gov (with an underscore after “scrap_”). Snail mail to: Jane Summerson / DOE NNSA / PO Box 5400, Bldg. 401K. AFB East / Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185

Psst, Bobby? You can’t stop ‘being’ the stupid party. You can only stop acting stupid!

Once, when I was embroiled in some relationship drama, I said to one of my male friends, “Why doesn’t he just tell me if he doesn’t want to be with me?” My friend paused and finally said, “Look, he’s telling you in every way he can without actually using the words.”

I never forgot that. Rejection is so painful, people tie themselves in knots just to avoid the soul-crushing reality. And it sounds like the Republicans are still in that stage where they just can’t acknowledge the truth: It’s not the way you look or that extra ten pounds. It’s you. The voters just aren’t into you!

But instead of real change, you just know they’re going for the new hairdo. Jamelle Bouie writes in the American Prospect:

Mitt Romney didn’t just lose to Obama in the 2012 presidential election: He underperformed. The consensus projection from political scientists and election forecasters was that it would be a close election, with a slight advantage for President Obama. Romney wouldn’t win, but he would come close to breaking 50 percent. This, it turns out, was too optimistic for the former Massachusetts governor, who lost by 4 million votes. In the end, he finished with 47.1 percent of the vote, a small improvement over John McCain’s performance in 2008.

Fundamentals can explain Obama’s win, but they don’t account for Romney’s surprisingly small share of the vote–and they certainly don’t explain the GOP’s poor performance in Senate elections, where mainstream and Tea Party Republicans lost to their Democratic counterparts. Twenty-twelve began as the year Republicans would win a majority in the Senate, and ended as the year Democrats expanded their advantage.

Exit polls provide a few clues about why voters rejected the Republican Party at all levels. Thirty-eight percent of voters said unemployment was the biggest issue facing people like themselves, and of them, 54 percent voted for President Obama. Fifty-five percent of voters said the U.S. economic system favors the wealthy (71 percent of them voted for Obama), and 53 percent said Mitt Romney’s policies “generally favor the wealthy” (87 percent voted for Obama).

If you weren’t well-off–if you were struggling–you didn’t vote for Romney; the GOP had nothing to offer you. Romney might disparage politicians who give “gifts” to the public, but the fact of the matter is that voters support leaders who provide–or can promise–tangible benefits. At most, Republicans promised greater “growth” from cutting taxes, slashing spending, and reducing regulations.

Americans didn’t bite, because those policies don’t work (they remember the previous administration) and because they don’t trust Republicans to govern (they remember the previous administration). The GOP brand is still reeling from the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush. To wit, 53 percent of voters last year said Bush was responsible for our current economic problems, compared with 38 percent for Obama. It’s no wonder voters gave Obama a second term–it takes more than four years to clean up a mess of that magnitude.

Any attempt to fix the problems of the Republican Party–to build a conservatism attuned to the needs of ordinary people–needs to start with an examination of the Bush years. So far, however, Republicans seem uninterested in self-reflection. The most prominent voices in the party–Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, Florida senator Marco Rubio, Wisconsin representative Paul Ryan, Texas senator Ted Cruz–insist on purity as the way back to power. If Bush failed, it’s because he spent too much. Unmentioned is everything else–the belligerence, the wars, the general incompetence.

Authored by Mark Spitznagel, Founder of Universa Investments, originally appearing in Forbes

The Role Of Capital Has Politicians Confused

The nonchalance with which politicians on both sides of the aisle discuss ever higher taxes as the solution to our endless budgetary ills is emblematic of a widespread and consequential misunderstanding of capital. Indeed, those who claim that higher taxes bring prosperity miss the point entirely. That is, they mistake means for ends.

You see, capital is not ends; capital is means. Capital is not what humans strive for, the triumphant reward of our material aims. Rather, it is what we strive with, the intermediate tool by which we attain those aims. It is the means of higher output per unit of input (bringing our species from its hand-to-mouth past to the present), whereby, when paired with more inputs – among which is labor – we get greater economic profit and real GDP growth.

But these means are typically far removed from their ends, both temporally (production takes time) and economically (production is costly); they are exceedingly indirect (or, as the Austrian economist Eugen von Behm-Bawerk said, they are “round-about”). The entrepreneur must navigate a circuitous path, and those who think it benign to hand their capital over to bureaucrats miss this path altogether; they see only the lucky pot of gold at the end. They fixate on the inanimate stuff of capital and overlook the human imagination, patience and effort to anticipate consumer desires and bring together the many factors of production to eventually satisfy them.

It is a tautology of corporate finance that growth in profits comes from the recursive reinvestment and compounding of past profits. For instance, GDP growth is a result of (in addition to population growth) the income reinvestment rate in the economy multiplied by the rate of return on that reinvestment (or the aggregate ROIC in the economy). So when taxes skim from the reinvestable-capital stock each year, they thus skim a proportional share from subsequent economic growth. (And, no, governments do not replace private ROIC with their own public ROIC.)

Politicians are certainly not alone in their profound misunderstanding of the process of capital and production (while the high-tax impresario himself, Warren Buffett, understands the compounding tax impact so well that he dis-ingenuously structures his investments to evade them). This misconception is often at the core of much bad thinking among economists and investors alike (two groups that should know better).

Consider most economists’ treatment of capital as a homogeneous blob fabricated by central bankers out of credit. They ignore that means, by necessity, are scarce (they are foregone consumption) and must be economized to attain the most desired ends. Circumventing that fact, as history has repeatedly shown (for instance, in past periods of economic growth despite high taxes), leads only to artificial booms canceled out by subsequent credit collapses.

In investing, ours is the age of immediate and direct ends. We have become a capitalism of momentum-based hedge Fund punters, quarterly earnings growth and the cash-out IPO dream: and it is the age of pundits pushing an incomprehensible world, such that meandering aims seem to trump the commitment of entrepreneurial long-range designs.

Amid all of this messy thinking we miss the simple truth behind our material wealth: It has been achieved through the accumulation, by us and inherited from our forefathers, of a stock of highly configured and embedded tools that make human effort more effective and things possible that never were before. And we turn our backs on this truth when we turn more and more of these tools over to government bureaucrats.

Profits are but an intermediate end of capital investment. Its ultimate end, in fact, is the material progression of our civilization. How easily we lose sight of this, at our and our progeny’s peril. We all want more economic growth, but we ignore the means to get there: the onerous choices and commitments made along the round-about path to those ends. We even confuse the means with the ends.

[ZH: As we have described before, Mark succinctly describes not just the misunderstanding of capital but its unintended flows as it is misallocated due to forced capital injection by central banks into an environment that is far from normal or stable…]

Since it is now quite clear that despite calling for even endless-er QE, the uberdovish Chicago Fed, and by implication the entire FOMC, is still clueless about the two most critical processes of modern fiat-based economics, namely bubble formation, and its counterpart, bubble bursting, we decided to give them a helping hand, and to explain just how these two fundamental events occur, with flow charts so simple, even an Economics PhD can get it.

Bubble Formation: start at the bottom left…

Bubble Bursting: …and end with a ‘debt crisis’ and a ‘rush for the exits’

Rinse and Repeat – Simple. QED

Reuters / Jacquelyn Martin / Pool

Israel’s health ministry has admitted to injecting Ethiopian Jewish women on their way to Israel with a birth control drug. It follows increasing publicity to the claim that it was administered without patient consent in a population control bid.

­The official acknowledgement came on Sunday with the publication of a letter written by Ron Gamzu, the director general of the Israeli Health Ministry, in response to comments made by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI). The letter, published in Haaretz, ordered several organizations treating Ethiopian immigrants to immediately cease administering Depo-Provera injections to them.

The Israeli government had previously denied that it was administering the contraceptive drugs in a deliberate attempt to cut the birth rate among poor black immigrants.

Gamzu’s letter stated that gynecologists currently treating Ethiopian women at Health Ministry-associated clinics should not renew prescriptions for the drug if there was a possibility that the patient did not understand “the ramifications of the treatment,” and to procure translators from now on if needed.

In a letter to Gamzu, ACRI had accused Israeli authorities of “a paternalistic, haughty and racist attitude” that limits the freedom of Ethiopian immigrants to choose their birth control method.

The ministry’s response did not indicate whether there were explicit policy guidelines or clarify how long government-funded health facilities have been administering the drug to the Ethiopian women, or to how many.

Medical staff made Ethiopian women take the contraceptive at Israeli-linked transit centers in their home country that prepare them for immigration to Israel, according to last month’s report by Israel Educational Television. Officials at such centers allegedly threatened to deny an unspecified number of applicants entry into Israel if they refused to be injected.      

The issue was first raised almost five years ago, when investigative journalist Gal Gabbay interviewed 35 Ethiopian women who had immigrated to Israel, in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically. The birth rate among Ethiopian Jews in Israel has declined by 50 per cent over the past ten years.

The television investigation broadcast testimony where immigrants claimed that they had been forced to receive the injection while waiting in transit camps in Ethiopia.

Medical staff“told us they are inoculations. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to,” one of these women is quoted as saying in the interview.

Depo-Provera is thought to be a highly effective and long-lasting contraceptive, and is to be injected every three months. The drug’s side effects include menstrual irregularities, abdominal pain, weight changes, headaches, depression, hair loss, nervousness and skin blemishes. 

About 100,000 Ethiopians have moved to Israel since the 1980s, but many Israelis doubt the authenticity of their Jewishness. Ethiopian immigrants often complain of discrimination in jobs, education and other areas.

A Liberal Democrat MP issued a written undertaking tonight that he would not repeat a reference to “the Jews”, which caused outrage last week.

David Ward was formally censured by Lib Dem chief whip Alistair Carmichael after he said he was “saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new state of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis”.

The Bradford East MP, who initially defended his words, apologised yesterday for any “unintended offence” caused by a message posted on his website ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.

After a meeting with Mr Carmichael this evening, the chief whip issued a letter saying: “I am strongly of the view that your use of the phrase ‘the Jews’ in this context was unacceptable and I formally censure you for that.

“In line with our conversation, and notwithstanding the strength with which you hold your views on the situation in the Middle East, I would be grateful if you would confirm the undertaking that you gave to me in our meeting that you will not again use the phrase ‘the Jews’ in this context.”

Responding, Mr Ward wrote: “I confirm that I am prepared to give you the undertaking that you asked for in our meeting.”

His controversial remarks were made in a website posting after signing a Holocaust memorial book.

Amid a furious backlash and a complaint from the Holocaust Educational Trust, he appeared on television to defend the comments and reinforce his point.

But in a new post yesterday he said he “never for a moment intended to criticise or offend the Jewish people as a whole, either as a race or as a people of faith, and apologise sincerely for the unintended offence which my words caused”.

He added: “I recognise of course the deep sensitivities of these issues at all times, and particularly on occasions of commemoration such as this weekend.”

He insisted however that he would “continue to make criticisms of actions in Palestine in the strongest possible terms for as long as Israel continues to oppress the Palestinian people”.

Organisers of a memorial day for victims of the Holocaust yesterday “utterly condemned” Mr Ward.

Small but highly publicized strikes by Walmart retail and warehouse workers last fall set the labour movement abuzz and gained new respect for organizing methods once regarded skeptically. “The labour movement is all about results,” says Dan Schlademan, who directs the Making Change at Walmart project of the Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). “The results are creating the energy.”

Walmart is a particularly rich target because the company is so large that it sets wages and prices among suppliers and competitors.

What’s the strategy behind the latest surprising wave of activism? Like most new organizing in the private sector, decades of attempts to unionize Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada have been met with firings, outsourcing, and even closings.

So retail workers who staff the stores, warehouse workers who move Walmart’s goods, and even guest workers who peel crawfish for a supplier are ignoring the path laid out by U.S. labour law, in which workers sign a petition asking to vote on a union. Instead, they’re exercising their rights to redress grievances together, whether a majority can be rallied to support the effort or not.

One-day strikes in dozens of stores last October and November protested illegal retaliation against those who had spoken up at their workplaces and joined the Organization United for Respect (OUR) at Walmart. Several had been fired and many experienced threats and cuts in hours for their participation. “We have a way to respond to illegal actions,” Schlademan said: “the power of the strike.”

Spread to Fast Food

Last summer, following the OUR Walmart model, the Service Employees (SEIU) started funding an effort to organize fast food workers in New York, Chicago, and other cities. Inspired by the Walmart warehouse and store strikes, workers launched one-day strikes in New York City a week after Black Friday. Workers marched back in with clergy, elected officials, and press, shaming managers who had hoped to retaliate, and reinstating one Wendy’s striker when her manager fired her for participating.

But the next steps are far from certain. “Are you trying to have a union like we have now? If so I would say forget it, don’t do it,” said Rick Smith, who was involved in a 2005 pilot project to organize Walmart in Florida. Instead, he advised activists to “figure it out as you go along.”

That’s pretty much the attitude of organizers who are making interesting things happen in warehouses, retail, restaurants, fast food, and along Walmart’s supply chain from the ports to the stores. Their efforts are part “non-majority” organizing on the job site, part strategic besmirching of their employers’ brands, part community-labour coalescing — and several parts chutzpah.

Born of Desperation

“The labour movement has tried a range of strategies over the last 20 years,” said Mark Meinster, who’s organizing Walmart warehouse workers in Illinois.

“Comprehensive campaigns, neutrality agreements, NLRB organizing — and while we’ve learned a lot through those strategies, none of it has reversed the decline.

“So now we’re at a point where there’s openness to new strategies. There’s an understanding that we won’t get labour law reform soon, that employers will continue to take a more aggressive stance toward workers and their unions, and so unions are looking at ways to impact those employers economically.”

Meinster also praised the skills labour has learned in its decades of operating from weakness: research, using the law, capital strategies, international work. The trick now, he said, is to combine those staff skills with building leaders in the workplaces and a willingness to use pre-majority organizing and, if workers so choose, strikes.

“I don’t know how to grasp corporate attention,” said Martha Sellers, a cashier in Paramount, California, who struck on Black Friday. “I expect we get to them through their paycheck.”

Interestingly Quiet

Despite Walmart’s fearsome reputation, the Black Friday strikes did not produce additional firings. “We’re not assuming a new reality inside the company, but it’s interestingly quiet,” said Schlademan.

The walkouts involved some 500 workers in dozens of stores. In some stores as few as two workers struck; in others half the shift walked out. Around 13 walked out of the Walmart in Paramount. “We were all scared, but we did it,” said Sellers. Though the store is now more understaffed than ever, managers have not taken action against the strikers, she said, and are “being very careful about what they say.”

That calm may be because the public eye is on Walmart. The actions at 1,000 stores held by community supporters, ranging from small informational pickets outside to musical flash mobs inside, gained plenty of media glare.

Walmart also wants to protect its image because it’s trying to convince city councils to let it build in urban areas that have thus far rejected the big box, markets like New York City and Seattle. Having paved rural and suburban America with its stores, Walmart is desperate to grow in cities.

Nick Allen of Warehouse Workers United believes Walmart cares about “reputational harm” that can’t be quantified, like the hit the company took when 112 apparel workers at a supplier were burned to death in Bangladesh. “When you’re the biggest employer it puts a level of scrutiny on you,” he said.

But even with Walmart on its best behavior for now, it’s unclear — even to organizers — how to take today’s retail effort to the next level. Many worker complaints, such as those about health care or pay, hit the heart of Walmart’s low-road business model and solutions can’t be extracted from local store managers. For example, workers want regular shifts. But managers get bonuses (and preserve their jobs) by keeping labour costs down using a hated just-in-time scheduling system, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a historian who writes about Walmart.

Still, “Walmart will accommodate various kinds of pressures,” said Lichtenstein, as long as it doesn’t mean recognizing a union. The penny-pinching corporation contradicted its own forecasts and raised wages in 700 of its stores in 2006, according to recently revealed company communications. The increase was likely a result of vigorous non-majority organizing in 2005 and 2006.

And on January 15 there was a sign the strikes have made top management defensive about scheduling. Walmart CEO Bill Simon announced vague intentions to change the company’s scheduling practices, which elicited a skeptical response from OUR Walmart: “We need these words to translate into real action.”

Raising Pay

If the current effort ends up raising Walmart pay substantially, it will be good news for retail and grocery workers around the country — another reason for organizers to target the company.

Walmart employs nearly one out of every 100 U.S. workers. It also sells more groceries than any of the largest U.S. grocery chains and undermines wages for grocery and other retail workers, many of them UFCW members. Walmart’s poor standards are used to justify low pay and unpredictable schedules everywhere from big box Target to New York boutiques.

OUR Walmart’s demands include $13 an hour, and fast food workers in New York and Chicago recently united under the banner of “Fight for $15.” Politicians are limping behind. In January, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo suggested that the state’s minimum wage should increase by $1.50 to $8.75, still miserably low. Nationally, the average Walmart worker makes around $8.81.

Trying to pit workers against customers, naysayers claim that higher wages will increase Walmart’s prices. But a recent study by the think tank Demos calculated that if all big low-wage retailers raised store workers to $12.25 a hour, it would lift three quarters of a million Americans above the poverty line — and cost customers only 15 cents per shopping trip.

Meanwhile, those same customers’ own wages have been dragged down by the Walmartized economy. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the Walton family controls $100-billion, more wealth than the bottom 42 per cent of Americans combined.

‘Open Source’ Organizing

Walmart has more than 4,000 stores and 1.4 million employees in the U.S., so OUR Walmart has just scratched the surface. Hoping to grow quickly, organizers describe the group as “open source,” meaning that workers can stumble upon it, talk to existing activists, and then organize themselves. The group boasts thousands of members, up from 100 in early 2011, in 43 states. Members pay dues of $5 a month. UFCW has put in considerable resources and is “in it for the long haul,” said Schlademan.

Walmart managers are spreading the word, too. As Black Friday protests approached, workers around the country reported meetings warning them not to participate.

There is a spontaneous quality to the group. OUR Walmart’s Facebook page bustles with discussions of goings-on at the stores. Workers compare their quarterly profit-sharing bonuses (measly), tell stories about crazy managers (one in Alabama recently held a 30-minute meeting in the freezer to punish staff), compare their hours (dropping since Christmas), and write in to ask for help.

“I work at the Walmart in Moultrie, Georgia,” wrote Michael Brady on December 30. “Managers use their power to fire people just because they don’t like you… I heard about this group from a friend and we really need some help here.”

Others are frustrated at work but express skepticism about organizing. “There will never be respect for us, we just work, that’s all we do… The ones that bitch get fired, so good luck with your little deal here,” wrote Travis Ratajcyzk, an unloader in Covina, California. OUR Walmart activists in other stores reassured him they had been active for over a year and had not been fired.

It’s possible the current composition of the National Labor Relations Board is helping forestall retaliatory firings. In 2000, Walmart faced board charges for retaliation against store employees across the country. Forty-one were fired for concerted activity between 1998 and 2003, says UFCW.

The union hoped to win a broad injunction against the company, which might have given workers nationwide breathing room to organize. But, according to Lichtenstein, Walmart made a call to the White House, and the incoming Bush administration promptly fired sympathetic NLRB General Counsel Leonard Page. The complaint went nowhere.

Under President Obama, the board and general counsel have been more sympathetic to worker organizing and have even sought injunctions against anti-union activity at other companies.

The board could be helpful if the company returns to its “fire first, deal with the legal problems later” attitude.

“We’re assuming the worst and hoping for the best,” said Schlademan of the company’s recent behavior. “Walmart is good at being patient and waiting until the spotlight is off of them.”

In preparation, the union and OUR Walmart have been trying out adopt-a-store ideas, so community members can immediately raise a fuss if workers are fired. They’ve also been developing an electronic rapid-response system and connecting with sympathetic local clergy and elected leaders. And they plan more strikes. –

Jenny Brown is a staff writer for Labor Notes where this article first appeared.

After writing a series of articles documenting the discrepancies and outright lies in the official narrative of the Sandy Hook shooting, Professor James Tracy of Florida Atlantic University shot to international attention when the establishment media began covering his work.

Now, Dr. Tracy is left trying to explain the misinterpretations, lies and soundbites that the mainstream media is using to discredit his work. Find out more in this week’s GRTV Feature Interview.

Watching this CNBC segment with Jared Bernstein and Kudlow, I can only think how screwed the conservative mind truly is.They’ve morphed the takers and moochers talking points into attacks on Americans with disabilities. It’s very nasty and disgraceful, since it’s not just “urban Democrats” who are getting those benefits, but most likely many people who still support Republicans.

I was on disability for a time, and have been hampered for many years by severe nerve damage. Let me tell you, all that time, I only wished one thing: to be able to play music again — somewhat pain-free. I didn’t want to have to collect any benefits, I wanted to work in the profession to which I’d dedicated my life. I haven’t been able to tour for almost nine years now. The number of people who are gaming the system is minimal at best, but those people are the ones labeled as representive the entire disabled community.

Pethokoukis: Back about 1935, we had a Democratic president, Franklin Roosevelt, and when talking about the welfare state, the dole, he called it a narcotic, a destroyer of souls. Then the left forgot about that for about 60 years, woke up in the mid 90s for welfare reform and forgot about it again. we’ve had an explosion of people getting Social Security disability at the same time when the workforce has become less physical, fewer injuries and yet an explosion of people on disability. Why? Because those are people who have been misdiagnosed or who are I’m sorry to say on the dole, who should not be getting disability payments. We are creating exactly the thing Franklin Roosevelt warned us against, which is a narcotic, a destroyer of souls, a destroyer of our labor force.

Bernstein followed up with facts and figures backing up his claims while acknowledging the callous attempts to demonize disabled American workers.

So while these data show some growth in the DI rolls that may reflect folks getting DI who ought not to, much of the increase appears to be explainable by known, legitimate factors. Neither is there much cyclicality to the rolls, suggest that “takers/fakers” are exploiting the program.

In fact, as I emphasized in the segment, more than 90% of entitlement dollars go to people who are either elderly, disabled, or working. In other words, the makers/takers frame is factually wrong, not to mention mean-spirited and divisive.I admit that my ears aren’t exactly non-partisan, but that frame just sounds really nasty to me, as I suspect it does to most people. So I guess if I were Machiavellian, I’d urge Larry and Jimmy to stick with it. But as I’m not, I’d urge them and others to give it up.

I agree completely. It’s divisive, uninformed and painful when conservatives attack the disabled in this country with such wanton hatred. And let’s face it, disability sucks for many reasons:

The important thing to add to this is that disability benefits, like all benefits in our meager system, are not generous at all. Average monthly benefit is $1,132. This isn’t a replacement for full-time employment for most people. I’m sure there are a few people who “abuse” the system by doing some under-the-table work on the side, but if they’re earning $1,100 per month you can hardly blame them.

.
Paul Krugman debunks their angry rant by labeling those unfortunate souls as ‘Disabled Deadbeats’

What strikes me, however, isn’t just the way the right is trying to turn a reasonable development into some kind of outrage; it’s the political tone-deafness. I mean, when Reagan ranted about welfare queens driving Cadillacs, he was inventing a fake problem – but his rant resonated with angry white voters, who understood perfectly well who Reagan was targeting. But Americans on disability as moochers? That isn’t, as far as I can tell, an especially nonwhite group – and it’s a group that is surely as likely to elicit sympathy as disdain.

There’s just no way it can serve the kind of political purpose the old welfare-kicking rhetoric used to perform.The same goes, more broadly, for the whole nation of takers thing. First of all, a lot of the “taking” involves Social Security and Medicare. And even the growth in means-tested programs is largely accounted for by the Earned Income Tax Credit – which requires and rewards work – and the expansion of Medicaid/CHIP to cover more children.

Again, not the greatest of political targets.The point, I think, is that right-wing intellectuals and politicians live in a bubble in which denunciations of those bums on disability and those greedy children getting free health care are greeted with shouts of approval – but now have to deal with a country where the same remarks come across as greedy and heartless (because they are).

Do you want to know what the Destroyer of Souls really are? Here it is.

One part austerity:

Austerity plan is failing, IMF tells Osborne

And one part the politicians who lie about it.

Rachel Reeves writes to the UK Statistics Authority after Cameron claimed in a Conservative Party political broadcast that the coalition “was paying down Britain’s debts”.

An Egyptian protester flashes victory signs near a police vehicle on fire in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on January 28, 2013 (AFP Photo / Mohammed Abed)

A young man has been shot and killed in clashes near a police station in Port Said, a hospital source told AFP. Violent protests continue across Egypt despite the curfew that came as part of a state of emergency currently in effect there.

The man was killed as a crowd of protesters reportedly tried to attack a police station in Port Said. “The youth died on his way to a hospital in the city of Zagazig,” the source told AFP.

Thousands took to the streets of Port Said Monday during the funerals of the most recent victims of the clashes.

After Port Said’s Sunday clashes ended in the deaths of seven people, President Morsi set curfews in the country’s most volatile cities.

The 9pm to 6am curfew is currently in place in Port Said, Suez and Ismailia.

­DETAILS TO FOLLOW

Egyptian mourners carry a placard reading in Arabic “Port Said wants to trial the war criminal Morsi’” as they march in the canal city of Port Said on January 28, 2013 (AFP Photo / Str)

Egyptian mourners carry the coffins of six people killed in clashes the day before, during their funeral in Port Said, on January 28, 2013 (AFP Photo / Str)

Scott Olson / Getty Images / AFP

A shooting in Chicago left seven people dead on Saturday, one of which was the last remaining son of a woman whose other three children had already died as a result of gun violence. Six others were injured in numerous shootings throughout the city.

Ronnie Chambers, a 34-year-old Chicago man, was shot in the head while sitting in his car in Chicago. Chambers was the youngest of four children, the other three had already lost their lives in the violence of America’s Windy City.

A 16-year-old boy and a 32-year-old man were also killed on a double-homicide on Saturday, while two roommates in their 40’s were shot at a hamburger stand on the city’s notoriously dangerous South Side, the Associated Press reports.

Chicago’s homicide rate has been on the rise for years, and the city is on pace for more than 700 murders this year — a figure that is set to surpass last year’s 516 and leave New York City’s murder rate in the dust.

There were 18 homicides in the first ten days of 2013, 15 of victims died from gunshot wounds and two of them were stabbed.

Overall, the murder rate has been on the decline in the US, but Chicago has been left out of the trend. While the city’s homicide rate is half of what it was in the 1990s, it has seen an increase in the past few years. At the current rate, it could accumulate more than 730 homicides — which would be a record high since 1997.

“The nationwide murder rate has significantly declined the past couple of decades,” says NPR host Steve Inskeep.“Yet if you start plotting murders on a map, you will still find outbreaks — like outbreaks of disease.”

Chicago’s murder rate has outpaced New York City and Detroit, the latter of which is experiencing a 20-year-old murder rate high.

January 28, 2013  |  

Getting into character for his portrayal of Steve Jobs in a new biopic, Ashton Kutcher adopted a fruitarian diet, as Jobs was known to sometimes do. Jobs ate fruits, nuts and seeds. Ricardo Bilton writes for Venture Beat, “Jobs, who at one point went a whole week eating just apples, was fond of the diet, as Walter Isaacson discusses in his 2011 biography. ‘He believed in eating nothing but fruits and starchless vegetables, which he said prevented the body from forming harmful mucus, and he advocated cleansing the body regularly through prolonged fasts,’ Isaacson writes.”

Kutcher didn’t seem to take to the diet too well. The actor told reporters while at Sundance that he “ended up in the hospital two days before we started shooting the movie,” he said. “I was like doubled over in pain, and my pancreas levels were completely out of whack, which was completely terrifying, considering everything.” 

Jobs died of pancreatic cancer but there is no evidence connecting that with his diet. The Huffington Post reports:

A diet high in fruits and veggies can actually reduce the risk of pancreatic cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Conversely, dietary risk factors for pancreatic cancer include meat-heavy diets and diets high in processed foods.

Still, a fruitarian diet can be unhealthfully incomplete. Columbia University’s Health Center reports that eating mostly or only fruit can cause deficiencies in essential vitamins and nutrients, including calcium, iron, zinc, vitamin D, B12 and other B-complex vitamins. It can also be too low in protein and fatty acids.  

While some people have reported relief from certain health conditions after following a fruitarian diet for periods of time, it’s unlikely most people could be very healthy on such a diet for an extended length of time. Tom Billings writes on the website Beyond Vegetarianism, that the fruitarian diet “almost never works in the long run. Specifically, credible successful examples–healthy individuals (both physically and mentally healthy) who have strictly followed the diet (i.e., no significant binge-eating, ‘cheating,’ or ‘exceptions’) long-term for more than five years–are either rare or non-existent.”

It’s unclear how long Kutcher followed the diet for and exactly what he was eating. One fruitarian website says that the motivation for such a diet varies:

To most Fruitarians, the diet is simply a natural progression, from omnivore to vegetarian, vegan, raw foods and finally Fruitarian. To some it is the chosen diet for health reasons. Others follow it because they believe humans were always destined to eat fruit, starting from the Garden of Eden. The one thing that more Fruitarians mention above all others is a knowingness, an internal feeling that the Fruitarian diet is the diet meant for mankind. …

Cooked food is an unnatural human creation and is toxic to the body. Fruitarians eat 100% raw food as close as possible to its natural state. It is never possible to improve upon nature, a fact that many humans find hard to accept. When our diet is in harmony with nature, our health excels and our consciousness expands.

Most nutritionists do not recommend extreme diets, as Jill Richardson wrote recently for AlterNet, “Perhaps Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University and author of many books including What To Eat, puts it best. She says, ‘Stay away from weird dietary practices. If they sound weird, they are.’”

Things in France must not be very serious, because the French labor minister accidentally let the truth come out a little earlier today. As the Telegraph reports, France’s labour minister sent the country into a state of shock on Monday after he described the nation as “totally bankrupt.“

Remember: France is one of the supposedly stable countries in Europe.

“Michel Sapin made the gaffe in a radio interview, which left French President Francois Hollande battling to undo the potential reputational damage. “There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state,” Mr Sapin said. “That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.” It appears that once one wipes out the propaganda and the smooth politico talk, things are bad and getting worse at Europe’s core. “Data from Banque de France showed earlier this month that a flight of capital has already left the country amid concerns that France’s Socialist leader intends to soak the rich and businesses. The actor Gérard Depardieu has renounced his French citizenship and decamped to Russia in protest, while David Cameron said Britain will “roll out the red carpet” to attract wealthy individuals. Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, said the comments by Mr Sapin were “inappropriate”.”

At least France can hike the tax on the millionaires to 75% to generate more money. Oh wait, no it can’t.

But if capital is leaving France, where is it going? The FT has the answer:

Almost €100bn of private funds flowed back into the eurozone’s periphery late last year after action by the European Central Bank encouraged reinvestment in the crisis-hit countries.

The scale of the net inflows, equivalent to about 9 per cent of the economic output of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland and Greece according to calculations by ING, the Dutch bank, highlight the revival in investor confidence in Europe’s monetary union after Mario Draghi, ECB president, pledged to preserve its integrity.

The return of capital has encouraged policy makers to believe the eurozone crisis is over, with Mr Draghi this month pointing to “positive contagion” in the region. The euro has also moved sharply higher.

Turns out it isn’t, and the capital was merely rotating from the frying pan and into the 9th circle of insolvency hell. But at least the SNB is still buying up every French bond it can get its hands on to indicate that all is well with the “totally bankrupt state.”

And speaking of private capital rotation, well Europe needed it. Recall the chart of European M3 loans to non-financial corporations we showed earlier based on central bank data:

Yup – a record outflow.

So if it wasn’t for the private capital scrambling to fill the hole, Q4 in Europe would have been an absolutely epic disaster. One can only hope that private funds are as bottomless as the public central banks backstopping them, because should there be a reflaring of risk, all bets for Europe are off, precisely at a time when everyone is hoping that the worst is behind and that Europe, as every European politician was quoted as saying in past weeks, is now “fixed.“

Of course, if France is totally bankrupt, there’s nothing that a little diversionary war can’t fix. Perhaps it is time to expand the Mali offensive a bit: there’s a tempting little country in Asia called Vietnam…

The ten things you need to know on Tuesday 29 January 2013…

1) DID HE REALLY SAY THAT?

Uh-oh. Yesterday, a Tory MP made a link between women wearing short skirts and then getting raped. Today, the papers go after a Tory cabinet minister for allegedly comparing gay marriage to incest – from the Guardian:

“Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, became embroiled in a row over equal marriage yesterday amid claims that he likened it to incest. The minister, who opposes David Cameron’s plans to grant gay couples the right to marry, denied equating equal marriage with incest after Pink News reported that he had linked the two issues.

“Hammond released a statement after Pink News said he had made the comments to two students at Royal Holloway, University of London, on Friday. The website reported that Hammond ‘told students in Surrey that allowing gay couples to marry would be like sanctioning “incest” … when the students asked why the MP [opposed] same-sex marriages he responded by likening the current ban on equal marriage to ‘incest’, where it is illegal for two siblings to enter into wedlock.’

“A spokesman for the defence secretary said: ‘It’s untrue. He didn’t equate equal marriage to incest.'”

2) BOUNDARY WARS

Today the Lib Dems will vote against the Tories in the Commons for the first time since the coalition was formed. My colleague Ned Simons reports:

“Furious Tory MPs will attempt use a Commons vote on Tuesday to overturn a Lib-Lab alliance that could cost David Cameron the next election.

“Earlier this month Lib Dem peers sided against their coalition colleagues and joined with Labour in order to delay a planned redrawing of the electoral map until after 2015.

“… Nick Clegg initially supported the plan. But after Tory MPs killed off proposals to reform the House of Lords he instructed his MPs and ministers to vote against it.

Cameron needs SNP and DUP votes in order to overturn a Lib-Lab alliance on this – but some of his own MPs may vote against him. There’s a hilarious quote from Philip Davies in the piece:

“Shipley MP Philip Davies has confirmed he plans to vote with Labour and the Lib Dems in the interests of self-preservation.

“Davies, who is no fan of the coalition, told HuffPost UK that while Clegg’s decision to oppose the changes helped him personally, he was less than impressed.

“‘How he has behaved is abysmal, It’s like a primary school child. It suits me on this issue but I don’t endorse his tactics,’ he said.”

Ahh….

3) HEY BMES, WE LOVE YOU

The Tories seem to have finally woken up to the fact that they probably need a few more BME voters on side if they’re going to win a majority at the next general election – from the Times splash:

“Big companies would be urged to publish the ethnic breakdown of their workforce under Conservative plans to help to repair the party’s image with Black and Asian voters.

“David Cameron has told the Cabinet to come up with policies to appeal to ethnic communities amid fears that without them the party will struggle to win an outright majority. One idea would encourage Stock Exchange-listed companies to state how many ethnic minority employees they have and how many they have recruited over the past year.”

Er, call me cynical, but I suspect BME communities will want a bit more than that, in order to wipe out the Tories’ dodgy legacy on race issues – from Enoch Powell to the primary purpose rule.

4) CHILD MINDER? IT’S HARDER TO BE AN ANIMAL MINDER

It’s long been claimed that the political party which can come up with a method for cutting soaring childcare costs will be able to vacuum up votes from ‘hard-working families’ in the ‘squeezed middle’ – from the Independent:

“Nursery staff and childminders will be better paid, require more qualifications and look after more children under a government drive to improve a childcare system lagging well behind its European counterparts.

“… After criticism that students need more qualifications to look after animals than children in England, childcare professionals will be required to have a GCSE grade C or above in English and Maths… Staff to child ratios will be relaxed to bring England more into line with the continent, but only when nurseries hire qualified people. Nursery staff will be able to look after four babies up to a year old instead of three as at present…”

Labour, and some childcare experts, say the plans could jeopardise child safety and won’t cut costs in the long-run. According to the Indy, the opposition also “released figures showing that more than 400 Sure Start children’s centres closed during the Coalition’s first two years after £430m earmarked for them was cut from council budgets, with more than half of those that are still open no longer providing any onsite childcare”.

5) MISSION TO MALI

Ever heard of the phrase ‘mission creep’, Dave? On Mali, our prime minister is getting more and more stuck in.

From the Guardian’s splash:

“Britain is prepared to take the risk of sending a ‘sizeable amount’ of troops, to Mali and neighbouring West African countries as David Cameron offers strong support to France in its operation to drive Islamist militants from its former colony.

“As news emerged that insurgents retreating from Timbuktu had set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts, Downing Street said the prime minister told François Hollande on Sunday night Britain was ‘keen’ to provide further military assistance to France.

“… Downing Street is adamant that British troops will play no part in combat.”

Hmm. Let’s see how long that line holds…

BECAUSE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR…

Watch this weird video of ‘classic movies’ from the perspective of Google Street View.

6) ‘NOT GUILTY’

We have a date. From the Sun:

“Former Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne will stand trial next Monday over claims he got his ex-wife to take a threepoint drive fine for him. The Lib Dem MP, 58, denied perverting the course of justice in court yesterday. He spoke only to confirm his name and enter a ‘not guilty’ plea.”

7) MY FRIEND RUPERT

Who says King Rupert’s power has waned since Leveson? Top Tories who have their eye on their party’s leadership still seem keen to get the media mogul’s backing – despite everything.

From the Guardian:

“George Osborne has become the latest person revealed to have attended a private dinner last week with Rupert Murdoch at the media mogul’s apartment in Mayfair.

“… Murdoch regularly assembles some of London’s elite for dinners, and last Tuesday’s event was no different. Described by insiders at News International as a collection of ‘very interesting people’, the dinner was also attended by Boris Johnson and several NI executives and editors and given a sprinkling of Hollywood stardust with the attendance of the London mayor’s fellow Old Etonian, Damian Lewis, star of Homeland – a Fox21 production.”

8) LUCKY GEORGE

Perhaps Osborne, in between dining out with foreign billionaires, should keep on eye on his own backyard. From the Mail:

“Chancellor George Osborne is facing a personal backlash over the HS2 route, which carves through the countryside in his Cheshire constituency of Tatton.

“Tory councillors questioned the value of the project, with one calling it an ‘enormous waste of money’.

“Mr Osborne insisted it was essential for the economy, describing it as an ‘engine for growth’.”

My favourite bit of the piece:

“Mr Osborne will not be financially affected by the new line as he sold his £900,000 constituency home in January last year. Documents released yesterday revealed that officials at one point considered a route for the line that would have gone much closer to his old house than the final route.”

Meanwhile, the Telegraph adds:

“The Government faced claims of hypocrisy after it emerged that the northern section of the HS2 network, the route of which was unveiled yesterday, would include a £600million ‘detour’ around parts of the Chancellor’s seat of Tatton in Cheshire.

“… A spokesman for Mr Osborne insisted that he played no part in choosing the route. A Department for Transport spokesman said Mr Osborne’s constituents had not been given special treatment.”

Hmm…

9) ‘TOTALLY BANKRUPT’

Meet the French Liam Byrne (via the Daily Mail):

“Socialist France is ‘totally bankrupt’, a senior government minister admitted yesterday. Michel Sapin, President Francois Hollande’s jobs minister, appeared to be saying that his government’s tax-and-spend policies were not working.

Mr Sapin said: ‘There is a state but it is a totally bankrupt state. That is why we had to put a deficit reduction plan in place, and nothing should make us turn away from that objective.’

“… Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, insisted: ‘France is a really solvent country. France is starting to recover.'”

Poor Pierre. Silly Sapin.

10) QUEEN GIVES UP HER THRONE TO SON

“Easy, Charles,” the Mirror explains, “it’s Queen Beatrix of Netherlands.”

Oh.

The paper adds:

“Her decision will undoubtedly open up the debate about Britain’s ageing monarchy as the Queen, 86, and Prince Philip, 91, prepare for another busy year of royal engagements.

“But while it is common in the Netherlands for monarchs to “retire” – Beatrix’s mother and grandmother both abdicated – Britain’s Queen has made it clear she sees her role as a “job for life”.

“So as Willem-Alexander becomes the first Dutch king since 1890 on April 30, at the age of 46, Britain’s Prince Charles, 65 this November, remains no closer to taking over as monarch.”

Poor ol’ Charles.

PUBLIC OPINION WATCH

From today’s Sun/YouGov poll:

Labour 41
Conservatives 35
Lib Dems 10
Ukip 9

That would give Labour a majority of 78.

140 CHARACTERS OR LESS

@Mike_Fabricant Irony: Labour has now adopted Conservatives’ pre 2010 route for HS2, while the Conservatives have accepted Labour’s route (Birm to London).

@TomHarrisMP Why oh why can’t we have more televised debates about “independence”? It’s like the Scottish media are just trying to avoid the subject…

@Queen_UK Don’t get any ideas, Charles. A party hat is the closest you’ll be getting to a crown any time soon. #abdication #beatrix

900 WORDS OR MORE

David Owen, writing in the Guardian, says: “My plan to save the NHS – in the nick of time.”

Rachel Sylvester, writing in the Times, says: “Why the ‘ethnicity effect’ terrifies Tories.”

Benedict Brogan, writing in the Daily Telegraph, says: “A big play from Osborne could stop Labour hijacking his legacy.”

Got something you want to share? Please send any stories/tips/quotes/pix/plugs/gossip to Mehdi Hasan (mehdi.hasan@huffingtonpost.com) or Ned Simons (ned.simons@huffingtonpost.com). You can also follow us on Twitter: @mehdirhasan, @nedsimons and @huffpostukpol

As the first funerals are held for the victims of a nightclub fire in Brazil, some of those who survived the inferno have been recalling a night of mayhem.

Survivor Kelly Rebello de Silva said a black toxic smoke filled the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria and panicked partgoers began trampling each other.

The 21-year-old said the scene was reminiscent of a “horror movie”.

“Everyone was pushing and shoving,” another survivor, Taynne Vendruscolo, told reporters.

“The fire started out small, but within seconds it exploded. Those who were close to the stage could not get out.”

Many of the dead were found in the club’s two bathrooms, where they fled apparently because the blinding smoke caused them to believe the doors were exits.

Bodies blocked the club’s only exit. Other victims were strewn in the street and panicked screams filled the air as medics tried to help.

There was little to be done; officials said most of those who died suffocated within minutes.

The fire broke out around 2am on Sunday when the nightclub was hosting a university party. Most of the 231 people who died were under 20.

“It’s very sad, I lost 13, 14 classmates,” a 22-year-old called Felipe said.

Police said the “most plausible cause” of the inferno was that pyrotechnics being used by a band on stage set fire to sound insulation on the ceiling.

The band, Gurizada Fandangueira, is now fearing retaliation, but it has emerged one of their members was killed in the blaze.

Danilo Jacques, 28, originally escaped but died when he went back into the burning building to get his accordion.

The five other band members made it out alive, and two of them have since been arrested by police investigating the blaze.

A friend of 19-year-old engineering student Ana Paula Miller also escaped but later died.

“A friend of mine managed to get out but then had a heart attack and died,” Ms Miller said.

Police inspector Sandro Meinerz recalled the devastating scene inside the club.

“It was terrible inside – it was like one of those films of the Holocaust, bodies piled atop one another,” he said.

Body after body was taken to a nearby community gym and lined up on the floor, partially covered with black plastic.

Family members identified their kin at the gym, and as dawn broke on Monday, collective wakes were held there.

In one of dozens of urns lined up next to each other, were the ashes of Joao Carlos Barellos da Silva who ran a website covering the parties in the club. His body was found in a bathroom.

“He was a wonderful son. I have never felt such pain,” said his mother, Gelsa Ina Barcelos.

Elaine Marques Goncalves lost her son Deivis in the fire. Another son who was at the nightclub, Gustavo, was barely alive after suffering two cardiac arrests caused by smoke inhalation.

She learned of the blaze after the mother of her sons’ friends called her.

“My boys were not home and I had no news. I turned on the TV – the tragedy was all over the television,” she said at the makeshift morgue.

“All I knew was they had gone to a club, I didn’t know which one. I kept saying: ‘Where do I start? Where do I go?'”

At a cemetery in Santa Maria, Juliana was in a state of disbelief at the burial of her brother, Heitor Oliveira.

“Why? Why?” she asked during the funeral.

“Quiet Juliana, he has to go,” said her mother, Livia.

Brazil is observing three days of national mourning in the wake of the tragedy.

Once again equity markets disconnected (positively) from their risk-related cousins at around the European close and while broad equity markets closed around unchanged, the weakness in HY credit, and rise in VIX and Treasury bond prices as the day wore on told a slightly more concerned story than stocks would suggest. AAPL rose helping the tech sector; homebuilders saw their biggest loss in 5 weeks following weaker than expected housing data; and CAT’s incredulous rally on total lack of clarity for their outlook provided just enough juice to keep the Dow near unchanged. S&P 500 futures fell rapidly to Friday’s low as the US day session opened but found support and oscillated around unch/VWAP for the rest of the day. The USD round-tripped from early strength to end unchanged with GBP weakness and JPY strength. Oil rallied, Silver slipped, Gold tracked the USD, but Treasuries’ overnight weakness halted instantly as the US day-session opened. Volume and average trade size were low which combined with the VIX expansion and broad risk-off suggests the equity rally is losing steam – but who knows anymore.

S&P 500 futures leaked higher all night as Treasuries weakened – as data hit early on, futures fell to Friday’s lows but as we headed into the European close futures had recovered and then oscillated on weak volume around VWAP for the rest of the day. The rally in AAPL coincided with the rapid sell-off in S&P 500 futures…

VIX has very notably disconnected (not just spot but out-months too) in recent days…

HY was considerably weaker than stocks all day but in a magical liftathon into the close they perfectly recoupled…

The USD rose modestly early on but fell back after US opened. GBP weakened notably and while JPY was volatile it ends the day stronger vs the USD…

Treasuries and stocks remain recoupled – though it is worth noting that Treasury yields were a one-way street from the US day-session open today and suggest slightly more risk-off…

and a little close-up on that orange oval shows today rather notable divergence between rates and stocks after recoupling early on…

Across broad risk assets, it is clear when the disconnect occurred (upper left chart) as VXX, HYG, and TLT ignored SPY’s strength. The overnight weakness in TSYs dragged CONTEXT (the broad risk proxy) up to stock’s perspective and from early in the day correlation picked up and they tracked rather well…

Yet another day when market breadth was dismal as TRIN ignored equity performance…

So market breadth weak, TSY strength all day (weakness was overnight – BoJ?), Equity disconnected from VIX and HY credit, and volume and average trade size weak… but apart from that – BTFD!!!

Source: Bloomberg and Capital Context

Capital Context (@CapitalContext) LLC is the leader in integrating credit-market data to actively trade equity markets. From our world-renowned intraday ‘CONTEXT’ and ‘SPY Arb’ models to the daily long-short equity portfolio, sector-weight updates and tactical asset-allocation strategies, Capital Context offers sophisticated hedge-fund strategies to the active trading community.

The car involved in an alleged hit-and-run crash that killed a husband and wife on a tandem bicycle was being followed by police, it has emerged.

The couple, who died at the scene of the collision in Bristol, have been named as 34-year-old Ross Matthews Simons and 30-year-old Clare Simons.

And police investigating the accident revealed the Citroen Picasso involved had collided with the cyclists just moments after officers tried to pull it over.

A statement issued by Avon and Somerset Police said: “Shortly before 4pm yesterday (Sunday), a police officer’s attention was drawn to a Citroen Picasso travelling along Lower Hanham Road at speed.

“The officer indicated to the car to stop but it made off. The officer began to follow the car but it was lost to sight almost immediately. Very shortly afterwards the car stuck another vehicle and then collided with two cyclists on a tandem bicycle.”

A 38-year-old man is being held by police after being arrested on suspicion of death by dangerous driving and the matter has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

Police also said a 35-year-old woman had been arrested, on suspicion of dangerous driving.

And Inspector Frazer Davey urged any witnesses to come forward.

“Following investigations overnight the circumstances of this collision have become much clearer,” he said.

“However I would appeal to anyone who witnessed this incident or saw this car in the area shortly before the collision to come forward and contact us.

“This is a tragic incident in which two people have needlessly lost their lives. Our thoughts and deepest sympathies are with their families.”

Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101 or visit www.avonandsomerset.police.uk

A new curriculum for public schools across the United States will soon make it mandatory for at least 70 percent of all assigned books to be works of non-fiction, eliminating classic works that have influenced great thinkers for centuries.

By 2014, schools in 46 out of 50 states will have adopted this new curriculum, which favors “informational texts” approved by the Common Core State Standards to prepare students for the workplace.

Suggested books included works by the Environmental Protection Agency, like the Recommended Levels of Insulation, as well as the Invasive Plant Inventory by California’s Invasive Plant Council.

While the new curriculum might provide practical information, it would also deprive students of classic literary works that have long been a part of the American culture. In studying the role of fiction in education, scientists have recently learned that fictional narratives develop human social and emotional life, giving students the ability to better understand people, the New York Times reports. 

Dr. Keith Oatley, an emeritus professor of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, said that reading provides a vivid stimulation of reality that “is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up on myriad interacting instances of cause and effect.”

But books such as JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rue and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird will no longer be the preferred reading assigned in US schools. Classic novels by authors including Mark Twain, Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoyevksy, Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Ernest Hemingway could soon be forgotten and replaced with textbook-style history books and other works of nonfiction put together by government departments or research groups.

“I’m afraid we are taking out all imaginative reading and creativity in our English classes,” Jamie Highfill, a teacher at Woodland Junior High School in Arkansas, told The Telegraph. “In the end, education has to be about more than simply ensuring that kids can get a job. Isn’t it supposed to be about making well-rounded citizens?”

Supporters of the new curriculum claim that informational texts would make students better prepared for both college and the workplace at a time when millions of high school students drop out of school each year. The nonfiction could teach them to write factually and concisely. 

“So many kids, often as many as 50 percent, graduate high school … demonstrably not ready for the demands of a first-year college course or job-training program,” David Coleman, president of the College Board, told NPR.

The new curriculum has stirred a heated debate among academics, with some teachers and professors employed in English departments hesitant about giving up their favorite literary works.

“English is the only compulsory class where students are encouraged to think differently, to be imaginative and creative, and if we take fiction out of the English curriculum, where are our kids going to get that?” said curriculum and instruction graduate research assistant Shea Kerkhoff in an interview with Technician Online.

The 46 US states who will implement the new curriculum have already signed onto the Common Core standards and some have already adopted the new guidelines.

So much for the alleged “deficit reduction,” huh? (As Atrios keeps repeating, nobody really cares about the deficit.) Bill Moyers interviews Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) about a corporate tax exemption for Amgen, the world’s largest biotech company, that was included in the “fiscal cliff” deal:

A recent article in The New York Times reported on a cost-control exception provided to Amgen, the world’s largest biotechnology firm. According to the report, the sweetheart deal – hidden in the Senate’s final “fiscal cliff” bill – will cost taxpayers half a billion dollars. Bill talks to U.S. Representative Peter Welch (D-VT) about the bi-partisan bill he recently sponsored to repeal that giveaway, and the political factors that allow such crony capitalism to occur.

“When there is this back room dealing that comes at enormous expense to taxpayers and enormous benefit to a private, well-connected, for-profit company, we’ve got to call it out,” Welch tells Bill. “Those members of Congress who are concerned about the institution, about our lack of credibility, about the necessity of us doing things that are in the public good as opposed to private gain, we’ve got to call it out.”

As Dave Johnson recently pointed out, let’s not call this “crony capitalism” or plain old political reality. Call it what it is. It’s corruption.

Our political culture is such that coercion, threats, extortion, blackmail and payoffs are now more common than not. And it all goes back to the same thing: Money in politics. Election finance reform would fix most of the problems. We’ve always had corrupt politicians, but we could at least minimize their impact.

Updates on global capital’s devastating moves and on the FED’s huge recent expansion of the money supply. Interview with Prof. Jan Rehmann: a Gramscian analysis of the Occupy movement. Response to listeners (1) how transition to workers self-directed enterprises (WSDEs) would change education and (2) an  example of WSDEs today, New Era Windows of Chicago.

On Economic Update with Professor Richard Wolff, Wolff and guests will discuss the current state of the economy, both locally and globally in relation to the economic crisis.

Wolff will focus on wages, jobs, taxes, and debts – and on interest rates, prices, and profits. We aim to explain why certain economic changes are happening and other changes get postponed or blocked and we will explore alternative ways to organize enterprises, markets, and government policies. Economic Update is a weekly show for people who want to understand and change not only their own financial situation but also the larger economy we all depend on.

To listen in live on Saturdays at noon, visit WBAI’s Live Stream

Economic Update is in partnership with Truthout.org

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Iceland has won a court ruling allowing it to repay billions of euros on its own terms to Britain and the Netherlands for bailing out depositors in a failed Icelandic bank.

Iceland has said it will fully repay both countries, but through a gradual process as it runs down the assets of failed bank Landsbanki.

It collapsed in 2008 leaving depositors of its Icesave online accounts stranded.

Britain and the Netherlands stepped in to repay savers, but it sparked a political row and the two countries sought court backing to say Iceland had failed to repay the money within time limits set by a European directive for deposit guarantee schemes.

A European court has now dismissed the case.

Officials on the small north Atlantic island expressed relief over the ruling.

“Icesave is now no longer a stumbling block to Iceland’s economic recovery,” Iceland’s Foreign Ministry said.

All of Iceland’s banks collapsed four years ago, early in the financial crisis, and the UK and Dutch governments wanted Iceland to pay them back directly and quickly.

Iceland did not comply, triggering a row between the governments and potentially complicating the island’s bid to join the European Union.

The court of the European Free Trade Association said Iceland did not break depositor protection laws by refusing to return the money, because the scale of its financial crisis was so big.

“The verdict is, of course, a fantastic and total victory for us,” said Icelandic Industries Minister Steingrimur Sigfusson, who was finance minister during the dispute.

“It’s good to have this whole unpleasant business out of the way,” he said in comments on public broadcaster RUV.

Iceland’s economy sank and the government had to take a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and Nordic countries after the 2008 crisis.

The row with the British and Dutch over the Icesave accounts added to bitterness in the aftermath of the crisis, when Iceland was especially angered at Britain’s use of anti-terrorism legislation to freeze Landbanki assets.

Britain had no immediate reaction to the verdict. The Dutch Finance Ministry said in a statement that it “regrets the judgment and will study the consequences of the judgment”.

The European Commission had also pressed the case against Iceland and said it was also studying the consequences.

Icelanders in referendums twice voted against repayment schemes drawn up by their government to satisfy the British and Dutch claims, leaving the estate of Landsbanki to pay back the funds, which it has steadily done.

The court of EFTA, a cooperation group of which Iceland is a member and which has links to the European Union, rejected all three claims brought by the EFTA Surveillance Authority – the body which oversees the bloc’s rules.

In its ruling, the court said the deposit guarantee directive in place in 2008 did not envisage the obligation to repay savers in Britain and the Netherlands “in a systemic crisis of the magnitude experienced in Iceland”.

The Icelandic Foreign Ministry said 585 billion Icelandic crowns of the 1,166 crowns of claims from Icesave had been repaid from the failed Landsbanki estate, representing more than 90% of the minimum deposit guarantee covering the savers.

“It is expected that the Icesave claims will be paid out in full by the actual debtor, the estate of the failed Landsbanki,” the Foreign Ministry said.

Rupert Murdoch has offered a “major apology” for a “grotesque” cartoon in the Sunday Times that has sparked claims of anti-semitism.

The media mogul took to Twitter to comment on the Gerald Scarfe image, which appears to show Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu paving a wall with the blood and limbs of Palestinians.

Mr Murdoch said in his tweet: “Gerald Scarfe has never reflected the opinions of the Sunday Times.

“Nevertheless, we owe major apology for grotesque, offensive cartoon.”

The political cartoon, which was published on Holocaust Memorial Day, shows Mr Netanyahu holding a trowel and carries the lines: “Israeli elections. Will cementing peace continue?”

Jewish community leaders said they were disturbed by parallels they saw between the red-tinged drawing and historical anti-Semitic propaganda.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews said it had lodged a complaint with the Press Complaints Commission.

The deputies said in a statement that the depiction of a Jewish leader using blood for mortar “is shockingly reminiscent of the blood libel imagery more usually found in parts of the virulently anti-Semitic Arab press”.

In a statement, the paper’s acting editor Martin Ivens said that insulting the memory of Holocaust victims or invoking blood libel was “the last thing I or anyone connected with the Sunday Times would countenance”.

“The paper has long written strongly in defence of Israel and its security concerns, as have I as a columnist,” he said.

New laws allowing a first born daughter to succeed the throne have cleared the Commons after only two days of debate in the House of Commons.

The Succession of the Crown Bill, which also permits an heir to the throne to marry a Catholic, received an unopposed third reading and will go to the House of Lords for further scrutiny.

The changes will mean that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s first child, expected in July, is a girl, she can become monarch even if she later has younger brothers.

But while an heir to the throne will be able to marry a Catholic, the new laws will still exclude Catholics from succeeding the throne.

Tory North East Somerset MP Jacob Rees-Mogg earlier tried to change the Bill so that Catholics could succeed the throne. He described the current rules as a “grating unfairness”, adding that he thought the Church of England could still be protected as the established church in the UK.

But Cabinet Office minister Chloe Smith said there was no public support to allow Catholics to succeed to the throne. Introducing such a fundamental change would also undermine the Church of England at a time when “instability was not welcome”, she said.

Moving the Bill’s third reading, deputy Commons leader Tom Brake said it was a “remarkable achievement” the Government had managed to bring the changes in across the Commonwealth so quickly.

He said: “The Succession to the Crown Bill is about equality. The prime ministers of the 16 Commonwealth nations of whom Her Majesty the Queen is head of state agreed during their meeting in Perth in 2011 to work together towards a common approach to amending the rules of succession to their respective crowns.

“The effect of the proposed change is if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were to have a daughter and then a son, the daughter would precede the son in the line of succession.

“I’m proud this Bill will remove two long-standing pieces of discrimination and modernise and affirm the place of our constitutional monarchy. As we look forward to the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s child, we can also celebrate that whether the baby is a boy or a girl, they will have an equal claim to the throne.”

A man has died after being hit by a sign which fell from a William Hill betting shop.

The man, believed to be in his 20s, died following the incident in Camden, north London, at 4.55pm, Scotland Yard said.

He was treated at the scene in Camden Road for a head injury and transferred to hospital where he later died, London Ambulance Service (LAS) said. “Every effort was made to resuscitate him at the scene and on the way to University College Hospital,” an LAS spokeswoman said.

A William Hill spokeswoman said: “There is an urgent investigation under way and we are still establishing facts and liaising with authorities. As such, we don’t have a comment to make at this time.”

The sign, which had covered the length of the shop front, fell on to the pavement.

Police erected a forensic tent on the pavement to cover the place where the man was killed, and cordoned off the surrounding area.

Ioana Nita, 21, was working at a nearby restaurant when the accident happened.

“I’m shocked. We heard a very loud noise. Me and a colleague went outside and saw the guy lying on the floor,” she said. “Five guys picked up the sign and it was put on the side. His hands were covered in blood and he wasn’t moving. Lots of people were in a circle around him, then the ambulance arrived and they were trying to get him back to life, pressing on his heart.”

She added: “I just want to go home and cry. I don’t know how that can happen. The sign is huge. Everyone said he was just walking past the shop. I cross that way five times a day. That could have been me.”

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: “Officers and London Ambulance Service attended and the man, believed to be aged in his 20s, was taken to a central London hospital for treatment. He died there a short while later. At this early stage it appears the man received his injuries after being struck by a sign or board which has fallen from a building.”

US Senator John Kerry’s hearing to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State this week was pretty uneventful… until this happened.

19-year-old Lachelle Roddy from Tampa, Florida was arrested for her outburst, who urged an end to excessive US financial aid to Israel, drone use and hawkish policies towards the Middle East region. In her first face-to-face interview, she spoke to Press TV to discuss why she interrupted the hearing.

Kerry responded to Roddy’s criticisms and addressed his Congressional colleagues after she was escorted out of the room by Capitol Police. She was later released with a citation.

Roddy, who is relatively new to activism, said she was surprised that Kerry acknowledged her demonstration at the hearing. Kerry is a Vietnam veteran who is most noted for speaking out against that war and other aggressive US military policies — sometimes facing unbeatable odds.

Kerry is expected to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State without much resistance unlike other Obama-backed nominees suggested to fill the top cabinet positions. Roddy says she’s cautiously optimistic about Kerry who seems to have empathy on scaling-down America’s military presence overseas, while assessing concerns of the international community.

Roddy is supported by the group Code Pink a well-known activist group here in Washington, DC. Roddy is currently studying political science and says as far as her activism is concerned, she’s just getting started.

US Senator John Kerry’s hearing to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State this week was pretty uneventful… until this happened.

19-year-old Lachelle Roddy from Tampa, Florida was arrested for her outburst, who urged an end to excessive US financial aid to Israel, drone use and hawkish policies towards the Middle East region. In her first face-to-face interview, she spoke to Press TV to discuss why she interrupted the hearing.

Kerry responded to Roddy’s criticisms and addressed his Congressional colleagues after she was escorted out of the room by Capitol Police. She was later released with a citation.

Roddy, who is relatively new to activism, said she was surprised that Kerry acknowledged her demonstration at the hearing. Kerry is a Vietnam veteran who is most noted for speaking out against that war and other aggressive US military policies — sometimes facing unbeatable odds.

Kerry is expected to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State without much resistance unlike other Obama-backed nominees suggested to fill the top cabinet positions. Roddy says she’s cautiously optimistic about Kerry who seems to have empathy on scaling-down America’s military presence overseas, while assessing concerns of the international community.

Roddy is supported by the group Code Pink a well-known activist group here in Washington, DC. Roddy is currently studying political science and says as far as her activism is concerned, she’s just getting started.

That precious metals are not the best friends of central banks, whose sole provenance is in creating, and lately massively diluting, faith-based fiat currency is no secret, especially not after the recent snafu involving the Bundesbank and its shocking gold repatriation announcement which came in direct refutation of its public statements just 2 months earlier about faith in the NY Fed this, and bashing of a “phantom debate” on the safety of gold reserves that. Yet it was not gold gold, silver or even tungsten that was the object of derision in an amusing paper released by the ECB in early November titled “Virtual Currency Schemes”, which we profiled at the time, but rather the decentralized electronic currency BitCoin, which was supposed to highlight what, in the eyes of the Draghi-led Frankfurt institutions, is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.

Why the ECB suddenly felt threatened so much by Bitcoin, it felt an imperative to issue a 55 page paper decrying such electronic currencies we will never know. What we do know, however, courtesy of a reminder by Bloomberg’s Max Raskin, is that since the publication of said paper, the value of Bitcoin as tracked by the Mtgox exchange, has soared some 40% in just under three months, from a “fiat equivalent value” of $13 to a most recent closing price of $18.50, and has doubled in the past 12 months alone.

So one wonders: after soaring to an all time high of $30 before crashing concurrent with the epic May 1, 2011 takedown of silver, was none other than the European Central Bank responsible for the recent second coming of BitCoin which is now slowly but surely creeping back to its all time highs, and what happens to all alternative “virtual” currencies once BitCoin returns to all time highs: will the Fed, the ECB, and the BIS have their hands full with pushing gold lower to care too much about this electronic currency, or will their attention then be diverted away from the daily precious metals smackdown to focus on this threat that at least in Europe is so large, the ECB itself had to chime in?

More from Bloomberg:

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that bitcoin has more than doubled in the past 12 months, strengthening to $16.37 from $5.88, according to data from Mt. Gox, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange. The money, issued by a decentralized network of computers, has recovered after falling to $2.14 in November 2011 from a high of $29.58 five months earlier.

Greater demand for virtual currencies could have a negative impact on the reputation of central banks, according to a report published by the European Central Bank in October last year. Since the report was released, bitcoin has risen more than 55 percent against the dollar and use of the currency has surged.

Bitpay Inc., a bitcoin payment processing company that recently raised $510,000 in an investment round, this month announced that the number of companies using its services has increased almost 50 percent to more than 2,000 since November, when blog management firm WordPress.com said it would accept the digital currency.

I think the ECB obviously is concerned, and it’s not reputational,” said Steve Hanke, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who helped to establish new currency regimes in countries such as Argentina and Bulgaria. “I think it’s a competitive threat. Maybe virtual currencies will be so convenient that they will pose a threat because of their ease of use.”

And as a reminder, for pure comedy value, here is the ECB, again, defining what a Ponzi scheme is without referencing itself even once:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity

Listen to the ECB: if nothing, it certainly is an expert on the topic of Ponzi schemes.