carapace – Not your father's america

The Empirical Data Strike Back

Ed Wallace
Aug. 28, 2009
Special to the Star-Telegram

The empirical data already point to an inescapable conclusion: Shipping high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas only leaves you with fewer consumers whose disposable income can advance consumerism. So, one will have lower wages chasing ever-lower prices, and that’s a downward spiral that only has one ending.

There’s better than even odds that we will soon hear positive financial news, not only out of Detroit but possibly worldwide, concerning the automotive companies’ financial statements. Some people will take this news as proof that the auto world has turned positive, but that’s premature; whether it’s a real and even semi-permanent turnaround is still up in the air.

Here are the reasons why we will have upbeat automotive news in at least the near term. First, because automobile sales fell in the first seven months of this year, most manufacturers from Detroit to Tokyo shut their factories for months to burn off excess inventory. It worked; many dealers were short on inventory to sell this summer even before the CARS program kicked in.

Second, car companies make their profits from producing and selling their vehicles to new car dealers, not to the public. Because most dealers are now cautiously restocking their depleted inventories, production rates are up, which will make automobile production in the third quarter more profitable.

Third, many auto manufacturers had cut back their workforces substantially. In Detroit, the new hires coming onboard to handle the increased production are making just over half the hourly pay rate of those who lost those jobs, and they’re getting fewer benefits.

And fourth, incentives costs are down slightly from this time a year ago; that’s another expense shrinking as production rates rise.

This combination of higher production rates and lower incentive costs should vastly improve profitability for automakers when they report their quarterly earnings in the first week of October. Or not: If car sales slow in September after the CARS program ends, then dealers will in turn trim orders for the 2010 model year. And if that happens, then the increasingly expensive spiral of lower production and higher incentive costs could start the cycle over again.

Where GM Leads, Sales Follow

Some promising things have happened in the automotive market over the last five weeks – and in luxury makes that don’t take many clunkers in trade. At this writing both Sewell Lexus of Fort Worth and Autobahn BMW were having an exceptional August, in each case likely the store’s best month of the year. Do you wonder why, when their buyers are the people least likely to take advantage of any government subsidized program to enhance car sales, these makes should be doing so well?

Here’s why: It’s commonly held that GM is an old line car company and no longer the bellwether for North American sales, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Because when GM sells more cars, everyone in the industry sells more cars.

Remember when GM launched Zero Percent Financing for 60 months in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which made October of 2001 the best month for new car sales in U.S. history? No one in the industry matched GM’s incentives across their entire model line; yet as GM led the way, every other car company’s sales skyrocketed. As a percentage, some automakers posted higher sales than GM did that month.

Fast forward to June of 2005: GM launched Employee Discounts for Everyone, and it happened all over again. This time no one matched GM’s offer that first month, and yet by the time the final sale was counted, Americans had purchased 1.8 million new cars in June of 2005. That’s double today’s sales rate.

Yes, empirical data show that when GM is booming, it’s good times for everyone and when GM is struggling, so is most everyone else. Yes, it’s true that Ford has picked up some market share this summer, just as Subaru posted a 50 percent gain in business in July, but it’s also true that the industry overall didn’t perform very well in that period. Like it or not, when it comes to determining the success of the American auto industry, GM still leads the way and others benefit from its success – or struggle in its wake.

That simple truth demonstrates the difference between our perceptions of how things work and business reality, per empirical data.

Most have come to believe that GM is a basket case, not worthy of being considered one of the world’s great automakers. But just look at sales in Latin America, which have done extremely well over the last half decade, or in China – and which car company is leading the pack in those two regions? GM.

Is This Condition Teachable?

So how do we, when the empirical evidence clearly shows what’s happening, get it so wrong? It’s a problem: We’ve been getting things wrong for far too long, and for the same reasons.

Does anyone remember when everyone was saying that if America got rid of its (inefficient and overpriced) manufacturing, it would free up all that money for “more productive” ventures; and consequently, Americans’ wealth would rise to new heights, including personal wages for workers in our new high-tech industries? Well, that did happen from 1994 to 2000. And we had decent GDP growth and wage growth in that period. But it was only a temporary situation as we made the transition.

What went mostly unnoticed is that more American manufacturing migrated to countries with low production costs, such as China. In turn, cheaper goods flooded back into America from 1995 to 2001, setting off an almost unprecedented wave of consumerism. Then more people took jobs in the service sector to handle this new retail business boom, and sure enough money was freed up by sending our manufacturing overseas.

Apparently, much of that newly liberated money went into new high-tech stocks – which, we were told, was where our economy was headed in the future. Because of those increased capital flows, high-tech companies hired workers at good wages and their stocks went through the roof; everyone else felt richer, so they spent even more. We were told that this expanding and exciting situation was the new American economy.

It wasn’t.

Many new companies in high tech never made a profit. So the wages of high-tech workers in the late nineties fell dramatically, and then the NASDAQ crashed.

Further, 92 percent of all increased consumer spending in that period came directly from the Baby Boomers, which already had the most money; the two following generations were poorer than we had been at their age. They still are: A 35-year-old male today earns only 65 cents for every dollar we earned in the same job at that age. That statistic alone explains why the bubble-based “recovery” during the past nine years was unsustainable.

Moreover, just like many skilled high-tech workers watched their wages fall after that industry collapsed, autoworkers’ paychecks have shrunk over the past three years. While many cheered the reduction in pay and benefits for union manufacturing workers, as predicted that situation is now spreading to other industries and professions.

Dances with Lemmings

The next wrong perception is how to get America truly up and running for the long term. The common thought is that taxes are too high, that top-tier executive wages prove the viability of our vibrant economy, and that we need to ship even more manufacturing overseas; this will lower the cost of consumer goods even more to stimulate demand.

But the empirical data already point to one inescapable conclusion: Shipping high-paying manufacturing jobs overseas only leaves you with fewer consumers whose disposable income can advance consumerism. All you get is lower wages chasing ever-lower prices, and that’s a downward spiral that only has one ending.

Now, if we look at the 10-year trend of real inflation adjusted GDP growth in America, we find that the strongest 15-year time-line occurred between 1954 and 1969. We had subdued growth as a percentage of the GDP from 1975 to 1983, and from there the line remains almost level until today. How could that be?

The strongest GDP growth against inflation came from 1954 to 1969 —when a CEO’s pay averaged only 35 times the wages of the company’s average worker. And the nominal tax rates for the richest Americans were obscene – and manufacturing growth in this country was bursting at the seams.

So with “expensive” manufacturing, high tax rates and CEO earnings low as compared to their workforces’, America had its true golden age. That’s the exact opposite of what we’ve come to believe.

And now we have reversed all of that, and nominal GDP against inflation has been stagnant at best for almost three decades. Of course this too is empirical data. Without further study to plug all the factors into the economic equation, it means little if anything, with one clear exception: That most of what we believe about what it takes to grow the economy is not based on historical data.

One thing is undeniable: If the America of the future is going to be based on service industries and ever decreasing wages and benefits, we will never get a handle on our twin deficits, and our dollar will be under more pressure as the world’s reserve currency. At the same time, once incomes fall to a certain level, even the cheapest goods from overseas will still be too high to keep our consumer-based economy functioning properly.

You have to wonder: Who is behind this financial race to the bottom, and why have so many of us bought into their self-destructive logic?

Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, given by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and is a member of the American Historical Association. He reviews new cars every Friday morning at 7:15 on Fox Four’s Good Day, contributes articles to BusinessWeek Online and hosts the top-rated talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF. E-mail: wheels570@sbcglobal.net, and read all of Ed’s work at his own highly respected news site, www.insideautomotive.com.

Complete article at:

www.star-telegram.com

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Ethanol fight bubbling up

By SARAH A. WEBSTER FREE PRESS AUTOMOTIVE EDITOR
August 28, 2009

Complaints from the ethanol industry keep getting louder.

Earlier this month, Free Press Washington correspondent Justin Hyde wrote about the brewing trouble.

Struggling ethanol makers want federal regulators to allow more ethanol to be mixed into regular gasoline. The current limit is 10% and they’re hoping for 15%.

Big ethanol also backed bills to let the government force automakers to build more vehicles capable of running on E85, a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.

Automakers oppose that measure, and also say more studies are needed about the impact that adding more ethanol to regular gasoline might have on existing vehicles.

But on Wednesday, ethanol makers scored a point for getting their side heard in the Wall Street Journal. In a front-page story, the journal said, “Turmoil in Biofuels Threatens Green Energy Revolution.”

Ethanol is the largest biofuel sector, and the article went on to explain how the ethanol industry would suffer if the government didn’t ramp up its support in the face of volatile demand and prices.

The article did have some words of cautions about biofuels.

“Not all biofuels may be worth the investment,” it said, “because they divert land from food crops, are expensive to produce and may be eclipsed by the electric car. One fact cited against biofuels: If the entire U.S. supply of vegetable oils and animal fats were diverted to make biodiesel, production still would amount to at most 7% of U.S. diesel demand.”

But there was nary a word from Detroit’s automakers, who estimate the cost for the flex-fuel mandate at about $140 per vehicle.

You can bet they want their side heard, though. So expect this battle to keep heating up in the months ahead.

Complete article at:

m.freep.com

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Op-Ed Contributor – ‘Peak Oil’ Is a Waste of Energy

By MICHAEL LYNCH
August 24, 2009
Amherst, Mass.

REMEMBER “peak oil”? It’s the theory that geological scarcity will at some point make it impossible for global petroleum production to avoid falling, heralding the end of the oil age and, potentially, economic catastrophe. Well, just when we thought that the collapse in oil prices since last summer had put an end to such talk, along comes Fatih Birol, the top economist at the International Energy Agency, to insist that we’ll reach the peak moment in 10 years, a decade sooner than most previous predictions (although a few ardent pessimists believe the moment of no return has already come and gone).

Like many Malthusian beliefs, peak oil theory has been promoted by a motivated group of scientists and laymen who base their conclusions on poor analyses of data and misinterpretations of technical material. But because the news media and prominent figures like James Schlesinger, a former secretary of energy, and the oilman T. Boone Pickens have taken peak oil seriously, the public is understandably alarmed.

A careful examination of the facts shows that most arguments about peak oil are based on anecdotal information, vague references and ignorance of how the oil industry goes about finding fields and extracting petroleum. And this has been demonstrated over and over again: the founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil first claimed in 1989 that the peak had already been reached, and Mr. Schlesinger argued a decade earlier that production was unlikely to ever go much higher.

Mr. Birol isn’t the only one still worrying. One leading proponent of peak oil, the writer Paul Roberts, recently expressed shock to discover that the liquid coming out of the Ghawar Field in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest known deposit, is around 35 percent water and rising. But this is hardly a concern — the buildup is caused by the Saudis pumping seawater into the field to keep pressure up and make extraction easier. The global average for water in oil field yields is estimated to be as high as 75 percent.

Another critic, a prominent consultant and investor named Matthew Simmons, has raised concerns over oil engineers using “fuzzy logic” to estimate reservoir holdings. But fuzzy logic is a programming method that has been used since I was in graduate school in situations where the factors are hazy and variable — everything from physical science to international relations — and its track record in oil geology has been quite good.

But those are just the latest arguments — for the most part the peak-oil crowd rests its case on three major claims: that the world is discovering only one barrel for every three or four produced; that political instability in oil-producing countries puts us at an unprecedented risk of having the spigots turned off; and that we have already used half of the two trillion barrels of oil that the earth contained.

Let’s take the rate-of-discovery argument first: it is a statement that reflects ignorance of industry terminology. When a new field is found, it is given a size estimate that indicates how much is thought to be recoverable at that point in time. But as years pass, the estimate is almost always revised upward, either because more pockets of oil are found in the field or because new technology makes it possible to extract oil that was previously unreachable. Yet because petroleum geologists don’t report that additional recoverable oil as “newly discovered,” the peak oil advocates tend to ignore it. In truth, the combination of new discoveries and revisions to size estimates of older fields has been keeping pace with production for many years.

A related argument — that the “easy oil” is gone and that extraction can only become more difficult and cost-ineffective — should be recognized as vague and irrelevant. Drillers in Persia a century ago certainly didn’t consider their work easy, and the mechanized, computerized industry of today is a far sight from 19th-century mule-drawn rigs. Hundreds of fields that produce “easy oil” today were once thought technologically unreachable.

The latest acorn in the discovery debate is a recent increase in the overall estimated rate at which production is declining in large oil fields. This is assumed to be the result of the “superstraw” technologies that have become dominant over the past decade, which can drain fields faster than ever. True, because quicker extraction causes the fluid pressure in the field to drop rapidly, the wells become less and less productive over time. But this declining return on individual wells doesn’t necessarily mean that whole fields are being cleaned out. As the Saudis have proved in recent years at Ghawar, additional investment — to find new deposits and drill new wells — can keep a field’s overall production from falling.

When their shaky claims on geology are exposed, the peak-oil advocates tend to argue that today’s geopolitical instability needs to be taken into consideration. But political risk is hardly new: a leading Communist labor organizer in the Baku oil industry in the early 1900s would later be known to the world as Josef Stalin.

When the large supply disruptions of 1973 and 1979 led to skyrocketing prices, nearly all oil experts said the underlying cause was resource scarcity and that prices would go ever higher in the future. The oil companies diversified their investments — Mobil even started buying up department stores! — and President Jimmy Carter pushed for the development of synthetic fuels like shale oil, arguing that markets were too myopic to realize the imminent need for substitutes. All sorts of policy wonks, energy consultants and Nobel-prize-winning economists jumped on the bandwagon to explain that prices would only go up — even though they had never done so historically. Prices instead proceeded to slide for two decades, rather as the tide ignored King Canute.

Just as, in the 1970s, it was the Arab oil embargo and the Iranian Revolution, today it is the invasion of Iraq and instability in Venezuela and Nigeria. But the solution, as ever, is for the industry to shift investment into new regions, and that’s what it is doing. Yet peak-oil advocates take advantage of the inevitable delay in bringing this new production on line to claim that global production is on an irreversible decline.

In the end, perhaps the most misleading claim of the peak-oil advocates is that the earth was endowed with only 2 trillion barrels of “recoverable” oil. Actually, the consensus among geologists is that there are some 10 trillion barrels out there. A century ago, only 10 percent of it was considered recoverable, but improvements in technology should allow us to recover some 35 percent — another 2.5 trillion barrels — in an economically viable way. And this doesn’t even include such potential sources as tar sands, which in time we may be able to efficiently tap.

Oil remains abundant, and the price will likely come down closer to the historical level of $30 a barrel as new supplies come forward in the deep waters off West Africa and Latin America, in East Africa, and perhaps in the Bakken oil shale fields of Montana and North Dakota. But that may not keep the Chicken Littles from convincing policymakers in Washington and elsewhere that oil, being finite, must increase in price. (That’s the logic that led the Carter administration to create the Synthetic Fuels Corporation, a $3 billion boondoggle that never produced a gallon of useable fuel.)

This is not to say that we shouldn’t keep looking for other cost-effective, low-pollution energy sources — why not broaden our options? But we can’t let the false threat of disappearing oil lead the government to throw money away on harebrained renewable energy schemes or impose unnecessary and expensive conservation measures on a public already struggling through tough economic times.

Michael Lynch, the former director for Asian energy and security at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an energy consultant.

Complete article at:

community.nytimes.com

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Peak oil and climate change — drowning in rhetoric

By Andrew McKillop
Online Journal Contributing Writer

These are both long-running or even stalwart themes of the late great consumer society. They only stretch back a decade or so to some people, but a whole lot further when you drill down a little — looking for the right ice cores or pockets of remaining oil and gas. Today they provide the base, or in
finance jargon the underlying security for an endless road show and conference business that stretches right around the world. Not only thousands of Web sites, TV shows, press reporters and publishing houses extract value from dwindling oil and changing climate, but big business and big government have also adopted and absorbed these themes. Both big business and big government now get plenty of traction from what some call the two Great Causes of Our Times.

onlinejournal.com

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Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy …

Paper by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy shows a clear increase in the size and influence of noncommercial traders, or “speculators,” in the oil futures market since regulations were eased by the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Speculators now constitute about 50 percent of those holding outstanding positions in the U.S. oil futures market, compared with only about 20 percent prior to 2002. The report also finds that the correlation between oil and the dollar has strengthened significantly over the past several years.

www.rice.edu

Get report here: www.bakerinstitute.org

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Low and behold : making the most of cheap oil

Edward L. Morse
Foreign affairs, volume 88 issue 5, September/October 2009, pp. 36-52.

www.foreignaffairs.com

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Gallagher: Paying to keep oil in the ground

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

The Guardian published the following opinion article by Kevin P. Gallagher on Friday, August 7th:

Paying to keep oil in the ground – Should the world pay Ecuador not to extract oil? President Rafael Correa’s argument makes perfect economic sense

Kevin Gallagher
guardian.co.uk
Friday, August 7, 2009

Ecuador ‘s President Rafael Correa is often dismissed as a radical leftist. Such has been the response to his proposal that the world pay him not to extract oil from Yasuni National Park in the western Amazon. Yasuni is home to almost 850 million barrels of oil, or 20% of Ecuador ‘s reserves.

A closer look at Correa’s proposal reveals that it comes straight out of an economics textbook, and makes perfect sense.

Ecuador has a national income of $7,500 in purchasing power terms, and the top 20% of Ecuadorans have more than half that income. More than half of Ecuador lives on less than $2 per day.

From where Ecuador sits on the global poverty and inequality ladder, the benefits outweigh the costs of extracting the oil. However, take into account the value of the park to the rest of the world, and the benefit-cost ratio shrinks. Its only rational then to ask the world to help pay for what it values.

In Ecuador ‘s case, the net benefits of the project are projected oil revenues minus the costs of extraction. A conservative estimate is that exploiting the oil would bring in $5.7bn in present value terms, or 10% of Ecuador ‘s GDP.

Cutting down the forest to extract oil could cost the country in terms of the other uses of the land that generated income, such as tourism, as well as in losses of biodiversity and carbon dioxide. Many of these benefits, however, may accrue to those outside Ecuador .

Ecuadoran economist Carlos Larrea has a model that tries to estimate some of the broader costs and benefits.

Yasuni is considered the most biodiverse park on the planet and has been named a Unesco Biosphere site. One hectare in the park has more species of trees than all of the United States and Canada combined. In addition to all sorts of flora, one can find ocelots, giant ant-eaters, white bellied spider monkeys, manatees and more.

People from across the world show they value this resource by travelling there – upwards of 20,000 per annum. However, Larrea estimates that those receipts amount to a mere $5m per year. Larrea also looked at losses to the use of other sectors due to degradation of the environment and estimated that to be small, at $56m.

The methodologies for analyses like these are in their infancy, as Frank Ackerman and Lisa Heinzerling show in their book Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing. Indeed, the cost figures are gross underestimates. One thing that’s missing from this calculation is what economists call the park’s “option value”. Many around the world derive utility from knowing there are white bellied spider monkeys out there and would be willing to pay to preserve them.

What is more, given that the park is one of the most diverse places in the world, there is a chance it could house the key to some future wonder drug and bring in even higher receipts than the oil. Finally, the park is home to the Waorini, an estimated 20,000 indigenous peoples who have a livelihood and culture that cannot be priced.

What ups the ante is climate change. The carbon dioxide emissions from extracting and burning the oil would be about 375 million tons, and emissions from deforestation would be 172 million – a total of 547 millions tons. The World Bank has estimated the abatement cost for carbon dioxide at $14 to $20 per ton (similar to the range in the pending Waxman-Markey legislation in the US Congress). The cost to the world to abate these emissions will be between $1.7bn and $2.4bn for the extraction and burning, and $909m for deforestation, for a total between $2.6bn and $3.7bn.

Correa proposes that Ecuador issue bonds for the value of the carbon dioxide emissions avoided by preserving the forest. He promises to park the funds at a neutral bank and only spend them on social development and alternative-energy projects in Ecuador . If a future government of Ecuador decides to exploit the oil, they have to repay the bondholders plus interest.

Preserving Yasuni is a rare win-win situation. The rich world (that created the climate problem) can help mitigate it in a relatively low-cost manner. Ecuador obtains the funds to help grow its relatively poor economy. Far from radical populism, this is economic efficiency at its finest.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009

Visit The Guardian and see other Gallagher columns:

www.guardian.co.uk

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The Friday Rush: “Rush Limbaugh showed great restraint”? Please …

By Greg Lewis

Sometimes we’re impressed by the way our now-weekly Rush Limbaugh commentary manages to almost write itself. On Thursday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough said that Rush’s reaction to the passing of Ted Kennedy “showed great restraint.” A few hours later on Thursday’s Rush Limbaugh Show, Rush played back that sound bite and agreed with the MSNBC morning host. “I did practice restraint,” said Rush.

…

Read More

mediamatters.org

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AS IF LIMBAUGH AND BECK WEREN’T BAD ENOUGH, THE GRANDDADDY OF HATE RADIO IS BACK ON THE AIR

By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet

Bob Grant taught a generation of conservative talkers how to channel white rage, until a listener boycott helped push him off the air. Now he’s back.

www.alternet.org

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Twitter For Dummies

Twitter, the simple-to-use microblogging service, offers immense benefits for businesses and organizations. Fire departments, political candidates, and C0EOs have used Twitter to share up-to-the-minute information. Laura Fitton, maybe better known by her Twitter handle – @Pistachio, has more than 10,000 followers on Twitter, and gives presentations on how to use Twitter to build business and personal opportunity. She’s joined by Michael Gruen and Leslie Poston to share Twitter expertise in this easy-to-follow guide.

You’ll discover how to get set up on Twitter, build a follower list, and find a voice for your tweets. Then you’ll learn to use third party tools to link Twitter to other sites and incorporate it into business communication models.

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And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Michael Jackson’s death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles County coroner on Monday. It seems fitting that his death was every bit as weird as his life. He is survived by his parents, three children, four brothers, three sisters, six noses, a chimpanzee and five non-disclosure agreements.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Bruce Beattie Daytona Beach News-Journal Aug 30, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Tom Toles: The Issue, Reframed
(politicalirony.com)

Dwayne Booth, Mr. Fish: hippocrates taking his oath
(www.cagle.com)

Theology …

August 29, 2009
by Taunter

My knowledge of theology is rather limited, but I was quite surprised to see this comment from a Catholic bishop:

The Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care,” Bishop Nickless of Sioux City wrote, adding, “Any legislation that undermines the vitality of the private sector is suspect.

Suspect? Really? Where did I read this:

Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. When his disciples heard it, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

In fact, I think that’s the same source as this:

When thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: And thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee: for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

If only the Church hung out a bit more with Him, and strayed a bit from Weber, oh the places we could go. But somehow the political battleship that is the public face of Catholicism cannot tack, and instead we have a one-track message: abortion, abortion, abortion.

I know it is probably beyond reason to hope for a day when the Church does not see the sexual freedom of women as a challenge to its core values. But allowing one issue to dominate an agenda is just plain stupid. Women who have abortions are not happy about the situation; it almost certainly was not what they set out to do. For whatever reason, a series of adverse events brought them to the fork in the road where they felt that a traumatic procedure was the best of the options available. Adding punishment, or reducing choices, is just running up the score on the weak at that point. If the goal is reducing abortion, how about encouraging contraception? How about encouraging excellent health care, so women do not find themselves with medical needs to terminate pregnancies?

In the meantime, perhaps it would be nice if religious leaders listened to the two thousand year old words of a great philosopher and stayed out of politics altogether:

Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s

Complete article at:

Theology

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PASTOR OF GUN-TOTING TOWN HALL PROTESTER PRAYED FOR OBAMA’S DEATH

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet

A good Christian.

A good Christian

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CHRISTIAN ORGANIZATIONS SHAME AND COERCE WOMEN INTO GIVING UP THEIR CHILDREN

By Kathryn Joyce, The Nation

Many Christian adoption agencies are far more concerned with artificially producing “orphans” for Christian parents to adopt, than helping birth parents care for wanted children.

SHAME AND COERCE WOMEN

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AS ANTI-CHOICE ZEALOTS GATHER, NEBRASKA AG LENDS THEM SUPPORT

By Wendy Norris, RH Reality Check

One of the last remaining doctors to do late-term abortions is the target this weekend of Operation Rescue. Guess whose side his state’s AG is on.

ANTI-CHOICE ZEALOTS

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August Break Report on the 111th Congress

August 25, 2009

Congress has recessed for its August break. Let’s reflect on the Secular Coalition for America’s efforts in the first eight months of 2009. The Religious Right has been less successful at infusing religion into public policy. The Secular Coalition helped stymie their efforts. We joined with our coalition partners, encouraging lawmakers to refuse to give in to the Religious Right’s policy demands. We successfully opposed:

funding faith-based organizations in the stimulus package, forcing taxpayers to pay for the religious education of D.C. students, the continuation of the global gag rule that suppresses the provision of critical medical information to patients, funding abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, and the creation of an annual “Spiritual Heritage Week”

In addition to legislative accomplishments, the Secular Coalition for America had our first individual meeting with White House officials. This meeting gave us the opportunity to tell the White House who nontheists are, and articulate our policy interests. This meeting increased the visibility and improved the perception of nontheists in America. Since our first meeting in May, we’ve been invited back to the White House to attend events and discuss nontheists and our interests on four separate occasions. Our increased visibility has been covered in the New York Times. The Nation magazine acknowledged that you are increasingly “assertive and credible.”

Despite tremendous success, there were disappointments. Our attempt to stop an engraving of the 1950s-era “In God We Trust” motto on the walls of the new Capitol Visitor’s Center failed. Eight members of Congress bravely voted against the engraving — and for our Constitution. It appears the D.C. religious school voucher program will continue in modified form. The administration decided children currently enrolled in the program will be allowed to continue.

This Fall we will advocate that Congress strike language in any and all bills that would allow faith-based organizations to use federal funds to proselytize and discriminate based on religion. We will highlight unjust special rights given to religious groups. For example, religious exemptions from child care and child protective laws can harm the most vulnerable among us. We will continue to oppose the expansion of the D.C. religious school voucher program.

Thank you for taking action based on our Alerts, and for supporting the Secular Coalition for America financially. Your help has brought us from no visibility in Washington four years ago to a legitimate place at the table in 2009. Together we must build on this success. Now is the time to volunteer. Now is the time to help financially. Now is the time to make a difference.

Best wishes,
Sean Faircloth
Executive Director

Secular Coalition for America www.secular.org

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ATHEISTS WIN — JUDGE RULES HOMELAND SECURITY PLAQUE CALLING ON “ALMIGHTY GOD” VIOLATES STATE-CHURCH SEPARATION

Will State Squander More Tax Money on Appeal?
Kagin: “I think Thomas Jefferson Would Have Been Pleased”

A circuit court judge ruled today that the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security violated the separation of church and state when it erected a plaque asking “Almighty God” to protect citizens “from acts of war and terrorism,” and included the religious theme in programs and training materials.

Kentucky lawmakers established the office following the faith-based terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A state law mandated that the new department “publicize the findings of the General Assembly stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.” Another statute called upon the Director of the new office to promote the religious message, and prominently display the plaque “at the entrance to the state’s Emergency Operations Center…” The text of the statue declared:

(1) No government by itself can guarantee perfect security from acts of war or terrorism.

(2) The security and well-being of the public depend not just on government, but rest in large measure upon individual citizens of the Commonwealth and their level of understanding, preparation and vigilance.

(3) The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance on Almighty God as set forth in the public speeches and proclamations of American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln’s historic March 30, 1863 Proclamation urging Americans to pray and fast during one of the most dangerous hours of American history, and the text of President John F. Kennedy’s November 22, 1963, national security speech which concluded: “For as was written long ago: ‘Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.’ ”

American Atheists and plaintiffs challenged the legislature’s action, declaring that the statues violated provisions of both the federal and state constitutions. Attorneys for the Commonwealth mustered several arguments in their effort to defend the plaque and the mission of a state office to proselytize. The Commonwealth also moved to have a summary judgment dismissing the case, but lost both filings. In his 17-page ruling, Judge Wingate rejected claims that the lawmakers use of religion had a secular intent.

“…while the court will generally defer to a legislature’s stated purpose, ‘the secular purpose required, has to be genuine, not a sham, and not merely secondary to a religious objective.”

He added:

“It is clear that the purpose underlying the display of the plaque and the contents of Office of Homeland Security training materials is not to celebrate the historical reasons for our great nation’s survival in the face of terror and war. Its purpose is to declare publicly that the official position of the Commonwealth of Kentucky is that an Almighty God exists and that the function of that God is to protect us from our enemies. Consequently, a reading of the statute’s plain language makes that clear. Effectively, the General Assembly has created an official government position on God.

The recitation of the beliefs of past Presidents does not mask the clear purpose of the statutes.”

The Commonwealth tried to compare the message on the plaque with other cases of government-sponsored religion, including the current national motto stamped on currency, “In God We Trust.” Judge Wingate found that practice to be benign, suggesting that it bore “no heological or ritualistic impact.” The plaque, however, manifested a clear message that violated the First Amendment:

“…its theological impact is clear from the very language of the challenged statutes. The legislative finding that the Commonwealth is unsafe without the protection of ‘Almighty God’ takes a clear stance on the nature of God, which constitutes an impermissible purpose not comparable to IN GOD WE TRUST.”

AANEWS has learned that following the release of the judge’s ruling today, the State Attorney General is already considering whether to appeal the ruling.

Attorney Edwin Kagin praised today’s ruling: “The plaintiffs, and all citizens of Kentucky, are more safe as a result of this thoughtful ruling by Judge Wingate. Threats to our security from within are even more frightening than threats from without. Those who seek to attack our freedoms by imposing their religion upon us have been pushed back a bit by this ruling. The Wall of Separation between government and religion continues to hold. I think Thomas “Jefferson would have been pleased.”

From: AANEWS for Wednesday, August 26, 2009 www.atheists.org

==========

AU Press Release :: Kennedy Was Champion Of Church-State Separation

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Kennedy Was Champion Of Church-State Separation, Says Americans United
Church-State Watchdog Group Mourns Passing Of Massachusetts Senator

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, today issued the following statement on the death of U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.):

“Sen. Ted Kennedy was a great champion of church-state separation. It’s not just that he consistently voted to support that principle he really got it. He deeply understood that only a high and firm wall of separation between church and state could protect our liberties. He knew the reasons why our Founders established church-state separation and why we need to preserve it. He got how church-state separation protects the rights of both religious and non-religious people.

“One of the things that made Sen. Kennedy so effective was his powerful presence. I first met him in the 1970s during a meeting designed to address issues of concern to residents of Washington, D.C. There were probably 40 people in the room, all squabbling about how to proceed. When Sen. Kennedy walked in, all talking stopped. He outlined a plan of action, and we divided up the work.

Read the full press release at au.org AU Press Release

Americans United is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to preserving the constitutional principle of church-state separation as the only way to ensure religious freedom for all Americans.

Americans United www.au.org

==========

Group wants to know if there are any other clergy sex abuse And more …

KFGO

FARGO, ND- A group that fights against sexual abuse wants anyone affected locally to come forward and get help. An organization called ‘The Survivors
…

http://www.kfgo.com/news_Detail.php?ID=8950

Ky. youth minister charged with sex abuse

Kentucky.com

Police in western Kentucky have charged a youth minister and deputy constable with sex abuse. Owensboro police arrested 22-year-old Jacob Allen Conder on …

http://www.kentucky.com/471/story/903876.html

Van Hollen asked to review case of clergy abuse suspect; other …

River Towns

Bill Berndt of the National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children says the legislation attempts to let victims file civil suits against their
…

http://www.rivertowns.net/daily/rfj/c090821/

Priest abuse hearing hinges on memory, time

Indianapolis Star

The Star generally does not identify victims of sexual assault. Normally, cases of childhood abuse must be filed by a victim’s 20th birthday. …

http://www.indystar.com/article/20090821/NEWS02/908210340/Priest+abuse+hearing+hinges+on+decades-old+memory

Priest’s abuse case sent to Vatican, local group wants prosecution

WKOW-TV.com

MADISON (WKOW) — This month, the Madison Catholic Diocese admitted allegations of sexual abuse of a child made against a Madison-area priest are credible. …

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=10966916

Suit: Former LI minister a sexual predator

Newsday

Two sisters are suing a Patchogue church and its former pastor for manipulating them into a sexual relationship with him. Valerie Spielman and her sister …

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/suit-former-li-minister-a-sexual-predator-1.1382694

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ANSWERED PRAYERS

Jenny goes to Father Milcahy one day and tells him, “Father, I have a problem. I have two female parrots, but they only know how to say one thing.”

“What do they say?” the priest inquired.

They say, “Hi, we’re hookers! Do you want to have some fun?”

“That’s obscene!” the good Father exclaimed.

Then he thought for a moment. “You know”, he said, “I may have a solution to your problem. I have two male talking parrots, which I have taught to pray and read the Bible.

Bring your two parrots over to my house, and we’ll put them in the cage with Frank and Bob.

My parrots can teach your parrots to praise and worship, and your parrots are sure to stop saying…that phrase…in no time.”

“Thank you,” Jenny responded, “This may very well be the solution.”

The next day, she brought her female parrots to Father Mlicahy’s house. As he ushered her in, she saw that his two male parrots were inside their cage holding rosary beads and praying. Impressed, she walked over and placed her parrots in with them.

After a few minutes, the female parrots cried out in unison: “Hi, we’re hookers! Do you want to have some fun?”

There was stunned silence.

Shocked, one male parrot looked over at the other male parrot and exclaimed, “Put the beads away, Frank. Our prayers have been answered!”

==========

three thousand words

(click here to view)

Terry Wise Ratland Ink Press Aug 18, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Racine Post Aug 20, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Tim Eagan: your scare tactics won’t work on us!
(www.cagle.com)

http://www.cagle.com/working/090827/eagan.jpg

Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst

Hurricane George, Four Years Later

by Greg Palast
Wednesday, August 26, 2009

For Crooks and Liars

This week, download for free, Palast’s film for Democracy Now!, “Big Easy to Big Empty: How the White House Drowned New Orleans.”

There’s another floater. Four years on, there’s another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.

I don’t get to use the word “heroic” very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren’t for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:

“By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breached. Nobody.”

On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the State Police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.

What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush’s boys did not notify the State of the flood to come which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands that remained stranded.

“Fifteen hundred people drowned. That’s the bottom line,” said van Heerden.
He shouldn’t have told me that. The professor was already in trouble for saying, publicly, that the levees around New Orleans were no good, too short, by 18″. They couldn’t stand up to a storm like Katrina. He said it months before Katrina hit – in a call to the White House, and later in the press.

So, even before Katrina, even before our interview, the professor was in hot water. Van Heerden was told by University officials that his complaints jeopardized funding from the Bush Administration. They tried to gag him. He didn’t care: he ripped off the gag and spoke out.

It didn’t matter to Bush, to the State, to the University, that van Heerden was right— devastatingly right. Exactly as van Heerden predicted, the levees could not stand up to the storm surge.

In 2006, I met van Heerden in his office at the University’s hurricane center; a cubby filled with charts of the city under water. He’s a soft-spoken, even-tempered man, given to understatement and academic reserve. But his words were hand grenades: the Bush White House did nothing about the levees, despite warning after warning.

Why? A hurricane is an Act of God. But a levee failure is an Act of Bush – of the federal government. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, once the levees break, it’s Washington’s responsibility to save lives — and to compensate the victims for lost homes and lost loved ones.

By telling me this, the professor had to know he was putting his job on the line.
This week marks the fourth anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans.

Shakoor Aljuwani of the Rebuilding Lives Coalition reminds me it is also the fourth year of exile for more than half of the low-income Black residents who once lived in the Crescent City. In the Lower Ninth Ward, 81% have yet to return.

And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden’s career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. “In 2006 they started the nonsense – they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out.”

His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden’s research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.

Cronies and Contracts

I did not seek out professor van Heerden about Bush’s deadly silence. Rather, I’d come to LSU to ask him about a strange little company, “Innovative Emergency Management,” a politically well-connected firm that, a year before the hurricane, had finagled a contract to plan the evacuation of New Orleans.

Innovative Emergency Management knew a lot about political contributions, but seemed to have zero experience in hurricane response planning. In fact, their “plan” for New Orleans called for evacuating the city by automobile. When Katrina hit, 127,000 wheel-less New Orleans folk were left to float out.

And van Heerden knew all about it. Well before the hurricane, I discovered, he’d pointed out flaws in the “Innovative” plan – and was threatened for the revelation by a state official. The same official later joined the payroll of Innovative Emergency Management.

When I asked the company, at their office, for a copy of the plan, they body-blocked our Democracy Now! camerawoman and called the cops.

Not everyone shared the harsh fate of van Heerden. Just this month, Innovative Emergency Management, the firm with the drive-for-your-life plan, was handed a fat contract by the State of Alabama to draft – you guessed it – a hurricane evacuation plan for Mobile.

The City That Care Forgot

After the flood, I filmed the uplifting story of Common Ground, the commune of Katrina survivors who, under the leadership of the community organizer Malik Rahim, rebuilt a shattered hulk of a building with their own sweat and donated materials. They housed 350 displaced families.

Since I broadcast that film in 2006, Rahim and the tenants were evicted by speculators who bought the building. Just before Christmas, elderly residents were carried out and dumped in the street, literally, by marshals. The speculators paid the families who build their new edifice not one dime.

We also filmed the story of Patricia Thomas, a woman fighting to return to her home in the beautiful Lafitte public housing project. Speculators have long lusted for this property on the edge of the French Quarter.

And now the speculators have it. Patricia’s home, unscathed by Katrina, was nevertheless bulldozed. As Rahim puts it, “They wanted them poor niggers out of there and they ain’t had no intention to allow it to be reopened to no poor niggers.” Their plan succeeded. Patricia, homeless, died last year.

This Friday, take a moment to remember a courageous professor, an indefatigable activist and the refugee families who once lived in what was once called, “The City That Care Forgot.”

Now, in 2009, you could call it the city that everyone forgot.

Part 2 tomorrow. A new warning; the next Katrina and Big Oil

For one week only, the International Humanities Center is offering, free of charge, a download of Greg Palast’s investigative report for Democracy Now!, “Big Easy to Big Empty – the untold story of how the White House drowned New Orleans” at www.GregPalast.com.

Download the film or make a donation to support these investigations and get a copy signed by Palast at bigeasy.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse.

Complete article at:

Levees Would Burst

==========

Four Years After Katrina

August 26, 2009

This Friday marks four years since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast.

CHRIS KROMM, chris@southernstudies.org,

http://southernstudies.org

Executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, Kromm said today: “New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are still waiting for Washington to show leadership in the Katrina recovery. Four years after the storm, one out of three New Orleans addresses are still unoccupied — yet the Congressional district that includes New Orleans (LA-2) received the LEAST federal stimulus dollars of any district in the country. President Obama campaigned on his commitment to rebuild the Gulf Coast, but on issues from housing to health care, jobs and coastal protection, communities are waiting to see those promises turn into action.”

This week, the Institute for Southern Studies, which has published eight in-depth reports on the Gulf Coast recovery, will be releasing the findings of a survey of over 50 Gulf Coast groups, grading the Obama administration’s record on Katrina rebuilding issues.

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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Commentary: Does Obama care about New Orleans?

CNN
shearer.new.orleans

By Harry Shearer
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Harry Shearer.

Special to CNN–New Orleans, hit so hard by what so many (including President Obama in his Sunday interview with the local newspaper) still see fit to describe, mistakenly, as a natural disaster, is making remarkable progress, while the agency that so disastrously failed at building a protective system mandated by Congress — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — may be making some of the same mistakes in rebuilding that system. And the White House, for the second consecutive administration, seems not to care.
Me? I’m a humorist, a comic actor, a sometime musician-filmmaker-novelist-blogger. What the hell do I know about what happened to the city I love?…
While the national media packed up and moved away after the initial orgasm of anger at FEMA, the local media reported something remarkable: The Corps was claiming that the flooding was due to the “overtopping” of its levees and floodwalls, while two teams of pro-bono forensic investigators were finding evidence that no overtopping had occurred.

As the Corps started denigrating these investigators, they kept digging, and kept coming up with the real story, available now for all to see (though all too few have) as the ILIT report from the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY and the Team Louisiana report from Louisiana State University.

Their conclusions: The “hurricane protection system” built by the Corps had serious design and construction flaws, baked into the system over 40 years under administrations of both parties, that caused catastrophic failure in more than 50 locations under storm surge conditions markedly less than the system was advertised to withstand….

President Obama, who has mainly limited his comments about New Orleans to feel-good boilerplate, did pledge to make good on President Bush’s promise on that eerie, floodlit night in a deserted Jackson Square in 2005, to rebuild New Orleans better and stronger. But he has yet to actively intervene to make sure New Orleans gets state-of-the-art flood protection and robust and timely coastal wetland reconstruction. Like President Bush, President Obama so far seems to be acting as if just saying it makes it so.

==========

Petroleum Supply Monthly

Friday, August 28, 2009

EIA Petroleum Data News
Petroleum Supply Monthly

The August Petroleum Supply Monthly with June data has been updated to the EIA website on Friday, August 28, 2009.

Petroleum Supply Monthly website:

Petroleum Supply Monthly

==========

The Petroleum Marketing Annual 2008

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Petroleum Marketing Annual 2008

Final monthly price and volume statistics on crude oil and petroleum products at a national, regional, and state level. Annual totals and averages have been calculated from these monthly data.

2008 Petroleum Marketing Annual website:

Petroleum Marketing Annual

==========

National Security Archive Update, August 16, 2009 – Brazil Conspired with U.S. to Overthrow Allende

Declassified U.S. Documents Show Richard Nixon and Brazilian President Emilio Medici Discussed Coordinated Intervention in Chile, Cuba, and other Latin American nations “to prevent new Allendes and Castros”

Secret Back Channel established between Presidents

Brazilian General Accused U.S. of Asking Brazil to “do its dirty work”

For more information contact:
Peter Kornbluh – 202/994-7000

www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, August 16, 2009 – In December 1971, President Richard Nixon and Brazilian President Emilio Garrastazu Medici discussed Brazil’s role in efforts to overthrow the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, formerly Top Secret records posted by the National Security Archive today reveal. According to a declassified memorandum of conversation, Nixon asked Medici whether the Chilean military was capable of overthrowing Allende. “He felt that they were,” Medici replied, “and made clear that Brazil was working toward this end.”

According to the Top Secret “memcon” of the December 9, 1971, Oval Office meeting, Nixon offered his approval and support for Brazil’s intervention in Chile. “The President said that it was very important that Brazil and the United States work closely in this field. We could not take direction but if the Brazilians felt that there was something we could do to be helpful in this area, he would like President Medici to let him know. If money were required or other discreet aid, we might be able to make it available,” Nixon stated. “This should be held in the greatest confidence.”

The U.S. and Brazil, Nixon told Medici, “must try and prevent new Allendes and Castros and try where possible to reverse these trends.”

During the same meeting, President Medici asked Nixon if “we” should be supporting Cuban exiles who “had forces and could overthrow Castro’s regime.” Nixon responded that “we should, as long as we did not push them into doing something that we could not support, and as long as our hand did not appear.”

The documents were declassified in July as part of the State Department’s Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series.

The memcon records Nixon telling Medici that he “hoped we could cooperate closely, as there were many things that Brazil as a South American country could do that the U.S. could not.” Indeed, the documentation reveals that Nixon believed that a special relationship with Brazil was so important that he proposed a secret back-channel between the two presidents “as a means of communicating directly outside of normal diplomatic channels.” Médici named his private advisor and foreign minister Gibson Barbosa as his back-channel representative, but told Nixon that for “extremely private and delicate matters” Brazil would use Col. Manso Netto. Nixon named Kissinger as his representative for the special back channel.

Communications between Nixon and Medici using the special back-channel remain secret.

Peter Kornbluh, who directs the National Security Archive’s Chile and Brazil projects, noted that “a hidden chapter of collaborative intervention to overthrow the government of Chile” was now emerging from the declassified documentation. “Brazil’s archives are the missing link,” he said, calling on President Ignacio Lula da Silva to open Brazil’s military records on the past. “The full history of intervention in South America in the 1970s cannot be told without access to Brazilian documents.”

Please visit the National Security Archive Web site for more information.

www.nsarchive.org

==========

Radio hosts use Kennedy’s death to fearmonger on health care rationing

Conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Tom Marr have used Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s death to attack health care reform, baselessly suggesting that if reform passes, elderly cancer patients — like Kennedy was — will be “denied” treatments or their treatments will be “rationed.” Limbaugh claimed that Kennedy “chose to exercise as many options as were available to him to prolong his life” and asserted that “to put his name on a health care bill that denies that to other people” is “hypocrisy.”

Read More

fearmonger

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Why Private Cloud Will Make IT Think Like Wal-Mart

CIO

Private Cloud

By Bernard Golden

Bernard Golden is CEO of consulting firm HyperStratus, which specializes in virtualization, cloud computing and related issues. He is also the author of “Virtualization for Dummies,” the best-selling book on virtualization to date.

August 20, 2009

Public. Private. Hybrid. Cloudburst. Much of the discussion about cloud computing focuses on deployment options and choices, with a surprisingly large number of enterprises inclining toward internal private clouds—that is, a cloud-capable infrastructure residing within a company’s own data center. A just-published survey by Evans Data supports this trend, indicating that 30 percent of developers (sample = 500) are currently working on projects that will run in private clouds (Important: the article notes that this is probably skewed, as the survey participants are self-selected). This seems quite high to me, given that the number of actual private clouds is pretty darn small. However, one can design and build an app in a public cloud environment with the ultimate goal of hosting the app in a private cloud. In any case, the survey reinforces an anecdotal sense that enterprises are very attracted to the concept of building and operating their own cloud.

…IT Operations will come under significant pressure to always have sufficient compute resources available. This doesn’t get discussed much, but expect it to be a hot topic in the future regarding private clouds. Of course, this is a challenge for all cloud providers, as they all promise what the UC BERKELEY RAD LAB REPORT calls “the illusion of infinite resources.” Amazon is characterized as having trouble with this issue, so it’s not unique to private clouds; however, this problem may be more acute for private clouds, since this skill is, today, not that prepared….

==========

And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

President Obama played golf with a few friends at Martha’s Vineyard Monday and Tuesday on his vacation. It’s good for him. A president carries the weight of the world on his shoulders, or the Dallas Cowboys new videoboard, whichever one’s heavier.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Paul Fell Artizans Syndicate Aug 27, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

David Horsey: give me my country back!
(www.seattlepi.com)

Kollinger: Goldman Sachs
(www.ritholtz.com)

National Security Archive Update, August 26, 2009 – The CIA’s Vietnam Histories

Newly-Declassified CIA Histories Show Its Involvement in Every Aspect of the Indochina War

www.nsarchive.org

For more information contact:
John Prados, 202/994-7000

Washington, DC, August 26, 2009 – The Central Intelligence Agency participated in every aspect of the wars in Indochina, political and military, according to newly declassified CIA histories, published today on the National Security Archive Web site. The six volumes of formerly secret histories (the Agency’s belated response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Archive senior fellow John Prados) document CIA activities in South and North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in unprecedented detail. The histories contain a great deal of new material and shed light on aspects of the CIA’s work that were not well known or were poorly understood. The new revelations include:

* The CIA and U.S. Embassy engaged in secret diplomatic exchanges with enemy insurgents of the National Liberation Front, at first with the approval of the South Vietnamese government, a channel which collapsed in the face of deliberate obstruction by South Vietnamese officials.

* CIA officers predicted as early as 1954 that Saigon leader Ngo Dinh Diem would ultimately fail to gain the support of the South Vietnamese people. Meanwhile the CIA crafted a case officer-source relationship with Diem’s brother Ngo Dinh Nhu as early as 1952, a time when the French were still fighting for Indochina.

* CIA raids into North Vietnam took place as late as 1970, and the program authorizing them was not terminated until April 1972, despite obtaining no measurable results.

* In 1965, a time when the South Vietnamese regime was again in conflict with the Buddhist majority, the CIA secretly funded Buddhist training programs.

* CIA involvement in South Vietnamese elections goes beyond what has been previously disclosed, and matches the scope of the Agency’s controversial 1960s political action program in Chile.

* In the later period of the war, according to the CIA’s own historian, Saigon leader Nguyen Van Thieu’s mistrust of the United States increasingly focused on the CIA.

* The CIA historian, contrary to neo-orthodox arguments regarding progress in the Vietnam war, concedes that U.S. pacification efforts failed in Vietnam–including the so-called “Phoenix” program–and traces this failure to several causes, including South Vietnamese lack of interest and investment in this key facet of the conflict.

* The CIA was aware from the very early 1960s of the problems posed by Laotian drug trafficking to its Laos campaign, but not only took no action, it did not even make drug trafficking a reporting requirement until the Nixon administration declared war on drugs.

Visit the Archive Web site for more information:

www.nsarchive.orgm

See: Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (Modern War Studies) by John Prados

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Financial Crisis Advisory Group publishes wide-ranging review of standard-setting activities following the global financial crisis

“The Financial Crisis Advisory Group (FCAG), a high level group of recognised leaders with broad experience in international financial markets, today published its recommendations related to accounting standard-setting activities, and other changes to the international regulatory environment following the global financial crisis.”

Report of the Financial Crisis Advisory Group, July 28, 2009: “In our discussions, we recognized the critical role that general purpose financial reporting plays in the financial system and we identified four principles that financial reporting must meet if it is to fulfill this role well. We believe that the financial crisis has underscored the importance of these principles.”

FCAG Report July 2009.pdf

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This Week in Petroleum (TWIP)

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

This Week in Petroleum (TWIP) has been updated to the EIA website:

TWIP

==========

Growing Poverty and Despair in America

By Stephen Lendman
Global Research, August 26, 2009

In 1962, Michael Harrington’s “The Other America” exposed the nation’s dark underside enough for John Kennedy to ask his Council of Economic Advisor chairman, Walter Heller, to look into the problem and for Lyndon Johnson to say (on January 8, 1964) that his administration “today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.”

In fact, it was little more than a skirmish that fell way short of addressing the real problem in the world’s richest nation. Today it’s even greater and increasing exponentially under a president who, unlike Johnson, declared war on the poor and disadvantaged to favor privilege over growing needs and essential social change.

In his book, Harrington wrote:

“In morality and in justice every citizen should be committed to abolishing the other America, for it is intolerable that the richest nation in human history should allow such needless suffering. But more than that, if we solve the problem of the other America we will have learned how to solve the problems of all of America.” Sadly, we didn’t then nor have we now.

Perhaps more than anything, increasing homelessness and hunger highlight the growing problem as, in the face of deteriorating economic conditions and growing human needs, administration policies are indifferent, counterproductive, uncaring and hostile.

In December 2008, Reuters reported that “Homelessness and demand for emergency food are rising in the United States as the economy founders,” according to a December 2008 US Conference of Mayor’s Task Force on Hunger and Homelessness survey of 25 American cities. Chief causes cited were growing poverty, unemployment, and unaffordable housing costs with greater than ever expected challenges in 2009. At the time, it was reported that “Cities continue to develop aggressive strategies to prevent homelessness” and provide other essential services, but that was then and this is now.

An Epidemic of State Budget Shortfalls

As economic conditions deteriorate, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP)’s July 29 report highlighted the growing problem. Titled “New Fiscal Year Brings No Relief from Unprecedented State Budget Problems,” it cited the following issues:

– at least 48 states “addressed or still face shortfalls in (their FY 2010) budgets,” the result of “the worst decline in tax receipts in decades;”

– at issue is a $163 billion deficit or 24% of their budgets, and these numbers keep rising as conditions worsen;

– at least 33 states “already anticipate” 2011 deficits that may exceed 2010 ones; and

– for FYs 2010 and 2011, shortfalls of at least $350 billion are expected, and FY 2012 may bring little or no relief.

In response, deep social service cuts are being implemented, putting the burden on vulnerable Americans to cope and survive. The situation is grave and worsening with at least 21 states cutting “low-income children’s or families’ eligibility for health insurance or reduce their access to health care services.”

Elderly and disabled persons programs are also being reduced or eliminated. So are services for home and child care, rehabilitation, and other essential needs for the poor and low-income households. The most vulnerable of all are affected, yet more cuts are expected as new budget pressures arise.

Pre-school, K-12, and higher education cuts are being made as well. Public payrolls and hours worked are being slashed, exacerbating the growing unemployment problem, worse still by cutting pay for the still-employed. Tax increases may also be considered at the worst possible time.

“Expenditure cuts and tax increases are problematic policies during an economic downturn because they reduce overall demand and can make the downturn deeper. When states cut spending, they lay off employees, cancel contracts with vendors, eliminate or lower payments to businesses and nonprofit organizations that provide direct services, and cut benefit payments to individuals.”

Demand is then reduced because households have less to spend. As a result, the economic crisis deepens. CBPP said federal assistance is crucial, yet the Obama administration declined while providing trillions to Wall Street and other corporate favorites. That’s the state of governance in America today under Republican and Democrat administrations, each no different from the other.

Hunger in America

On its web site, Feeding America (formerly America’s Second Harvest) said in “the land of plenty,” one in eight Americans (meaning millions) face growing hunger problems, and not just the poor and unemployed. They’re “often hard-working adults, children and seniors who simply cannot make ends meet” and have to forego meals at times, even for days.

Hunger and Poverty Facts

– in (pre-crisis) 2007, 37.5 million people were impoverished; they comprised:

– 12.5% of the population and 9.8% of families;

– 20.3 million or 10.9% of people aged 18 – 64;

– 13.3 million or 18% of children under age 18; and

– 3.7 million or 9.7% of seniors aged 65 or older who benefit from Social Security and Medicare.

In addition:

– 36.2 million Americans are food insecure, including 12.4 million children;

– they comprise 13 million or 11.1% of households;

– 4.7 million households experience “very low food security” meaning hunger is a persistent problem;

– households with children have double the food insecurity as ones with none;

– single women-headed households are worst off with 30.2% of them insecure; and

– 53.9% of food-insecure households rely on one or more of the following federal programs – food stamps, the National School Lunch Program, and the Special Supplement Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC); in addition, Feeding America (in 2007) provided emergency food aid to about 25 million low-income people, 8% more than in 2001.

On August 6, the US Department of Agriculture reported a record 34.4 million Americans (one in nine) receiving food stamps in May as unemployment keeps surging. It was the sixth consecutive monthly record, and every state showed an increase as economic conditions worsen.

On September 10, the Commerce Department will release 2008 census data expected to show around another 1.5 million people added to the poverty rolls over 2007 figures – a total of nearly 39 million representing 12.7% of Americans. According to Rebecca Blank, Economic Affairs Undersecretary, final numbers aren’t yet in and may be worse than expected because of how bad things are for growing numbers in the country. She believes if (U-3) unemployment hits 10% (up from 9.4% now), poverty could reach 14.8% this year and rising because of jobs and homes lost, savings exhausted, and the sharpest ever decline in personal wealth between mid-2007 and December 2008.

Worst of all, conditions for most people are deteriorating as businesses, states, and local governments shed workers and cut budgets at the worst possible time. It promises harder times ahead and potentially millions more impoverished.

Homelessness Facts

Annually, two – three million Americans, including 1.3 million children, experience homelessness and many more are at risk. Most vulnerable are those losing jobs, homes, and the millions of low-income workers paying 50% or more of their income in rent so that a missed paycheck, health emergency, or unexpected financial burden makes them vulnerable to homelessness at a time government aid is being cut.

Criminalizing the Homeless

In the face of a growing burden on society’s most needy, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty reported that “many cities use the criminal justice system to punish people living on the street for doing” what they must to survive. Local ordinances prohibit sleeping, camping, eating, sharing food, sitting, loitering, and/or begging in public places with criminal penalties imposed on offenders. Some cities even punish organizations and individuals for helping, and the idea always is to keep the unwanted out of sight, mind, and preferably out of cities, at least in or near more affluent areas or business districts.

As economic conditions deteriorate, the problem will grow and so will the plight of the homeless as cities crack down harder in violation of constitutional and international human rights laws.

The OECD’s 2008 Report, “Growing Unequal?: Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries

It states that America “is the country with the highest inequality level and poverty rate” among the 30 OECD countries, ranking only ahead of Mexico and Turkey. In addition, since 2000, inequality grew rapidly, “continuing a long-term trend (going) back to the 1970s” when inflation-adjusted household incomes began falling. Other data cited includes:

– the gap between rich and middle and poorer income groups widened;

– government redistribution of income “plays a relatively minor role in the United States,” partly because social service spending is low and falling; in 2008 America, it was 9% of household incomes compared to 22% on average in OECD countries;

– social mobility in America is low, and children of poor families are less likely to become rich; and

– “wealth is distributed much more unequally than income: the top 1% controls some 25 – 33% of total net worth and the top 10% holds 71%;” other estimates place these disparities much higher and widening as social inequalities increase, high-paying jobs disappear, the middle class keeps shrinking, poverty grows, and federal and state governments cut essential services in the face of increasing need among greater numbers of people.

The Working Poor Keep Getting Poorer

The Working Poor Families Project October 2008 study highlighted similar problems from 2002 through 2006. Titled “Still Working Hard, Still Falling Short: New Findings on the Challenges Confronting America’s Working Families,” it reported:

– jobs paying poverty-level wages rose by 4.7 million;

– low-income working families (earning less than double the Census definition of poverty) increased by 350,000;

– below poverty-level jobs rose to 29.4 million and comprise 22% of all jobs compared to 19% in 2002;

– most disturbing is that this happened during a period of economic growth, but at the same time wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living;

– low income family numbers rose to nearly 9.6 million or 28% of the population;

– children in them number 21 million;

– 72% of low-income families with working adults in them performed the equivalent of one and one-quarter jobs – a far greater burden than in other OECD countries; and

– income inequality is highest in New York; California is fourth, but all states are in a race to the bottom as conditions deteriorate everywhere, so all rankings are disturbing compared to the late 1990s.

The US Labor Department’s latest productivity report highlights the plight of workers even more. It rose 6.4% in Q 2, the largest gain since 2003, while workers’ compensation fell sharply, 2.2% on an annualized basis. According to Mark Vitner of Wells Fargo Bank, the productivity increase “is almost entirely the result of cost-cutting, not improved ways of producing goods and providing services.” It also shows how powerless workers are at a time of massive job cuts, so staying employed takes precedence over wages paid and benefits. The result is profits up, pay down, benefits disappearing, and American workers transitioning to serfs.

More confirmation comes from the latest Internal Revenue Service statistics for 2007 showing that the income disparity between the top 10% and bottom 90% reached “a higher level than any other year since 1917 and even surpasses 1928, the peak of the stock market bubble in the ‘roaring’ 1920s,” according to data from University of California economist Emmanuel Saez. He noted that “2007 was an incredibly good year for the super rich” and added:

“Based on the US historical record, falls in income concentration due to recessions are temporary unless drastic policy changes such as financial regulation or significantly more progressive taxation are implemented and prevent income concentration from coming back.”

But these are no ordinary times as the US sinks slowly into depression. The super-rich are exploiting it to their advantage, while millions of working Americans are losing jobs, homes, benefits, savings, futures, and safety net protections. The 2007 data reflected the peak of the current cycle. What’s ahead will be far more grim, disturbing, and reflective of an America that is no more.

The Economic Policy Institute’s (EPI) State of Working America – 2008/2009

As the economy contracted in 2008, job losses and unemployment accelerated, but EPI’s report missed the worst of it from early 2009 to the present. It cited:

– wages losing ground to inflation;

– high energy costs;

– the burst housing bubble;

– millions of defaults on home loans followed by foreclosures;

– declining financial markets and frozen credit;

– less health care coverage and fewer higher-paying jobs with good benefits; and

– “for the first time since the mid-1940s, the real incomes of middle-class families are lower at the end of this business cycle than they were when it started;” as a result, “prosperity is eluding working families” as they fall further behind, now more than ever as depression takes hold.

EPI calls family income “the core building block of American living standards.” Yet during the last business cycle, significant productivity growth was accompanied by stagnant or falling real incomes. “That has never happened before.” The latest economic recovery bypassed the middle class and created greater income inequality. The Bush administration’s tax cuts exacerbated the problem by helping the top 1% mostly, the middle class marginally, and low-income families not at all.

Clear racial disparities show whites consistently better off than blacks and Hispanics, men doing better than women, huge class distinctions, and mobility up the income ladder bypasses most at lower levels. One study showed that about 60% of families starting out in the bottom fifth stratum were still there a decade later. At the same time, over half the top income ones kept their position.

EPI concludes that “where you start out in the income scale has a strong influence (over) where you end up (so) the rate of economic mobility is low” in the richest country in the world where the select few alone benefit. All others lose out as their incomes don’t keep pace with inflation and their living standards erode.

Another study implies that a poor family of four with two children needs nine to 10 generations to reach middle-income status. It means where you’re born is where you’ll stay. So-called rags-to-riches tales are just folklore, and stagnant or downward mobility today is more serious than ever.

Wages and salaries comprise three-fourths of family income, and for the middle class, it’s even higher. Yet since 2002, they didn’t grow at all despite historically high productivity, meaning business benefitted, not workers who fell further behind. Women and minorities fare worst plus everyone in lower income categories. During the 2002 – 07 recovery, no progress was made “in reducing the share of workers with low earnings (in) all race/ethnic groups and for both genders….The very highest earners have done considerably better than other workers for at least (the past) 30 years, but they (did) extraordinarily well over the last 10 years.”

In addition, eroding “employer-provided benefits, most notably pensions and health insurance, is an important aspect of the deterioration in job quality (and economic security) for many workers.” Most harmed are young workers facing bleak prospects, older ones losing jobs and not wanted, and the erosion of unionization since the 1950s, especially since the late 1970s.

Overall, 2002 – 07 growth was a jobless recovery followed by the subsequent wiping out of five years of modest gains. From 2000 – 2007, average annual job growth was an anemic 0.6%, well below the 1990s 1.8% figure. In addition, the unemployment rate rose 0.7% from March 2001 (the last business cycle’s peak) to December 2007 even though average workers age increased and the labor force participation rate shrank – “both of which should have put downward pressure on the” unemployment rate. The great American job creation machine faltered badly in the new millennium and now has collapsed.

Net family wealth also determines household well-being, particularly from income and financial assets, including real estate. Yet in America, the top 1% controls more than the bottom 90% combined and the disparity is growing. In 1962, the bottom 80%’s share was 19.1%. In 2004, it was 15.3%, the difference shifting to the top 5%.

In addition, until the current downturn, average household debt grew much faster than income, fueled by increases in mortgages, home equity loans, and high credit card balances. Since the housing bubble burst and home prices collapsed, the damage done has been enormous with still more to come.

The result is growing poverty levels as discussed above with numbers increasing as economic conditions weaken. “The backsliding against poverty in the 2000s is most notable among the least advantaged,” especially blacks, Hispanics, mother-only families, and the poor unable to keep pace.

It shows up in inequality in health security in the form of inadequate or no insurance, lower life expectancies for poor and lower income households, and an eroding safety net for the most needy. Rising health care costs, lost or no benefits, and an economic crisis have increased the plight of millions of the country’s least advantaged.

EPI’s report highlights a nation of growing inequality, lower wages, fewer benefits, diminished worker bargaining power, and disempowered unions v. market fundamentalists, complicit government officials, and their “You’re-on-Your-Own” (YOYO) ideology against which they’re powerless.

They believe markets know best so let them, arguing that alternatives “will create the wrong incentives.” Recent decades reveal the folly of this approach on American workers’ living standards. Exposing the “ownership society” myth, all household security measures, including net worth, have fallen despite a few years of late 1990s progress.

Today, “The macro-economy is in serious disrepair, beset by the spillovers from the bursting….housing bubble, high energy prices, and unsustainable levels of household indebtedness” causing economic collapse and the possibility of a deep, protracted depression. So far, remedial measures have been patchwork and counterproductive as growing millions face greater uncertainties with no imminent signs of relief and federal and state governments not caring or helping.

In 2009, the State of Working America is dire and worsening enough for millions of households to face greater than ever challenges on their own with government indifferent to their plight.

Concluding an early 1980s edition of his book, Michael Harrington sensed what “Other Americans” were up against in writing:

“I end this review, then, on an ambivalent note. There was progress; there could have been more progress; the poor need not always be with us. But it will take political movements much more imaginative and militant than those in existence in 1980 to bring that progress about. Until that happens, the poor will be with us.” And today, in exponentially growing far greater numbers because nothing is being done to reverse them.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at www.sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Monday – Friday at 10AM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on world and national issues. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Complete article at:

Growing Poverty and Despair in America

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Libya: A Hero’s Welcome

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton
August 26, 2009

On Aug. 24, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill addressed a special session of the Scottish Parliament. The session was called so that MacAskill could explain why he had decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the former Libyan intelligence officer convicted of terrorism charges in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and who had been expected to spend the rest of his life in prison. MacAskill said he granted al-Megrahi a compassionate release because al-Megrahi suffers from terminal prostate cancer and is expected to live only a few months.

The Aug. 20 release of al-Megrahi ignited a firestorm of outrage in both the United Kingdom and the United States. FBI Director Robert Mueller released to the press contents of an uncharacteristically blunt and critical letter he had written to MacAskill in which Mueller characterized al-Megrahi’s release as inexplicable and “detrimental to the cause of justice.” Mueller told MacAskill in the letter that the release “makes a mockery of the rule of law.”

The flames of outrage over the release of al-Megrahi were further fanned when al-Megrahi received a hero’s welcome upon his arrival in Tripoli — video of him being welcomed and embraced by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was broadcast all over the world.

For his part, Gadhafi has long lobbied for al-Megrahi’s release, even while taking steps to end Libya’s status as an international pariah. Gadhafi first renounced terrorism and his nuclear ambitions in 2003, shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In October 2008 he completed the compensation agreement with the families of the U.S. victims of the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 and of an April 1986 Libyan attack against the La Belle disco in Berlin.

Yet despite the conviction of al-Megrahi, the 2003 official admission of Libyan responsibility for the Pan Am bombing in a letter to the United Nations, and the agreement to pay compensation to the families of the Pan Am victims, Gadhafi has always maintained in public statements that al-Megrahi and Libya were not responsible for the bombing. The official admission of responsibility for the Pan Am bombing, coupled with the public denials, has resulted in a great deal of ambiguity and confusion over the authorship of the attack — which, in all likelihood, is precisely what the denials were intended to do.

The Pan Am 103 Investigation

At 7:03 p.m. on Dec. 21, 1988, an improvised explosive device (IED) detonated in one of Pan Am Flight 103’s cargo containers, causing the plane to break apart and fall from the sky. The 259 passengers and crew members aboard the flight died, as did 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, the town where the remnants of the jumbo jet fell.

Immediately following the bombing, there was suspicion that the Iranians or Syrians had commissioned the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) to conduct the bombing. This belief was based on the fact that German authorities had taken down a large PFLP-GC cell in Frankfurt in October 1988 and that one member of the cell had in his possession an IED concealed inside a Toshiba radio. Frankfurt is the city where Pan Am 103 departed before stopping in London. Indeed, even today, there are still some people who believe that the PFLP-GC was commissioned by either the Iranian or the Syrian government to conduct the Pan Am bombing.

The PFLP-GC theory might eventually have become the officially accepted theory had the bomb on Pan Am 103 detonated (as planned) while the aircraft was over the North Atlantic Ocean. However, a delay in the plane’s departure from London resulted in the timed device detonating while the aircraft was still over land, and this allowed authorities to collect a great deal of evidence that had been scattered across a wide swath of the Scottish countryside. The search effort was one of the most complex crime-scene investigations ever conducted.

Through months of painstakingly detailed effort, investigators were able to determine that the aircraft was brought down by an IED containing a main charge of Semtex, that the IED had been placed inside a Toshiba radio cassette player (in a macabre coincidence, that particular model of Toshiba, the RT-SF 16, is called the “BomBeat radio cassette player”), and that the radio had been located inside a brown Samsonite hard-side suitcase located inside the cargo container.

Investigators were also able to trace the clothing inside the suitcase containing the IED to a specific shop, Mary’s House, in Sliema, Malta. While examining one of the pieces of Maltese clothing in May 1989, investigators found a fragment of a circuit board that did not match anything found in the Toshiba radio. It is important to remember that in a bombing, the pieces of the IED do not entirely disappear. They may be shattered and scattered, but they are not usually completely vaporized. Although some pieces may be damaged beyond recognition, others are not, and this often allows investigators to reconstruct the device

In mid-1990, after an exhaustive effort to identify the circuit-board fragment, the FBI laboratory in Washington was able to determine that the circuit board was very similar to one that came from a timer that a special agent with the U.S. Diplomatic Security Service had recovered from an arms cache while investigating a Libyan-sponsored coup attempt in Lome, Togo, in 1986. Further investigation determined that the company that produced the timers, the Swiss company MEBO, had sold as many as 20 of the devices to the Libyan government, and that the Libyan government was the company’s primary customer. Interestingly, in 1988, MEBO rented one of its offices in Zurich to a firm called ABH, which was run by two Libyan intelligence officers: Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi and Badri Hassan.

The MEBO timer, model MST-13, is very different from the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device found in Frankfurt in October 1988. Additionally, the ice-cube timer in the PFLP-GC device was used in conjunction with a barometric pressure switch, and the IED used a different main charge, TNT, instead of the Semtex used in the Pan Am 103 device.

Perhaps the fact that does the most damage to the PFLP-GC conspiracy theory is that the principal bombmaker for the PFLP-GC Frankfurt cell (and the man who made the PFLP-GC Toshiba device), Marwan Khreesat, was actually an infiltrator sent into the organization by the Jordanian intelligence service. Kreesat not only assisted in providing the information that allowed the Germans to take down the cell, but he was under strict orders by his Jordanian handlers to ensure that every IED he constructed was not capable of detonating. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that one of the IEDs he created was used to destroy Pan Am 103.

One of the Libyans connected to MEBO, al-Megrahi, is an interesting figure. Not only was he an officer with Libyan intelligence, the External Security Organization, or ESO, but he also served as the chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA) and had visited Malta many times. The owner of the Mary’s House clothing shop in Sliema identified al-Megrahi as the man who purchased the clothing found in the suitcase, and Maltese immigration records indicated that al-Megrahi was in Malta on Dec. 7, 1988, the time that the clothing was purchased. Al-Megrahi left Malta on Dec. 9, 1988, but returned to the country using a false identity on Dec. 20, using a passport issued by the ESO in the name of Ahmed Khalifa Abdusamad. Al-Megrahi left Malta using the Abdusamad passport on Dec. 21, 1988, the day the suitcase was apparently sent from Malta aboard Air Malta Flight KM180 to Frankfurt and then transferred to Pan Am 103.

On Nov. 13, 1991, the British government charged al-Megrahi and Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, the LAA station manager at Luqa Airport in Malta, with the bombing. One day later, a federal grand jury in the United States returned an indictment against the same two men for the crime. In March 1995, the FBI added the two men to its most wanted list and the Diplomatic Security Service’s Rewards for Justice Program offered a $4 million reward for their capture. Al-Megrahi and Fhimah were placed under house arrest in Libya — a comfortable existence that, more than actually confining them, served to protect them from being kidnapped and spirited out of Libya to face trial.

After many years of boycotts, embargos, U.N. resolutions and diplomatic wrangling — including extensive efforts by South African President Nelson Mandela and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan — a compromise was reached and all parties agreed to a trial in a neutral country — the Netherlands — conducted under Scottish law. On April 5, 1999, al-Megrahi and Fhimah were transferred to Camp Zeist in the Netherlands to stand trial before a special panel of Scottish judges.

On Jan. 31, 2001, after a very long trial that involved an incredible amount of technical and detailed testimony, the judges reached their decision. The Scottish judges acquitted Fhimah, finding that there was not proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he was involved in the plot (the British government had charged that he had been the person who stole the luggage tags and placed the suitcase on the Air Malta flight), but they did find al-Megrahi guilty of 270 counts of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum sentence of 27 years.

Although the case against al-Megrahi was entirely circumstantial — there was no direct evidence he or Fhimah had placed the device aboard the aircraft — the Scottish judges wrote in their decision that they believed the preponderance of the evidence, including al-Megrahi’s knowledge of airline security measures and procedures, his connection to MEBO, his purchase of the clothing in the suitcase that had contained the IED and his clandestine travel to Malta on Dec. 20 to 21, 1988, convinced them beyond a reasonable doubt that al-Megrahi was guilty as charged.

In a December 2003 letter to the United Nations, Libya accepted responsibility for the Pan Am 103 bombing. (In the same letter, Libya also took responsibility for the September 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772, a French airliner destroyed by an IED after leaving Brazzaville, Congo, and making a stop in N’Djamena, Chad. All 170 people aboard the aircraft died when it broke up over the Sahara in Niger.) Nevertheless, the Libyan government continued to maintain al-Megrahi’s innocence in the Pan Am bombing, just as al-Megrahi had done throughout the trial, insisting that he had not been involved in the bombing.

Al-Megrahi’s reluctance to admit responsibility for the bombing or to show any contrition for the attack is one of the factors singled out by those who opposed his release from prison. It is also one of the hallmarks of a professional intelligence officer. In many ways, al-Megrahi’s public stance regarding the bombing can be summed up by the unofficial motto of the CIA’s Office of Technical Services — “Admit nothing, deny everything, make counter-accusations.”

Shadows

In the shadow world of covert action it is not uncommon for the governments behind such actions to deny (or at least not claim) responsibility for them. These governments also often attempt to plan such attacks in a way that will lead to a certain level of ambiguity — and thereby provide plausible deniability. This was a characteristic seen in many Libyan attacks against U.S. interests, such as the 1986 La Belle Disco bombing in Berlin. It was only an intercept of Libyan communications that provided proof of Libyan responsibility for that attack.

Many attacks that the Libyans sponsored or subcontracted out, such as the string of attacks carried out against U.S. interests by members of the Japanese Red Army and claimed in the name of the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade, were likewise meant to provide Libya with plausible deniability. Gadhafi did not relish the possibility of another American airstrike on his home in Tripoli, like the one that occurred after the La Belle attack in April 1986. (A number of Libyan military targets also were hit in the broader U.S. military action, known as Operation El Dorado Canyon.) Pan Am 103 is considered by many to be Gadhafi’s retribution for those American airstrikes, one of which killed his adopted baby daughter. Gadhafi, who had reportedly been warned of the strike by the Italian government, was not injured in the attack.

During the 1980s, the Libyan government was locked in a heated tit-for-tat battle with the United States. One source of this friction were U.S. claims that the Libyan government supported terrorist groups such as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), which conducted several brutal, high-profile attacks in the 1980s, including the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport assaults. There was also military tension between the two countries as Libya declared a “line of death” across the mouth of the Gulf of Sidra. The U.S. Navy shot down several Libyan fighter aircraft that had attempted to enforce the edict. But these two threads of tension were closely intertwined; the U.S. Navy purposefully challenged the line of death in the spring of 1986 in response to the Rome and Vienna attacks, and it is believed that the La Belle attack was retribution for the U.S. military action in the Gulf of Sidra. The Libyan ESO was also directly implicated in attacks against U.S. diplomats in Sanaa, Yemen, and Khartoum, Sudan, in 1986.

Because of the need for plausible deniability, covert operatives are instructed to stick to their cover story and maintain their innocence if they are caught. Al-Megrahi’s consistent denials and his many appeals, which often cite the PFLP-GC case in Frankfurt, have done a great deal to sow doubt and provide Libya with some deniability.

Like Osama bin Laden’s initial denial of responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, al-Megrahi’s claims of innocence have served as ready fuel for conspiracy theorists, who claim he was framed by the U.S. and British governments. However, any conspiracy to frame al-Megrahi and his Libyan masters would have to be very wide ranging and, by necessity, reach much further than just London and Washington. For example, anyone considering such a conspiracy must also account for the fact that in 1999 a French court convicted six Libyans in absentia for the 1989 bombing of UTA Flight 772. The six included Abdullah al-Sanussi, Gadhafi’s brother-in-law and head of the ESO.

Getting two or more governments to cooperate on some sort of grand conspiracy to frame the Libyans and exonerate the Iranians and Syrians is hard to fathom. Such cooperation would have to involve enough people that, sooner or later, someone would spill the beans — especially considering that the Pan Am 103 saga played out over multiple U.S. administrations. As seen by the current stir over CIA interrogation programs, administrations love to make political hay by revealing the cover-ups of previous administrations. Surely, if there had been a secret ploy by the Reagan or Bush administrations to frame the Libyans, the Clinton or Obama administration would have outed it. The same principle applies to the United Kingdom, where Margaret Thatcher’s government oversaw the beginning of the Pan Am 103 investigation and Labour governments after 1997 would have had the incentive to reveal information to the contrary.

While the U.S. and British governments work closely together on a number of intelligence projects, they are frequently at odds on counterterrorism policy and foreign relations. From our personal experience, we believe that it would be very difficult to get multiple U.S. and British administrations from different political parties to work in perfect harmony to further this sort of conspiracy. Due to the UTA investigation and trial, the conspiracy would have to somehow involve the French government. While the Americans working with the British is one thing, the very idea of the Americans, British and French working in perfect harmony on any sort of project — much less a grand secret conspiracy to frame the Libyans — is simply unimaginable. It is much easier to believe that the Libyans were guilty, especially in light of the litany of other terror attacks they committed or sponsored during that era.

Had the IED in the cargo hold of Pan Am 103 exploded over the open ocean, it is very unlikely that the clothing from Malta and the fragment of the MEBO timer would have ever been recovered — think of the difficulty the French have had in locating the black box from Air France 447 in June of this year. In such a scenario, the evidence linking al-Megrahi and the Libyan government to the Pan Am bombing might never have been discovered and plausible deniability could have been maintained indefinitely.

The evidence recovered in Scotland and al-Megrahi’s eventual conviction put a dent in that deniability, but the true authors of the attack — al-Megrahi’s superiors — were never formally charged. Without al-Megrahi’s cooperation, there was no evidence to prove who ordered him to undertake the attack, though it is logical to conclude that the ESO would never undertake such a significant attack without Gadhafi’s approval.

Now that al-Megrahi has returned to Libya and is in Libyan safekeeping, there is no chance that any death-bed confession he may give will ever make it to the West. His denials will be his final words and the ambiguity and doubt those denials cast will be his legacy. In the shadowy world of clandestine operations, this is the ideal behavior for someone caught committing an operational act. He has shielded his superiors and his government to the end. From the perspective of the ESO, and Moammar Gadhafi, al-Megrahi is indeed a hero.

If you repost this article on a website, include a link to http://www.STRATFOR.com

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Beck calls Senate-confirmed Orszag a “czar”

In the “Know Your Czars” segment of his August 26 radio show, Glenn Beck singled out Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag as his latest example of an Obama administration “czar” — officials he has previously complained are “advising our president” but “don’t go through a confirmation process” and “don’t answer to the legislative branch.” However, Orszag, whom Beck called “our budget czar,” “the proud Enron of czars” and said is “handy with a calculator,” was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in January.

Read More

Know Your Czars

John Sherffius: fox news
(www.cagle.com)

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WHO’S STILL ADVERTISING ON GLENN BECK?

By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet

Let’s see, some News. Corps properties, some conservative PACs ….

Complete article at:

ADVERTISING ON GLENN BECK

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USGAO: Private Pensions: Alternative Approaches Could Address Retirement Risks Faced by Workers but Pose Trade-offs.

GAO-09-642, July 24.

USGAO: Private Pensions

Highlights – Highlights

==========

And now for the important news ….

By Argus Hamilton

Michael Jackson’s death was ruled a homicide by the Los Angeles coroner’s office Monday. He was on Atavan, Valium, Paxil, Demerol and the hospital anesthetic propofol. He was killed by a bullet fired two years ago but it was July before he felt anything.

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Tim Eagan The Press Democrat Aug 27, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Jeff Danziger: Re-public-an Option, Health care, GOP
(danzigercartoons.com)

Lloyd Dangle, Troubletown: obama rumors
(www.cagle.com)

National Security Archive Update, August 25, 2009

THE CIA TORTURE REPORT: WHAT WERE THEY HIDING?

A Side-by-side Comparison of the Bush and Obama Administration Releases

THE TORTURE ARCHIVE: 83,000 Pages Now Online, Full-text and Indexed

www.nsarchive.org

For more information contact:
Tom Blanton: 202/994-7000

Washington, DC, August 25, 2009 – Today, the National Security Archive posted a side-by-side comparison of two very different versions of a 2004 report on the CIA’s “Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities” by Agency Inspector General John Helgerson. Yesterday, the Obama administration released new portions of the report including considerably more information about the use of torture and other illegal practices by CIA interrogators than a version of the report declassified by the Bush administration in 2008.

New revelations include:

* Details on “specific unauthorized or undocumented torture techniques,” including the use of guns, drills, threats, smoke, extreme cold, stress positions, “stiff brush and shackles,” waterboarding, mock executions and “hard takedown.”

* A look at the legal reasoning behind the Agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the development of Agency guidance on capture, detention and interrogation.

* A brief discussion of the history of the CIA interrogation program, including the “resurgence of interest in teaching interrogation techniques” in the early 1980s “as one of several methods to foster foreign liaison relationships.”

* The conclusion that, while CIA interrogations had produced useful intelligence, the “effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained” is not “so easily measured.”

The National Security Archive also announced today the publication of the Torture Archive — more than 83,000 pages of primary source documents (and thousands more to come) related to the detention and interrogation of individuals by the United States, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the broader context of the “global war on terror.” The goal of the Torture Archive is to become the online institutional memory for essential evidence on torture in U.S. policy.

With support from the Open Society Institute and the JEHT Foundation since 2006, this initial launch of the Torture Archive includes the complete set of declassified Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board files from the Pentagon, and thousands of documents resulting from FOIA litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Archive and other plaintiffs. The Torture Archive will continue to add documents as they are released through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation or Executive discretion.

www.nsarchive.org

The Torture Archive: www.nsarchive.org/torture_archive

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New Study Exposes 2007 as the Year of the Super-Rich

AlterNet

Super-Rich

By Sam Pizzigati

Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

August 18, 2009

EMMANUEL SAEZ, THE BERKELEY ECONOMIST who many now consider the world’s top authority on the incomes of the super rich, has never been one for sweeping statements. He tends to let his data do the talking. But his latest data — from the crunching of just-released IRS tax records for 2007 — have wowed even Saez.

America’s most affluent, those data show, have never grabbed a greater share of the nation’s income than they did in 2007. The nation’s top .01 percent of income-earners in 2007 — taxpayers who made over $11.5 million — pulled in 6.04 percent of all income, the highest top .01 percent share of the nation’s income since the IRS started keeping records back in 1913.

The year 2007, a rather awestruck Saez noted earlier this month, “was an incredibly good year for the super rich.”

The 14,588 families who made up 2007’s top .01 percent averaged $35,042,705 in income, 1,080 times the $32,421 average income of America’s bottom 90 percent. The gap between the top .01 percent and the bottom 90 percent, before 2007, had never stretched over 1,000 times….

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Conference Focuses On Deficits, Stimulus

Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal

By Jon Hilsenrath

August 24, 2009

Jackson Hole, Wyo. — Central bankers don’t make decisions on taxes and government spending, but fiscal policy was a major focus of this year’s Federal Reserve conference here….

Large long-term deficits could cause “serious economic disruptions,” said ECONOMIST ALAN AUERBACH OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY, who co-wrote a paper presented here with William Gale of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank largely populated by Democrats.

Over the next decade, they estimated in a paper written earlier this year, the U.S. budget deficit will add up to $10 trillion, and possibly more. Credit markets, they added, have begun to signal a risk of U.S. government default, something unheard of a few years ago.

The economists gave the Obama administration’s stimulus plan a mixed report card. While stimulus was needed, they said, it came too late and wasn’t optimally designed. For instance, some of the administration’s spending programs haven’t been implemented quickly….

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Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Financial stability and macroeconomic policy
Economic Policy Symposium, Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
August 20-22, 2009.

www.kc.frb.org

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STEELE AGREES THAT BOEHNER AND GOP LEADERSHIP ARE ‘AN ABSOLUTE FREAKIN’ JOKE’

By Ben Armbruster, Think Progress

Is this all part of a brilliant strategy to save the
Republican party?

ABSOLUTE FREAKIN’ JOKE

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Defining socialism and single-payer health care

By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor

Let me clearly define socialism and single-payer health care, since I see and hear these terms misused many times a day on radio, television, even in newspapers, mostly to mislead and frighten people.

Defining socialism

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Special Report packs in health care falsehoods

In a report on how, in the words of Fox News host Bret Baier, “Republicans are trying to position themselves as the party looking out for seniors’ well-being,” Fox News correspondent James Rosen advanced the conservative talking point that Democrats plan to cut Medicare benefits for seniors and presented the widely debunked “death panel” falsehood as a he said/she said. He also advanced the smear that Veterans Health Administration officials are referring veterans to a booklet that encourages them to end their lives prematurely.

Read More

health care falsehoods

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Twitterville

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Borowitz Report – Someone’s not happy

August 26, 2009
Bush Questions Brevity of Obama’s Vacation
Short Break ‘Sends Wrong Message to Terrorists’

Former president George W. Bush criticized President Barack Obama today for taking such a brief August vacation, arguing that the brevity of his summer break “sends the wrong message to terrorists.”

“The one way to let the evildoers know that they don’t have you all stressed out is by taking all of August off,” Mr. Bush told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. “I always made sure I did that.”

The former president called Mr. Obama’s golf game in Martha’s Vineyard today “a positive step,” but added, “It may be a case of too little, too late.”

Mr. Bush said “there’s still time” for Mr. Obama to correct his mistake, and recommended that the president “take all of September off.”

“I suggest he find a ranch that needs some brush cleared off of it and spend all of September doing that,” Mr. Bush said.

In other news, a new study shows that serious injuries can occur from texting during sex.

Quentin Tarantino announced a sequel to “Inglourious Basterds” titled “Ignomunious Douchebugs.”

And CNN ruled Michael Jackson’s death a primetime special.

Huffington Post Names BorowitzReport one of the 50 Funniest on Twitter

Follow Andy Borowitz on Twitter: Borowitz Report

Upcoming Events

September 15, 2009 at 7:30PM

Cleveland!
Andy comes home for one night only. After the show he’ll sign copies of his new book, Who Moved My Soap? The CEO’s Guide to Surviving in Prison: The Bernie Madoff Edition.

Location:
2000 Sycamore St. Cleveland OH 216-696-4677
For tickets go to Cleveland Improv

http://www.borowitzreport.com/

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Elena Steier Center for American Blogress Aug 26, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

David Horsey: who will cut health care costs?
(www.seattlepi.com)

Something is Going On . . .
(www.ritholtz.com)

Obama’s Foreign Policy: The End of the Beginning

By George Friedman
August 24, 2009

As August draws to a close, so does the first phase of the Obama presidency. The first months of any U.S. presidency are spent filling key positions and learning the levers of foreign and national security policy. There are also the first rounds of visits with foreign leaders and the first tentative forays into foreign policy. The first summer sees the leaders of the Northern Hemisphere take their annual vacations, and barring a crisis or war, little happens in the foreign policy arena. Then September comes and the world gets back in motion, and the first phase of the president’s foreign policy ends. The president is no longer thinking about what sort of foreign policy he will have; he now has a foreign policy that he is carrying out.

We therefore are at a good point to stop and consider not what U.S. President Barack Obama will do in the realm of foreign policy, but what he has done and is doing. As we have mentioned before, the single most remarkable thing about Obama’s foreign policy is how consistent it is with the policies of former President George W. Bush. This is not surprising. Presidents operate in the world of constraints; their options are limited. Still, it is worth pausing to note how little Obama has deviated from the Bush foreign policy.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, particularly in its early stages, Obama ran against the Iraq war. The centerpiece of his early position was that the war was a mistake, and that he would end it. Obama argued that Bush’s policies — and more important, his style — alienated U.S. allies. He charged Bush with pursuing a unilateral foreign policy, alienating allies by failing to act in concert with them. In doing so, he maintained that the war in Iraq destroyed the international coalition the United States needs to execute any war successfully. Obama further argued that Iraq was a distraction and that the major effort should be in Afghanistan. He added that the United States would need its NATO allies’ support in Afghanistan. He said an Obama administration would reach out to the Europeans, rebuild U.S. ties there and win greater support from them.

Though around 40 countries cooperated with the United States in Iraq, albeit many with only symbolic contributions, the major continental European powers — particularly France and Germany — refused to participate. When Obama spoke of alienating allies, he clearly meant these two countries, as well as smaller European powers that had belonged to the U.S. Cold War coalition but were unwilling to participate in Iraq and were now actively hostile to U.S. policy.

A European Rebuff

Early in his administration, Obama made two strategic decisions. First, instead of ordering an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, he adopted the Bush administration’s policy of a staged withdrawal keyed to political stabilization and the development of Iraqi security forces. While he tweaked the timeline on the withdrawal, the basic strategy remained intact. Indeed, he retained Bush’s defense secretary, Robert Gates, to oversee the withdrawal.

Second, he increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The Bush administration had committed itself to Afghanistan from 9/11 onward. But it had remained in a defensive posture in the belief that given the forces available, enemy capabilities and the historic record, that was the best that could be done, especially as the Pentagon was almost immediately reoriented and refocused on the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. Toward the end, the Bush administration began exploring — under the influence of Gen. David Petraeus, who designed the strategy in Iraq — the possibility of some sort of political accommodation in Afghanistan.

Obama has shifted his strategy in Afghanistan to this extent: He has moved from a purely defensive posture to a mixed posture of selective offense and defense, and has placed more forces into Afghanistan (although the United States still has nowhere near the number of troops the Soviets had when they lost their Afghan war). Therefore, the core structure of Obama’s policy remains the same as Bush’s except for the introduction of limited offensives. In a major shift since Obama took office, the Pakistanis have taken a more aggressive stance (or at least want to appear more aggressive) toward the Taliban and al Qaeda, at least within their own borders. But even so, Obama’s basic strategy remains the same as Bush’s: hold in Afghanistan until the political situation evolves to the point that a political settlement is possible.

Most interesting is how little success Obama has had with the French and the Germans. Bush had given up asking for assistance in Afghanistan, but Obama tried again. He received the same answer Bush did: no. Except for some minor, short-term assistance, the French and Germans were unwilling to commit forces to Obama’s major foreign policy effort, something that stands out.

Given the degree to which the Europeans disliked Bush and were eager to have a president who would revert the U.S.-European relationship to what it once was (at least in their view), one would have thought the French and Germans would be eager to make some substantial gesture rewarding the United States for selecting a pro-European president. Certainly, it was in their interest to strengthen Obama. That they proved unwilling to make that gesture suggests that the French and German relationship with the United States is much less important to Paris and Berlin than it would appear. Obama, a pro-European president, was emphasizing a war France and Germany approved of over a war they disapproved of and asked for their help, but virtually none was forthcoming.

The Russian Non-Reset

Obama’s desire to reset European relations was matched by his desire to reset U.S.-Russian relations. Ever since the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine in late 2004 and early 2005, U.S.-Russian relations had deteriorated dramatically, with Moscow charging Washington with interfering in the internal affairs of former Soviet republics with the aim of weakening Russia. This culminated in the Russo-Georgian war last August. The Obama administration has since suggested a “reset” in relations, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton actually carrying a box labeled “reset button” to her spring meeting with the Russians.

The problem, of course, was that the last thing the Russians wanted was to reset relations with the United States. They did not want to go back to the period after the Orange Revolution, nor did they want to go back to the period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Orange Revolution. The Obama administration’s call for a reset showed the distance between the Russians and the Americans: The Russians regard the latter period as an economic and geopolitical disaster, while the Americans regard it as quite satisfactory. Both views are completely understandable.

The Obama administration was signaling that it intends to continue the Bush administration’s Russia policy. That policy was that Russia had no legitimate right to claim priority in the former Soviet Union, and that the United States had the right to develop bilateral relations with any country and expand NATO as it wished. But the Bush administration saw the Russian leadership as unwilling to follow the basic architecture of relations that had developed after 1991, and as unreasonably redefining what the Americans thought of as a stable and desirable relationship. The Russian response was that an entirely new relationship was needed between the two countries, or the Russians would pursue an independent foreign policy matching U.S. hostility with Russian hostility. Highlighting the continuity in U.S.-Russian relations, plans for the prospective ballistic missile defense installation in Poland, a symbol of antagonistic U.S.-Russian relations, remain unchanged.

The underlying problem is that the Cold War generation of U.S. Russian experts has been supplanted by the post-Cold War generation, now grown to maturity and authority. If the Cold warriors were forged in the 1960s, the post-Cold warriors are forever caught in the 1990s. They believed that the 1990s represented a stable platform from which to reform Russia, and that the grumbling of Russians plunged into poverty and international irrelevancy at that time is simply part of the post-Cold War order. They believe that without economic power, Russia cannot hope to be an important player on the international stage. That Russia has never been an economic power even at the height of its influence but has frequently been a military power doesn’t register. Therefore, they are constantly expecting Russia to revert to its 1990s patterns, and believe that if Moscow doesn’t, it will collapse — which explains U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s interview in The Wall Street Journal where he discussed Russia’s decline in terms of its economic and demographic challenges. Obama’s key advisers come from the Clinton administration, and their view of Russia — like that of the Bush administration — was forged in the 1990s.

Foreign Policy Continuity Elsewhere

When we look at U.S.-China policy, we see very similar patterns with the Bush administration. The United States under Obama has the same interest in maintaining economic ties and avoiding political complications as the Bush administration did. Indeed, Hillary Clinton explicitly refused to involve herself in human rights issues during her visit to China. Campaign talk of engaging China on human rights issues is gone. Given the interests of both countries, this makes sense, but it is also noteworthy given the ample opportunity to speak to China on this front (and fulfill campaign promises) that has arisen since Obama took office (such as the Uighur riots).

Of great interest, of course, were the three great openings of the early Obama administration, to Cuba, to Iran, and to the Islamic world in general through his Cairo speech. The Cubans and Iranians rebuffed his opening, whereas the net result of the speech to the Islamic world remains unclear. With Iran we see the most important continuity. Obama continues to demand an end to Tehran’s nuclear program, and has promised further sanctions unless Iran agrees to enter into serious talks by late September.

On Israel, the United States has merely shifted the atmospherics. Both the Bush and Obama administrations demanded that the Israelis halt settlements, as have many other administrations. The Israelis have usually responded by agreeing to something small while ignoring the larger issue. The Obama administration seemed ready to make a major issue of this, but instead continued to maintain security collaboration with the Israelis on Iran and Lebanon (and we assume intelligence collaboration). Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration has not allowed the settlements to get in the way of fundamental strategic interests.

This is not a criticism of Obama. Presidents — all presidents — run on a platform that will win. If they are good presidents, they will leave behind these promises to govern as they must. This is what Obama has done. He ran for president as the antithesis of Bush. He has conducted his foreign policy as if he were Bush. This is because Bush’s foreign policy was shaped by necessity, and Obama’s foreign policy is shaped by the same necessity. Presidents who believe they can govern independent of reality are failures. Obama doesn’t intend to fail.

If you repost this article on a website, include a link to STRATFOR

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Pentagon Plans For Global Military Supremacy: U.S., NATO Could Deploy Mobile Missiles Launchers To Europe

By Rick Rozoff

Complete article at:

Global Military Supremacy
Global Research, August 22, 2009
Stop NATO

From August 17-20 the annual U.S. Space and Missile Defense Conference was conducted in Huntsville, Alabama, which hosts the headquarters of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA).

Among the over 2,000 participants were the Missile Defense Agency’s new director, Army Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. James Cartwright, commander of the Space and Missile Defense Command/Army Forces Strategic Command Army Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Administrator Charles Bolden Jr.

There were also 230 exhibitors present, among them the nation’s major arms manufacturers with an emphasis on those weapons companies specializing in global missile shield and space war projects. The presence of the head of NASA indicated that the distinction between the military and civilian uses of space is rapidly disappearing. As the Bloomberg news agency reported on the second day of this year, “President-elect Barack Obama will probably tear down long-standing barriers between the U.S.’s civilian and military space programs to speed up a mission to the moon amid the prospect of a new space race with China” and “Obama’s transition team is considering a collaboration between the Defense Department and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration….” [1] The recently appointed NASA chief, Bolden, is a retired Marine Corps general.

47,500-Pound Missile Launcher Headed To NATO Bases In Europe?

A Reuters dispatch of August 20 on the Huntsville Space and Missile Defense Conference reported that the Boeing Company’s vice president and general manager for missile defense, Greg Hyslop, announced to the conference that his company “is eyeing a 47,500-pound interceptor that could be flown to NATO bases as needed on Boeing-built C-17 cargo planes, erected quickly on a 60-foot trailer stand and taken home when judged safe to do so.”

Boeing displayed a scale-model version of a mobile “two-stage interceptor designed to be globally deployable within 24 hours….” [2]

The company executive made an allusion to the fixed-site ground-based interceptor deployment planned for Poland as being politically risky – the majority of Poles oppose it if their government doesn’t and Russian officials have persistently pledged to take countermeasures if the U.S. goes ahead with the project – and the above-cited Reuters report endorses the mobile interceptor proposal by claiming it could “blunt Russian fears of possible U.S. fixed missile-defense sites in Europe.” [3]

How substituting a mobile missile launcher “globally deployable within 24 hours” for ten missiles permanently stationed in Poland at a location known to Russia would assuage the latter’s concerns over its deterrent and retaliation capabilities being neutralized in the event of a U.S. and NATO first strike was not explained by either the Boeing official or Reuters.

Later in the same day the First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Czech Republic Tomas Pojar gave the lie to the Boeing subterfuge by insisting that a “possible U.S. mobile anti-missile shield does not threaten the U.S. plans to build a radar base on Czech soil because the system is to be a combination of fixed and mobile elements” and that “The whole system will always function based on the combination of fixed and mobile elements (including many radars) that will complement one another. It is not possible otherwise.” [4]

Missile Defense: Ruse And Reality

As regards the incontestable fact that U.S. and NATO plans for the deployment of interceptor missiles and complementary radar facilities in Europe are not and could not be designed to protect the United States and Western Europe from imaginary Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles and equally non-existent nuclear warheads, even the vice chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright was forced to concede the point at the space and missile defense conference this week.

In relation to the U.S.’s “capability to take on 15 inbound intercontinental ballistic missiles simultaneously using the 30 GBI’s [ground-based interceptors] being placed in silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California,” Cartwright in a moment of rare candor stated, “That’s a heck of a lot more than a rogue nation could fire.” [5]

To demonstrate that interceptor missiles and associated radar components of a worldwide Star Wars system – the current U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is an outgrowth of the Ronald Reagan administration’s 1983 Strategic Defense Initiative and since 2002 has been the successor organization to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization launched in 1993 – are intended for incorporation into a far wider-ranging project than what they are publicly acknowledged to be used for, at this week’s conference in Alabama MDA’s director Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly addressed one of the space facets of his agency’s plans and spoke of the inauguration of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System (STSS) which will include two demonstration satellites to be launched next month. [6]

And in respect to the ground-based components of U.S. and NATO missile shield deployments in Eastern Europe, plans for their stationing have never been disavowed by American officials, neither President Barack Obama nor Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The only reservations expressed in Washington about positioning missiles and missile radar precariously close to Russia’s borders are the proven viability and cost effectiveness of such deployments.

Broadening The Scope Of U.S.-NATO Missile Shield Plans

On July 30th Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told U.S. congressmen “The site in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic are among the options that are being considered, together with other options that might be able to perform the mission as well” and Associated Press on that date wrote that “Vershbow said the missile defense review will look at a range of options, but will not take Russia’s objection into account.” [7]

The “other options” all along have been a broader and not narrower undertaking, that of integrating American missile shield sites into a continent-wide system with NATO.

The recent recommendation of a mobile, rapid deployable interceptor missile model may well be what is intended, again to reinforce rather than supplant bilateral arrangements between the U.S. and Poland and the Czech Republic.

Almost thirty years ago to the day Washington first proposed a mobile missile initiative that if implemented might have proven to be one of the most dangerous moves in the 45-year Cold War.

MX: Washington’s First Project For Mobile Missile Launchers

In a speech on September 7, 1979 U.S. President Jimmy Carter, indicating a qualitative escalation of strategic deployments in the second half of his term that would pave the way for further aggressive actions by his successor Ronald Reagan, announced that:

“My administration is now embarked on a program to modernize and to improve the ability of our entire strategic triad, all three systems, to survive any attack. Our bomber force is being strengthened with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Our strategic submarine force is being upgraded by Trident submarines and Trident missiles. However, as a result of increasing accuracy of strategic systems, fixed land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBM’s located in silos, such as our Minuteman, are becoming vulnerable to attack. A mobile ICBM system will greatly reduce this vulnerability.”

He was referring to the MX missile system and described it in outline as one that would “consist of 200 missile transporters or launchers, each capable of rapid movement on a special roadway connecting approximately 23 horizontal shelters.”

The full scale of the project was to have included a circular railroad track on which more than 200 missiles would be rotated into 4,600 shelters along the circumference in Utah and Nevada.

During the delicate and often hair-trigger days of the Cold War when peace and the survival of the planet and its inhabitants depended not only on mutual trust but on each side – the U.S. and the Soviet Union – being able to know what the other possessed and where it possessed it, especially launchers for intercontinental ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads, Carter’s MX missile adventurism, had it implemented, may have brought the world closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than it had ever been before.

For although Carter and his grey eminence, the ruthless geopolitician and pathological Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski, employed the artifice of defending the U.S. against an alleged Soviet first strike threat, in fact they intended to confront the U.S.S.R. with almost 5,000 new sites to target. The current total Russian strategic arsenal is exactly that number.

The 1979 SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) called for both sides to reduce their delivery vehicles (ICBM silos, submarine missile-launch tubes and strategic bombers) to 2,250. That number is less than half of the missile shelters the MX project would have constructed.

The MX system and complementary nuclear weapons initiatives with NATO in Europe were intended to accomplish one or both of two objectives: To be able to win (whatever that verb could mean in the more horrifying of all contexts) a nuclear war and to force the Soviet Union to spend itself into bankruptcy, the dual goal that was pursued even more assertively by Carter’s replacement Ronald Reagan and his Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) project begun in 1983. (Reagan would transform the MX project into what only his administration could call the Peacekeeper fixed-site missile, each carrying 10 re-entry vehicles armed with 300-kiloton warheads.)

1979: NATO’s Expanded Nuclear Deployments In Europe

The month after Carter announced his commitment to the MX missile program, in October of 1979 NATO adopted a resolution that recommended modernization of NATO’s long-range theater-nuclear forces. 108 Pershing II missile and 464 ground-launched cruise missile launchers were to be deployed in Western Europe “To enhance the deterrence posture of NATO and to provide for a contingency in which the actual use of NATO’s nuclear-capable systems might become necessary….” [8]

The beginning of the Soviet Union’s deployment of SS-20 medium-range missiles was the justification for the stationing of an additional 572 nuclear warheads in Europe. How serious a threat Soviet missile attacks on Western Europe, much less the United States, were was demonstrated twelve years later when the nation unilaterally dissolved itself.

In December a meeting of NATO defense and foreign ministers formalized the plans and NATO Secretary General Joseph Luns revealed that the Pershing IIs and nuclear cruise missiles would be based in the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Britain and possibly Belgium and the Netherlands.

In June of 1980 the NATO Nuclear Planning Group met in Norway and “Following a briefing by the United States Secretary of Defence [Harold Brown], Ministers discussed strategic policy and planning concerning central strategic and theatre nuclear forces in support of the Alliance. Against this background, Ministers noted the continuing importance of improving the effectiveness of the full spectrum of Alliance forces, i.e. conventional, theatre nuclear and strategic nuclear forces, and of maintaining the essential linkage between these elements of the NATO triad.” [9]

One of the chief purposes of the founding of NATO in April of 1949 – months before the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb in August of that year – was to allow the U.S. to station some of the nuclear weapons of which it had a monopoly in Europe. Although Washington’s arsenal of nuclear warheads in Europe was drastically reduced after the end of the Cold War, American nuclear weapons remain on the continent, by some estimates several hundred.

NATO’s Supreme Guarantee: Strategic Nuclear Forces

NATO’s Strategic Concept adopted in 1999 states that “The supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States….Nuclear forces based in Europe and committed to NATO provide an essential political and military link between the European and the North American members of the Alliance. The Alliance will therefore maintain adequate nuclear forces in Europe.”

A new version is being crafted currently, with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright heading up the group preparing it. In announcing the launching of that initiative, NATO reiterated that “The Strategic Concept is the authoritative statement of the Alliance’s objectives and provides the highest level of guidance on the political and military means to be used in achieving them.” [10]

Each summit and several ministerial and Military Committee meetings over the past decade have reaffirmed the Alliance’s dedication to the deployment and use of nuclear weapons in Europe.

As one of Turkey’s main daily newspapers, Zaman, said this July 31, “NATO rules allow for the possible use of nuclear weapons against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran….” [11]

A Time magazine report last year claimed that “The U.S. keeps an estimated 350 thermonuclear bombs in six NATO countries. In four of those — Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands — the weapons are stored at the host nation’s air bases, where they are guarded by specially trained U.S. military personnel.” [12]

When Boeing announced that it is prepared to assist in moving a nearly 50,000-pound mobile missile launcher – deployable internationally within 24 hours – to various NATO bases in Europe, it’s important to recall that many of those bases house nuclear warheads.

Pentagon’s, NATO’s New Bases In Eastern Europe: Threat To Russia

Were an interceptor missile – launched from a fixed site in Poland or from a proposed mobile missile launcher most anywhere in Europe – to approach Russia’s border by accident or design, the effect would be the same as that warned of by Russian military officials when the George W. Bush administration announced plans to equip ICBMs with conventional warheads.

No one in Moscow would have the luxury of waiting to see if a mushroom cloud blossomed over the Russian capital. The nation’s political and military leaders would do what their counterparts in any other nation, the U.S. most assuredly, would do. They would assume the worst and respond accordingly. That is, they would retaliate with strategic forces.

There are no NATO bases per se although there are bases in several European nations from Britain to Turkey that have been used by the bloc over for decades, and nowadays military bases in most every part of Europe are at the disposal of NATO collectively and the U.S. individually. Over the past ten years numerous new ones have become available in Eastern Europe, particularly in nations that border the Baltic and Black Seas, as does Russia in both cases.

American and NATO missile shield plans for Europe, inextricably connected as they are with a global interceptor missile network and the militarization of space, don’t exist in a strategic vacuum.

Verification Safeguards, Weapons Limitations: U.S. To Let START Die Russia Fears Nuclear First Strike

This year has marked several parallel moves by the West to achieve worldwide military – including nuclear – supremacy, especially ahead of the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) this December 5.

Two years ago Reuters reported that “The United States plans to let a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia expire in 2009 and replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons limits, a senior US official says.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Paula DeSutter is quoted as asserting that the major provisions of the treaty “are no longer necessary. We don’t believe we’re in a place where we need have to have the detailed lists (of weapons) and verification measures.” [13]

A Russian commentary of last December made the connection between the lack of a replacement for the START agreement and Washington’s missile shield designs and warned that “Lack of such agreement and deployment of a U.S. missile defense system may undermine strategic parity between the Russian Federation and the U.S. The potential enemy’s considerable superiority in the number of warheads is greatly increasing the risk of a disarming first strike, and the surviving missiles may not be enough to penetrate missile defenses and inflict unacceptable damage on the aggressor.” [14]

This March the Council on Foreign Relations conducted an interview with Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer (who is of a decidedly pro-Western bent) in which he said that Russia believes “that nuclear missiles will be deployed in Poland near Russia and these nuclear missiles will have also a first-strike capability and could hit Moscow before [Russia's response] could get airborne, so this is going to actually be seen not so much as missile defense as a deployment of first-strike capability.

“The Russian military has been telling its political leaders that this missile plan is actually not what the Americans say it is. The Russian military says that these missiles will be nuclear armed because the Russian military doesn’t believe that non-nuclear defensive missiles are possible.” [15]

Prompt Global Strike: Missiles To Strike Anywhere On Earth In 35 Minutes

Regarding another U.S. plan to upset global military parity and further endanger world peace – the Prompt Global Strike initiative approved by Congress two years ago – it has been characterized as being able to “provide the US with the capability to strike virtually anywhere on the face of the earth within 60 minutes.

“Experts warn this could unleash a new spiral of the arms race and [is] fraught with unpredictable consequences.

“The Americans’ action is seen as a threat to everyone.

“They can take any potential enemy, Russia included, in their crosshairs and if treaties like START 1 and others are not extended, there will be no more curbs left…to prevent the development of new deadly weapons all leading to a new round of the arms race.” [16]

Another warning concerning Prompt Global Strike was issued by a Russian source two years ago: “The programme has been prompted by a US new strategy in the making, a strategy that proceeds from building a potential for delivering a first strike involving non-nuclear arms anywhere in the world within just one hour’s time.

“Two projects are due to be carried out within the programme.

“The first has to do with arming Trident sea-based missiles with conventional charges, while the second is about building a new super speed cruise missile.” [17]

Shortly afterward a major British newspaper in an article titled “US plans new space weapons against China” revealed that “Congress awarded $150 million for the Falcon project [hypersonic technology vehicle] and its associated prompt global strike programme. A defence industry source said it was likely that hundreds of millions more were being spent on space warfare ‘away from the public view.’

The ‘global strike’ platform would give America the ‘forward presence it requires around the world without the need for bases outside the US.

“The Pentagon is spending billions of dollars on new forms of space warfare to counter the growing risk of missile attack from rogue states and the ‘satellite killer’ capabilities of China.” [18]

Prompt Global Strike includes two main weapons, a conventional strike missile and an advanced hypersonic weapon, “a high-speed, missile-launched vehicle that could hit targets anywhere on Earth within 35 minutes.” [19]

Another Russian alarm was sounded at about the same time, one whose operative word is orbital: “Despite the obvious threat to civilization the United States may soon acquire orbital weapons under the Prompt Global Strike plan. They will give it the capacity to deal a conventional strike virtually anywhere in the world within an hour.” [20]

This year has been a portentous one so far in several other regards when it comes to the Pentagon’s plans for uncontested global military domination.

U.S. Navy Launches Missile Defense Command, Air Force Consolidates Nuclear Global Strike Command, Air Force Space Command Establishes Cyberwarfare Unit, MDA Boosts Laser Warfare Capacity

On April 30 the U.S. Navy established an Air and Missile Defense Command. Speaking on the occasion at the Naval Support Facility in Dahlgren, Virginia, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Adm. Robert F. Willard said, “We’re on a quest to field a naval capability that is equally adept servicing national missile defense of the United States, regional missile defense for our allies and friends abroad and theater defense for our forward fighting forces.” [21]

The Aegis combat system which has equipped the U.S. and its allies (to date Norway, Spain, Australia, Japan and South Korea) with sea-based interceptor radar and missiles is administered by the U.S. Navy.

On August 7 the U.S. Air Force launched a Global Strike Command which combines all American ICBMs and nuclear-capable bombers, which includes new generation super-stealth warplanes capable of evading the radar and penetrating the air defenses of countries targeted for devastating first strikes.

Eleven days later, August 18, the U.S. Air Force Space Command “activated a new unit…to better organize space and cyberspace capabilities”

To illustrate what purposes space and cyberspace are to play in future warfighting plans, the Space Command’s top military officer, Gen. C. Robert Kehler, said of his command that it “is committed to organizing and equipping the 24th Air Force so it can be a premiere organization dedicated to supporting combatant commanders.” [22]

The United States Army Space and Missile Defense Command has boosted activity on its High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico and on August 10 the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency employed a modified Boeing 747 passenger airliner to conduct the most advanced test yet of its Airborne Laser missile defense system and the Missile Defense Agency announced plans to next use the weapon against intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) during their boost phase.

MEADS: NATO And Pentagon To Cover Europe With Layered Missile Shield

Returning to Europe and so-called missile defense, the Obama administration has requested almost $600 million in funding for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) for next year and “Congress is on track to support the Administration’s request.” [23] MEADS is a joint U.S.-German-Italian-NATO theater interceptor missile program to upgrade current Patriot and Nike Hercules systems in Europe under NATO management and “will provide capabilities beyond any other fielded or planned air and missile defense system. It will be easily deployed to a theater of operation.” [24]

“The U.S. provides 58 percent of funding with Germany offering 25 percent and Italy and other NATO members contributing 17 percent. MEADS is designed to provide air defense from ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.” [25]

MEADS is to consist of:

•A sophisticated X-band radar;
•A surveillance radar with 360 degree coverage;
•A tactical operations center;
•Launchers; and
•The next-generation Patriot interceptor. [26]

The upgraded Patriot is the new Lockheed Martin “hit-to-kill” PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor, one which exceeds the range and accuracy of the standard PAC-3 which itself covers seven times the area of the original Patriot and has double the striking distance.

“MEADS International, the joint venture executing the contract, announced on August 5 that the system had completed is component-level critical design reviews and that MEADS will begin system-level reviews.

“If the U.S. moves forward with the systems for the Czech Republic and Poland, however, it is reasonable to demand that the Germans and Italians express support for the fielding of the long-range missile defenses for U.S. and Europe….MEADS will provide a transportable missile and air defense capability. This means the system will be able to accompany expeditionary ground forces to wherever they are deployed and protect these forces against air and missile attacks. Thus, MEADS will be a critical element of alliance force projection capabilities.

“MEADS is interoperable with other defense systems. MEADS is not a standalone system. It can work in association with other missile defense systems, including the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system and the Aegis sea-based missile defense systems….MEADS, as with the longer-range defenses that should be fielded in the Czech Republic and Poland, may be able to make a material contribution the Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense system that NATO planners are currently designing.” [27]

Any hopes that a new post-Cold War order, a new century or a new American administration would herald a more peaceful and less dangerous world are being gravely challenged.

Notes

1) Bloomberg News, January 2, 2009
2) Reuters, August 20, 2009
3) Ibid
4) Czech News Agency, August 20, 2009
5) Reuters, August 20, 2009
6) Aviation Week, August 20, 2009
7) Associated Press, July 30, 2009
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 457,
No. 1, 78-87 (1981)
9) NATO Nuclear Planning Group, June 3-4, 1980
10) North Atlantic Treaty Organization, July 8, 2009
11) Zaman, July 31, 2009
12) Time, June 19, 2008
13) Reuters, May 23, 2007
14) Russian Information Agency Novosti, December 12, 2008
15) Council on Foreign Relations, March 18, 2009
16) Voice of Russia, September 12, 2007
17) Voice of Russia, August 7, 2007
18) Daily Telegraph, November 14, 2007
19) Washington Times, November 27, 2009
20) Russian Information Agency Novosti,
November 20, 2007
21) United States Navy, April 30, 2009
22) U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, August 19, 2009
23) Heritage Foundation, August 17, 2009
24) Wikipedia
25) Aviation Week, August 20, 2009
26) Heritage Foundation, August 17, 2009
27) Ibid

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RIGHT-WING MILITIAS ARE RESURGING — WILL THEY PRODUCE MORE TERRORISTS LIKE TIMOTHY MCVEIGH?

By David A. Love, The Progressive

After a decade out of the spotlight, the militant rightwing “Patriot” movement is on the rise.

RIGHT-WING MILITIAS

==========

Today’s Gasoline Prices

Monday, August 24, 2009

RETAIL GASOLINE: (Self Service Prices per Gallon, Including Taxes) This report contains price estimates for gasoline sold in ozone non-attainment areas which require the sale of reformulated gasoline (RFG) as designated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and Conventional areas which includes both
attainment areas and carbon monoxide non-attainment areas.

Mogas web site url
Today’s Gasoline Prices

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Congressman Paul’s Texas Straight Talk: The Sunlight Rule

Monday, August 24, 2009

We Need Sunlight to Disinfect the Legislative Process!

“During August recess, many legislators have heard an unexpected amount of discontent from their constituents about what is happening on Capitol Hill, particularly regarding healthcare. Some people are justifiably terrified at what the government could do to healthcare, should it get its claws even further into it. Others demand a public option for health insurance and are adamant that healthcare be treated as yet other absolute entitlement. One thing everyone agrees on is that the final bill needs to be read and understood by all legislators before a vote is taken. To any American, this is common sense. In Washington, that is unlikely to happen…”

Click here to read the full article:

Congressman Paul

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White House Deals With PhRMA

August 14, 2009

Billy Tauzin “is chief of PhRMA, the biggest pharmaceutical trade group. In the 2008 campaign, Obama ran a television ad pillorying Tauzin for his role in preventing Medicare from negotiating for lower drug prices. Last week the Los Angeles Times reported — and the New York Times confirmed — that Tauzin, an active player in White House health care negotiations, had secured a behind-closed-doors flip-flop, enlisting the administration to push for continued protection of drug prices.”
– Frank Rich, The New York Times, 8/9/09

See the Obama campaign ad denouncing Tauzin: Tauzin

JOHN GEYMAN, jgeyman@u.washington.edu

http://www.pnhp.org/blog/author/john-geyman-md

Geyman is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington. He is past president of Physicians for a National Health Program and author of the book “Shredding the Social Contract: The Privatization of Medicare.”

He said today: “Whatever the details of who said what in a closed meeting we’re not supposed to know about, this is a classic ‘surrender in advance’ policy failure corrupted by corporate money and self-interest. Despite its rhetoric, PhRMA profiteers on the backs of sick people and taxpayers, and we will have to come to a policy whereby drug prices can be negotiated as the VA already does so effectively.”

From: Institute for Public Accuracy

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“Death book” distortions abound on Fox News Sunday

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace hosted former Bush administration aide Jim Towey to discuss his recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “The Death Book for Veterans,” and in doing so promoted numerous distortions about an end-of-life educational booklet used by the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). In addition to forwarding the smear that the booklet is a “death book,” Wallace promoted Towey’s distortion that the booklet encourages veterans to “pull the plug” — it doesn’t; Wallace and Towey both claimed that the Bush administration suspended use of the booklet — it didn’t; and Wallace claimed that a VHA document requires doctors to direct veterans to the booklet — it doesn’t.

Read More

Death book

(click here to view)

Ed Stein Self Aug 18, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Tom Toles: cradle to the grave
(d.yimg.com)

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The Folks Who Missed the Largest Financial Bubble in the History of the World Are Confident That the Recession is Over

August 21, 2009

That would be the world’s central bankers who are convened at their annual meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Four years ago this same group had a Greenspan retrospective in which they debated whether Alan Greenspan was the greatest central banker of all time. It might have been worth noting the track record of this group — the people most responsible for the current economic crisis — when the NYT gives us their assessment of the world economy.

It might also have been worth noting the greatest claim to fame of Frederick Mishkin, a former Fed governor cited in the article. Mr. Mishkin wrote an analysis of Iceland’s economy in 2006 assuring the world that it was thriving.

Complete article at:

The Beat the Press Weekly Roundup Beat the Press

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CNN: Michael Jackson’s Death Ruled a Primetime Special

Andy Borowitz
BorowitzReport.com
August 24, 2009

CNN is reporting that the death of the singer Michael Jackson has been ruled a primetime special, network sources confirm.

“Based on the latest report of the Los Angeles coroner, we are ruling Mr. Jackson’s death a primetime special to be aired at 9 PM eastern, 8 central,” a CNN spokesperson said.

Sources close to the Jackson investigation were waiting in recent days to see whether the singer’s death would be ruled a primetime special or merely a series of updates spread across the network’s schedule.

But with the news that his death had been ruled a primetime schedule, the network was already hard at work teaching Larry King how to pronounce all the drugs found in Michael Jackson’s body. More here.

Follow Andy Borowitz on Twitter: Borowitz Report

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three thousand words

(click here to view)

Pat Bagley Salt Lake Tribune Aug 25, 2009 EditorialCartoonists.com

Tom Tomorrow: American bankers: Fighting the good fight
(www.salon.com/)

Matt Bors: great national debate
(www.mattbors.com/)