Will the Washington Crew Ever Notice the Housing Bubble?
By Dean Baker | The Guardian Unlimited | March 30, 2010
Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the rest of the crew running economic policy somehow could not see the housing bubble as it grew to more than $8 trillion. It really should have been hard to miss. Nationwide house prices had just tracked overall inflation for 100 years from 1895 to 1995. Suddenly in 1995, coinciding with the stock bubble, house prices began to hugely outpace the overall rate of inflation.
There was no explanation for this run-up in house prices on either the supply or demand side of the housing market. Furthermore, there was no unusual increase in rents, providing further confirmation that fundamentals were not behind the increase in house prices. Finally, in contrast to a story of housing shortages driving up house prices, vacancy rates were at record levels.
But the super-sleuths at the Fed, Treasury and other centers of decision-making just could not see the bubble. They couldn’t even see the flood of bogus mortgages being spit out by the millions and packaged into mortgage-backed securities and more complex instruments.
As a result of this astounding incompetence, we are now living through the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Because Greenspan and Bernanke and the rest messed up, tens of millions of workers are out of work. Close to one in four mortgages are underwater and the baby boom cohort has seen much of its wealth destroyed as they reach the edge of retirement. In short, as Joe Biden would say, this was a f***ing big mistake.
Remarkably, the folks in charge seem to have learned zip. They still have no clue about the housing bubble. How else can anyone explain the Obama Administration’s latest proposal for helping out underwater homeowners?
If the point is to help homeowners then there are two incredibly simple questions that must be asked:
- Are homeowners paying less under the plan than they would to rent the same place?
- Are homeowners going to end up with equity in their home?
These are the key questions, because if we can’t answer “yes” to at least one of them, then we are not helping homeowners. If we can’t answer “yes” to at least one of these questions, then taxpayer dollars being put into the program are helping banks, not homeowners.
Unfortunately, it seems no one in the Obama Administration has yet been told about the housing bubble. There is no evidence that they ever considered these questions in designing the latest policy to “help” homeowners.
The program will potentially pay banks and loan servicers up to $12 billion to write off principle on mortgages. In exchange, the government will guarantee new mortgages through the Federal Housing Authority (FHA). Those familiar with the housing market will note that house prices are still falling and must fall by close to 15 percent to get back to their long-term trend. If house prices continue to fall, then the vast majority of the homeowners that take part in this program are likely to never accrue any equity in their home.
Furthermore, the FHA is likely to incur substantial losses on these loan guarantees, as homeowners will again find themselves underwater and many will be unable to pay off their mortgages when they sell their home. Because the FHA hugely expanded its role in the housing market in the last two years, without paying attention to falling prices, it now is below its minimum capital requirement. It will suffer additional losses and fall further below its capital requirements as a result of this program. By the way, the losses to the FHA and the taxpayers are money in the pockets of the banks, but no reason to mention that detail.
For anyone who can see an $8 trillion housing bubble, this is all as clear as day. There is nothing complex about a story in which the government buys banks out of bad mortgages. But the Washington policymakers could not see an $8 trillion housing bubble before it wrecked the economy and apparently still haven’t noticed it even after the fact.
It’s great to know that there are good-paying jobs for people with no discernible skills. But do those jobs have to involve running the economy?
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy. See article on original website.
Carbon Emissionaries
Anthony Watts | March 31, 2010
In 2005, the European Union (EU) put into place a carbon trading scheme. Prices for carbon permits promptly plunged, and have remained depressed since then. The price for a permit to emit a tonne of CO2 went from 21.59 Euros in 2005, to 17.28 in 2006, to 0.68 in 2007, to 2.16 in 2008, to 13.03 in 2009. Today, however, you will be glad to know that some academics declared the scheme a resounding success …
Say what? Here’s what Reuters News Service had to say:
(Reuters) – The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is a success and its flaws have not harmed its basic aim of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, multi-national research showed on Friday.
Experts at French state bank Caisse des Depots, the Paris-Dauphine University, the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research in the United States and University College Dublin collaborated to evaluate the scheme’s trial period, which has widely been viewed as a failure.
The EU’s flagship carbon trading scheme requires companies to buy permits for each tonne of carbon they emit. Carbon output is capped and the level is lowered year by year.
The scheme’s first trading phase ran from 2005 to 2007. Installations in the 27-nation bloc were over-allocated with carbon permits and the carbon price fell to zero.
The research concluded that although there were many problems in the first phase, they were overcome and did not hamper the scheme’s ultimate objective of reducing emissions. … SOURCE
Now, as some of you might have noticed, I’m a suspicious fellow and I like to run the numbers myself. So, what numbers should we be looking at here?
After some thought, I decided that I would look at the change from the four years prior to the institution of the carbon trading scheme (2001 through 2004), to the first four years of the scheme (2005 through 2008). [Figures for 2009 are not yet available] That would let me see if things improved or got worse.
The most logical measures to look at, it seemed to me, were per capita fuel use and CO2 emissions . (Excel spreadsheet) Using per capita figures removes the effects of population changes . If we just looked at fuel use, for example, a population increase would affect the fuel use. I didn’t want to be measuring the effect of population changes, so I used per capita figures.
Using those measures, I decided to compare the EU with the US. Their economies are of a comparable size and development. Since the US is the global CO2 pariah, and has no carbon trading scheme, that would give me a good baseline to compare with the EU performance.
Without further prologue, here are my results:
Figure 1. Percentage change from the period before the EU carbon trading scheme (average 2001-2004) to the period after the carbon trading scheme (average 2005-2008). All measurements are per capita.
By every single measure, the US has outperformed the EU. And the most telling point is that per capita, EU carbon dioxide emissions have increased since 2005 when the scheme started, while US carbon dioxide emissions have decreased. For a scheme designed to reduce emissions, that’s not good news.
The US did better by every measure than the EU, and did it without any restriction on carbon. Now perhaps some folks in a think-tank somewhere call that a whacking great success for the trading scheme … but not on my planet. Call me crazy, but my conclusion is that the EU carbon trading scheme was a failure.
Museum of Tolerance Desecrates Graves
By John Taylor | March 31, 2010
Rabbi Marvin Hier’s Los Angeles-based Museum of Tolerance, part of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, is building a $150 million branch in Jerusalem. The Museum, whose mission is confronting “global anti-Semitism, extremism, hate … and promoting unity and respect among Jews and people of all faiths,” is being built atop part of the Mamilla Muslim cemetery, some of whose burials date to the 11th century. The graves, which may contain the remains of soldiers who fought with Saladin against the Crusaders, are being uprooted to make way for Rabbi Hier’s new museum.
More than a few commentators, including a number of Israelis and some of Israel’s friends in this country, have argued strongly that a Museum of Tolerance built literally upon the bones of Palestine’s indigenous Arab population is hypocritical, intolerant, and wholly absurd. A case could be made, however, that tearing out centuries-old Muslim graves and replacing them with an American-financed Museum of Tolerance symbolizes Zionist policy and practice toward the Palestinians from the birth of modern political Zionism a century ago down to the present day. It also exemplifies America’s role as an enabler of Israeli ethnic cleansing.
The new building certainly mirrors one of Zionism’s key objectives: driving out the Arabs and replacing them with newly minted Israelis from around the world. As Moshe Dayan once put it, “Jewish villages were built in the place of Arab villages. … Nahalal arose in the place of Mahlul; Kibbutz Gvat in the place of Jibta; Kibbutz Sarid in the place of Huneifis; and Kefar Yehushu’a in the place of Tal al-Shuman. There is not one single place built in this country that did not have a former Arab population.” So even today only an Israel-centric narrative seems to matter, and all else in the Holy Land can be consigned to the dustbin of history, or, in the case of human remains from the Mamilla cemetery, excavated hastily with pickaxes and sledgehammers and tossed into cardboard boxes or crushed under the treads of bulldozers [.pdf].
Rabbi Hier, when trying to justify the choice of site for his Museum of Tolerance, likes to argue that it is being built on a municipal parking lot, not a cemetery, and that, in any case, Muslim religious authorities “desanctified” the area years ago. He also relishes saying that work on the museum proceeded only after the Israeli Supreme Court approved the project (true) and that that occurred when the Israeli Antiquities Authority released the site for construction upon completion of its excavations (not true).
A parking area was in fact part of the site selected for Hier’s project, but the Mamilla cemetery’s burials lay intact under its pavement. The chief archaeologist assigned to the museum site by the Antiquities Authority, Gideon Suleimani, declared [.pdf] after test pits were dug in November 2005 that “the entire area ‘abounded with graves,’ and that under the parking lot there was a crowded Muslim cemetery, containing 3 or 4 layers of graves.”
After starting to excavate the entire site, Suleimani recorded that representatives of the Simon Wiesenthal Center “who were seeking to establish facts on the ground” would visit the site “on a daily basis” to urge that excavations proceed more rapidly “to prevent the Muslims from halting the project.” These same representatives, according to Suleimani, even threatened to sue the Antiquities Authority if the project were delayed. The excavators began working 12 hours a day, six days a week.
With only 10 percent of the site completely excavated, 250 burials properly recorded, 200 skeletons exposed, but an estimated 2,000 graves remaining, archaeological work was halted. Unbeknownst to Suleimani, his superiors at the Antiquities Authority had notified the Supreme Court that “almost the entire area of the excavation has been released for construction, because it contains no further scientific data.” Hier’s museum received the Supreme Court’s blessing. All Suleimani could do was swear out an affidavit accusing his superiors of “archaeological crime” and the destruction of “an opportunity to study the history of Jerusalem over the last millennium.”
As for Rabbi Hier’s assertion that an Islamic court had desanctified the Mamilla cemetery in 1964, it is perhaps worth noting that Arabs in Israel were under martial law until 1966 and that the Israeli government appointed the members of that court. A more recent Islamic court ruling declared that Muslim cemeteries could never be officially abandoned [.pdf]. It seems a bit presumptive of Rabbi Hier to hold himself out as an expert on Sharia law. Clearly his opinions will never carry any weight with the Jerusalem Palestinians whose ancestors’ remains are being disinterred to make way for the Museum of Tolerance. One might also observe that the Wiesenthal Center, having spent years lobbying to expel a Carmelite nunnery from the grounds of Auschwitz, is somewhat inconsistent when it comes to deciding what constitutes desecration of graves.
Many will acknowledge that there is a painful conflict when the Wiesenthal Center builds a museum of tolerance atop an ancient cemetery. Hatred increases, and the stated objectives of the institution are likely to be frustrated. Somewhat less obvious, however, are the conflicting goals of the Wiesenthal Center itself. The Center’s “primary mission is to fight racism, prejudice, and discrimination in all its forms and to promote civic discourse, social justice, tolerance, and mutual understanding” and to “teach the lessons of the Holocaust.” But along with these worthy objectives [.pdf] comes another goal – “to stand by Israel,” which in practice means defending Israel from any and all criticism, no matter how justified, about the way it treats Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.
For example, Hier fully approves the now two-year-long Israeli siege of Gaza, which makes life miserable for the 1.5 million Palestinians confined on that small strip of land, the vast majority of whom are totally innocent of launching attacks on Israel. According to Hier, the tight blockade began when Gazans began to fire rockets into southern Israel, although Israel actually put the siege in place after the people of Gaza had the temerity to choose Hamas to represent them. Further, Hier supported last year’s ground campaign in Gaza, during which Israel attacked critical civilian infrastructure and UN facilities (including warehouses and schools), killed 1,400 people, and destroyed thousands of homes.
The language Hier chooses to justify the invasion is most revealing. He states that “even after Auschwitz” the world resents Israel defending itself, and he implies that rebuilding Gaza with Hamas in power would be akin to letting “a Fourth Reich … continue the policies of Adolf Hitler” and that the world’s reaction to the Israeli invasion shows that “the real lessons of World War II have yet to be learned.” Can Rabbi Hier actually be using the Holocaust as a weapon to defend Israel’s massive overkill and inhumane policies in Gaza? Had Hier himself and other friends of Israel actually learned the lessons of Holocaust, they would be supporting the Palestinians in Gaza, most of whom are cold, hungry, living in miserable conditions, unemployed, and desperate.
Rabbi Hier is very sensitive to accusations that Israel has established an apartheid regime on the West Bank, and the Wiesenthal Center has attacked Jimmy Carter’s book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. Although this is not the place for a nuanced discussion of the similarities between the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the now-defunct South African regime, suffice it to say that Palestinians under occupation live a very different existence from their Israeli settler neighbors. Palestinians are subject to Israeli military rule, their movements are controlled by a network of check points, their lands and water resources are being stolen, and they have virtually no political rights. If the Wiesenthal Center’s “primary mission is to fight racism, prejudice, and discrimination in all its forms,” it has manifestly failed on the West Bank and in Gaza.
The biggest difference between apartheid South Africa and Israel is that the Israelis depend upon a phalanx of friends abroad to permit them to circumvent international law and generally accepted standards of morality and fair play in their relationship with the Palestinians. The Simon Wiesenthal Center may claim the moral high ground, but it is just one of a large number of well-financed American institutions enabling Israeli bad behavior. That bad behavior has the most unfortunate additional effect of creating enemies for the United States across the Muslim world.
Atlantic conveyor belt – still going strong and will be the day after tomorrow
March 29, 2010 | Watts Up With That?
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.
A slow-down – dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow – is projected by some models of climate change.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C warmer than they would otherwise be.
It forms part of a larger movement of water, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is itself one component of the global thermohaline system of currents.
Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible – just a lot of variability on short timescales.
The satellite record going back to 1993 did suggest a small increase in flow, although the researchers cannot be sure it is significant.
“The changes we’re seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle,” said Josh Willis from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
“The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling.”
Short measures
The first observations suggesting the circulation was slowing down emerged in 2005, in research from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
Using an array of detectors across the Atlantic and comparing its readings against historical records, scientists suggested the volume of cold water returning southwards could have fallen by as much as 30% in half a century – a significant decline.
The surface water sinks in the Arctic and flows back southwards at the bottom of the ocean, driving the circulation.
However, later observations by the same team showed that the strength of the flow varied hugely on short timescales – from one season to the next, or even shorter.
But they have not found any clear trend since 2004.
===
Read the rest of the story at the BBC here
Or feel free to laugh at this movie:
James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed
Excerpts from Guardian interview with James Lovelock | March 29, 2010
Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the stolen CRU emails:
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.
…
Careers have been ended by this affair and the reputation of the institution [CRU] will go down for a while. It’s sad because there are some good people there. They have to clean their house if they know people are behaving badly. They have got a rotten job ahead, but it will blow over in a few years.
…
I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn’t mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don’t believe me go out and do the measurements yourself.
On the over-reliance on computer modeling:
I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they’re not complete models. They’re based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don’t take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don’t see how they can accurately predict the climate. It’s not the computational power that we lack today, but the ability to take what we know and convert it into a form the computers will understand. I think we’ve got too high an opinion of ourselves. We’re not that bright an animal. We stumble along very nicely and it’s amazing what we do do sometimes, but we tend to be too hubristic to notice the limitations. If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it’s a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it.
On climate sceptics:
The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven’t got the physics worked out yet. One of the chiefs once said to me that he agreed that they should include the biology in their models, but he said they hadn’t got the physics right yet and it would be five years before they do. So why on earth are the politicians spending a fortune of our money when we can least afford it on doing things to prevent events 50 years from now? They’ve employed scientists to tell them what they want to hear. The Germans and the Danes are making a fortune out of renewable energy. I’m puzzled why politicians are not a bit more pragmatic about all this.
We do need scepticism about the predictions about what will happen to the climate in 50 years, or whatever. It’s almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it’s wrong to do it.
On the influence of vested interests:
We shouldn’t let the lobbies influence science. Whatever criticism might befall the IPCC and the UEA, they’re nothing as bad as lobbyists who are politically motivated and who will manipulate data or select data to make their political point. For example, it’s deplorable for the BBC whenever one of these issues comes up to go and ask what one of the green lobbyists thinks of it. Sometimes their view might be quite right, but it might also be pure propaganda. This is wrong.
…
I don’t know enough about carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible. We have this crazy idea that we are setting an example to the world. What we’re doing is trying to make money out of the world by selling them renewable gadgetry and green ideas. It might be worthy from the national interest, but it is moonshine if you think what the Chinese and Indians are doing [in terms of emissions]. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.
Top Scientist Assesses Climate Change Emails
Mar 28, 2010 John O’Sullivan
Dr. John P. Costella examined 1079 leaked emails and 72 other documents from the computers of the UK’s Climatic Reseach Unit to reveal ‘shocking misconduct and fraud.’
Dr. Costella’s study has been widely accepted by all sides of the global warming debate as a faultless assessment. Climategate publicly began on November 19, 2009 allegedly pointing to a conspiracy to fraudulently bolster greenhouse gas theory. The British mainstream media, more than any other nation, have widely reported on the scandal.
The Australian physicist documents, step by step, flawed scientific procedure, over-arching concerns with personal and professional interests and how an elite of climatologists discussed immorally securing ‘research’ funding and evading tax payments. The emails cover correspondence between international climatologists over a 13-year period up to November 2009.
Does the evidence point to climate crimes?
Yes, as reported in The Times of London ‘University tried to mislead MPs on climate change e-mails’ (February 27, 2010) referring to the decision of the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Only the statute of limitations thwarted criminal charges on breaches of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), while further issues of serious fraud are yet to be decided. Examples of specific quotations most often referred to from those leaked emails include evidence supportive of:
(1.) Manipulation of evidence:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” [Jones: CRU email 942777075.txt, Nov. 16 1999]
(2.) Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.” [Trenberth: CRU email 1255352257.txt, October 12, 2009]
(3.) Intentional conspiracy to destroy evidence:
“Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis. Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Jones: CRU email1212073451.txt May 29, 2008]
(4.) Attempts to disguise the inconvenient truth of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP):
“I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1000 years ago.” [Briffa: CRU email 938018124.txt (Sep. 22, 1999)]
“I do find the dismissal of the Medieval Warm Period as a meaningful global event to be grossly premature and probably wrong.” [Cook: CRU email 988831541.txt (May 2, 2001)]
(5.) Suppression of dissent from the peer review process:
“ I think we have to stop considering “Climate Research” as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor.” [Jones: CRU email 1047388489.txt March 11, 2003]
Who Has Been Implicated in the Global Warming Scandal?
A clique of climate scientists central to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are implicated: Professor Phil Jones, ‘lead conspirator’ in the United Kingdom; Professor Michael Mann, the ‘lead conspirator’ in the United States; Tom Wigley, older ‘conspirator’ who becomes increasingly worried about the unfolding scandal; Keith Briffa, an older conspirator whose ‘blunders lead the others to all but abandon him.’
Also included are Ben Santer, a ‘dangerously arrogant and naive young conspirator’ in the U.S. as well as other conspirators of varying degrees of complicity and integrity.
What Fallout Has Occurred Since the Climategate Scandal Broke?
Dr. Costella concluded that the “climate science” community was a façade and that “their vitriolic rebuffs of sensible arguments of mathematics, statistics, and indeed scientific common sense were not the product of scientific rigor at all, but merely self-protection at any cost.”
There has been worldwide condemnation for the unethical conduct of the discredited researchers. In the United States a raft of civil lawsuits opposing federal policy based on the alleged fraudulent results of these researchers has ensued. Climate sceptics have called for a moratorium on implementation of any further expensive ecological policies until the courts resolve the matter.
The IPCC has admitted errors have been made after subsequent revelations known as Glaciergate, Amazongate, Australiagate, Africate, Inquirygate, etc.
Internet revolution in Venezuela
By Eva Golinger | March 26, 2010
Despite critics’ exaggerated outcries and accusations in the international media alleging Internet censorship, President Chavez announced a new government-sponsored program to promote Internet usage and cyber communication throughout Venezuela.
Venezuela has made headlines recently in international media for alleged threats to freedom of expression, this time directed at the Internet. But as in the past, many of these accusations against the Chavez administration that spread contagiously throughout mass media outlets and are tweeted and blogged in cyberspace at the speed of light, are just not true.
Press agencies and major world newspapers, such as the New York Times, El Pais and The Guardian, were quick to react to statements made by President Hugo Chavez two weeks ago regarding a website that had maliciously reported the murders of two prominent government figures. “Venezuela’s Chavez calls for internet controls,” headlined a Reuters release, which went on to claim that “Chavez is angry with Venezuelan political opinion and gossip website NoticieroDigital, which he said had falsely written that Diosdado Cabello, a senior minister and close aide, had been assassinated.”
By referring to Chavez’ reaction to the website’s dangerous and false reporting as a personal issue, i.e. “Chavez is angry,” Reuters downplayed and ridiculed very serious crimes: inciting violence and knowingly and maliciously reporting false information to further criminal acts. Additionally, contrary to Reuters’ brushing aside the content of the posts as something that President Chavez “said,” and therefore questioning the veracity of the charge, the Venezuelan website NoticieroDigital actually had posted false reports on Diosdado Cabello’s assassination by armed attackers, alongside another post claiming that pro-Chavez television host Mario Silva had been “gunned down” the following day. Both stories remained on the website for at least two days, and were only taken down after government supporters publicly denounced the website for the malicious posts.
THE INTERNET IS NOT A FREE-FOR-ALL
President Chavez did state that “the Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done,” a notion shared by governments and societies around the world. In the United States, controls on Internet content are frequent. Content such as pornography is strictly regulated, and criminal acts or incitement to commit such acts is outright prohibited, even on blogs, chats and informal, anonymous forums. In early 2009, Steven Joseph Cristopher, a 42 year-old resident of Wisconsin, was arrested by the US Secret Service for threatening to assassinate President Obama in a chat forum on a website about UFOs and aliens. Christopher was charged with violating a US law that prohibits threatening to kill a president or president-elect of the United States, carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In late December 2009, President Obama named Howard Schmidt, a former White House security advisor to George W. Bush, as Cybersecurity Chief, to oversee Washington’s Internet policies and regulations, as well as aid in the protection of US cyber assets. The US Congress has also debated a law that would give the US President emergency control over the Internet and permit a seizure of “private-sector networks” during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
That type of regulation goes well beyond what is presently being discussed in Venezuela. At most, the Venezuelan government — legislative and executive branches alike — are debating extending current penal codes to cyberspace. Rumors spread internationally, probably via twitter, which is used by more than 160,000 Venezuelan residents, that Venezuela’s National Assembly was debating a law to regulate Internet content. But members of the Venezuelan legislature were quick to deny those rumors and clarify that current laws should merely be applied to crimes committed over the Internet, as is common in most countries.
Germany has also been considering creating a government agency to specifically regulate and create policy regarding cyberspace, one of the most rapidly growing industries and business fields around the world.
FREE, UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO INTERNET
Dispelling critics and so-called international defenders of freedom of expression who claimed President Chavez was shutting down Venezuelans’ access to Internet, the Venezuelan head of state declared on television Sunday, “A false rumor is spreading, and it’s wrong, saying that we are going to limit Internet access, that we are going to control it. It’s false. We have a central strategy and it’s none other than transferring power to the people, and the first and most important power is knowledge.”
In that context, President Chavez inaugurated twenty-four new Infocenters last Sunday during his program, Alo Presidente, bringing the total to 668 nationwide. He also approved more than $10 million for the creation of 200 more of these community-based free cybercenters to be built during 2010. Infocenters are a project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, and are government-sponsored and funded computer centers built in communities throughout the nation that provide free Internet and technological access and services to all Venezuelans. Twenty-seven mobile Infocenters were also launched this week, which will travel across the nation to remote areas in the Amazon, Andean and rural regions, guaranteeing free Internet services and computer training to citizens with little or no access to technology.
At present, the Infocenters have the capacity to provide Internet and computer services to more than 2.5 million permanent users and up to 10 million visitors annually. The government’s goal is to transfer the operations and administration of the Infocenters to organized community groups, such as Community Councils, that can collectively determine the use and technological needs of their residents, neighborhoods and regions. “The transfer of the management and administration of the Infocenters and technological spaces built by the Revolution will permit organized communities to collectively make decisions regarding the use of these spaces. Our strategic objective is to advance the technological growth and communications access to aid in the creation of the Communal State,” explained President Chavez.
“Technology will be assumed as a form of communication of the People’s Power, to capacitate and articulate communities,” added Chavez. “The people should have the responsibility to maintain and operate the Infocenters and to conserve their equipment, as well as guarantee the functioning of each center” said the Venezuelan President, emphasizing that the Internet is a “tool of the Revolution” and should aid in the creation and expansion of Venezuela’s alternative press.
“Each community can create a network and we can communicate with one another to inform each other of developments,” exclaimed Chavez, also announcing the creation of his own blog. “I am starting my own battleground in the Internet with a blog. It’s going to be full of different information, and we will be ready for the bombardment of responses we will surely receive. Even from the enemy, they will attack me with fire and I will respond. Battle is battle, assault is assault,” he warned.
TECHNOLOGY FOR THE PEOPLE
President Chavez also announced that in Venezuela, only 273,537 Internet subscribers existed in the year 2000. But by the first trimester of 2009, more than 1,585,497 Internet subscribers were registered, an increase of 600%. “And the number of Internet users in 2000 was only 820,000 in Venezuela. Nine years later, that number has risen to 7,552,570 users, an increase of more than 900%,” indicated President Chavez.
In the year 2000, only 3.4% of the Venezuelan population had access to Internet, while statistics show that by the end of 2009, 30% of Venezuelans had Internet access, a huge increase in large part made possible by government programs. The Infocenter project not only provides computers and Internet access to communities nationwide, but also trains users in computer literacy. Brigades of computer and Internet educators, sponsored by the Science and Technology Ministry, have trained thousands of Venezuelans in the basics of computer usage, ranging from simply how to use a computer to advanced Internet searches and blogging.
MEDIA BATTLEGROUND — INTERNET AS A WEAPON
While the Venezuelan state has been empowering its own citizens to enter the world of cyberspace in a conscientious and responsible way, another government has been training and funding a select group of Venezuelans to destabilize their nation and promote regime change using the Internet as a weapon.
During the last few years, more than $7 million have been channeled from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to anti-Chavez youth and student groups in Venezuela to “strengthen new media tools that can improve access to information and allow open and productive debate on the Internet.” Since 2002, USAID has funded hundreds of opposition organizations and political parties in Venezuela with over $50 million USD in an ongoing effort to promote the overthrow of the Chavez administration.
TWITTER REVOLUTION
The millions invested in Internet “strengthening” for opposition youth groups have accounted for the proliferation of anti-Chavez websites, blogs and propaganda online, aiding in the mass media offensive against the Venezuelan government. New media tools such as Twitter and Facebook are also overridden with anti-Chavez users. And it’s no surprise. In October 2009, the US State Department sponsored the 2nd Annual Summit of the Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) in Mexico City, bringing together the founders and representatives of new media companies, such as Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Myspace, Google, Meetup and others, along with a selection of handpicked student and youth leaders from around the world. Representatives from US government agencies, including the State Department, USAID, Freedom House, International Republican Institute (IRI), National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Cato Institute, Cuba Development Initiative, and others, were also present at the event, which included a welcome speech from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Forty-three young political activists funded by the State Department were brought to the AYM Summit from nations such as Sri Lanka, Colombia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Lebannon, Turkey, Moldovia, Malaysia, Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela. The Venezuelan attendees were Yon Goicochea, current leader of the ultra-conservative Primero Justicia party, and winner of Cato Institute’s Milton Friedman Award for promoting neoliberal politics; Geraldine Alvarez, member of Goichochea’s foundation Futuro Presente, created with funding from US agencies; and Rafael Delgado, another former student leader associated with the opposition.
The goal of the State Department event was to capacitate selected youth with the knowledge, technology and funding to promote “Twitter Revolutions” in their countries, citing the examples of Iran, Moldovia and the anti-FARC and anti-Chavez marches promoted in Colombia via Facebook and Twitter.
BALANCING THE BATTLEGROUND
Nevertheless, pro-Chavez groups and activists in Venezuela are now flooding those same new media technologies used by Washington to promote the imperial agenda. Facebook and Twitter accounts have recently been opened by prominent figures connected to the Bolivarian Revolution, and new blogs, websites and email lists are growing fast, in an attempt to gain ground in the information battlefield in cyberspace.
While the Internet is still dominated by those forces working to destabilize and discredit the Chavez administration and the Bolivarian Revolution, chavistas are catching up fast. The hundreds of new Infocenters throughout the nation, guaranteeing free access to all Venezuelans, will enable millions to share their stories and voices — previously ignored and invisible — with the international community.
When it comes to East Jerusalem, ‘NPR’ misleads and misinforms
By Henry Norr on March 26, 2010
It’s been almost two weeks since I wrote to National Public Radio’s senior Washington editor, Ron Elving, and to the network’s ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, to ask why Elving used an Israeli formulation – “disputed” area – to characterize East Jerusalem, instead of calling it “occupied,” the term used by the U.S. government, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and virtually every other international body. So far, neither has replied.
While I wait, I’ve spent some time looking a little more deeply into NPR’s coverage of East Jerusalem since Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 new housing units there put the area in the spotlight. The network posts transcripts of all its stories, interviews, and talk shows on the Middle East (and nowadays most other stories, too) on its website, and it has a pretty good search engine, so it wasn’t hard to review all 22 broadcasts that have discussed East Jerusalem since the controversy exploded. (NPR doesn’t transcribe its hourly headlines, so they’re not included. Neither are the Associated Press reports and Foreign Policy articles it posts on its website but doesn’t read over the air.)
Here’s some of what I found anyone depending on NPR for information about the issue would have gathered about East Jerusalem:
1. It’s part of Israel’s capital. Regular listeners have heard Jerusalem described that way in at least eight stories. In five of those cases the city was called Israel’s “undivided capital;” once the phrase was “unified capital.” When NPR’s reporters say it (as opposed to when they’re quoting Netanyahu or Michael Oren, for example), they scrupulously precede these phrases with something like “the Israelis have proclaimed” or “Israel considers” the whole city their capital. But since NPR reporters hardly ever even hint that anyone except the Palestinians disputes this claim, these are essentially throw-away words. (The closest they come to questioning the Israel position is the statement, which I found in two stories, that “The international community believes that the final status of the city should only be determined through negotiations.”)
2. Israel has a deep historical claim to all of Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s assertion in his AIPAC speech that “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago” was quoted in three separate stories. Twice listeners have been told that Israelis consider the city – implicitly the whole thing – just as much theirs as Tel Aviv. On “Talk of the Nation” they heard an Israeli analyst explain that no government would agree to a construction freeze because Jerusalem is “the heart and soul of the Jewish people.” Weekend news analyst James Fallows informed listeners that the Israeli public considers the government’s East Jerusalem policy “necessary for their survival.”
3. Ramat Shlomo, the East Jerusalem settlement where the government plans to add the 1,600 new units, is an idyllic “neighborhood” (a word NPR reporters have used at least eight times in this context) or “community” on a hilltop. It’s “tranquil” or even “very tranquil,” full of pious Jews who “focus on their religious studies and pay little attention to the outside world.” Their only problem is that they have large families and therefore “housing needs;” this “housing crunch” explains the government’s decision to build the 1,600 units.
4. As for the Palestinians, including the roughly 250,000 who live in East Jerusalem, they are presented to NPR listeners not as people whose roots in Jerusalem go back millennia – who, legally, own East Jerusalem – but as people who, for some unexplained reason, lay claim to what Israel has: they “want” East Jerusalem, they “claim” it, they “hope” it will be part of their “future state,” they “aspire” to make it their capital. In the meantime, unlike the “unfazed” Jewish residents of Ramat Shlomo, they can barely contain their emotions: they are “angry,” “frustrated,” “incensed.” Some of them even think Israel wants to push them out of the city, but the Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem is promptly called upon to dismiss this charge, and he’s given the last word.
Now, some things NPR listeners have not been told about Jerusalem since the [latest escalation of] controversy flared :
1. Except Israel, no government in the world, even the U.S., recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Not a single country, even the U.S., has an embassy there. Under the U.N.’s 1947 partition plan, it was not to be part of Israel at all, but a separate entity – a “corpus separatum” – under U.N. administration.
2. In legal terms, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory by the United States government, the United Nations, the European Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the International Court of Justice, including even the American judge who was the one holdout when the ICJ in 2004 ruled the separation Wall in East Jerusalem and the West Bank illegal. (In fairness, weekend host Guy Raz noted in passing on March 13 that East Jerusalem is “an area Israel has occupied since 1967,” and in one report Garcia-Navarro said that Ramat Shlomo is “on land captured by Israel during the 1967 war.”)
3. Under international law (specifically, the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention) occupying powers are clearly prohibited from transferring their civilians into such territories.
4. The “international community” has repeatedly and forcefully rejected Israel’s claim to East Jerusalem. In the aftermath of Israel’s seizure of the area as well (as the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights) during the 1967 war, the U.N. Security Council, including the U.S., adopted several resolutions reaffirming that “acquisition of territory by military conquest is inadmissible” In 1971 Security Council Resolution 298, adopted with U.S. support, declared that “al1 legislative and administrative actions taken by Israel to change the status of the: City of Jerusalem, including expropriation of land and properties, transfer of populations and legislation aimed at the incorporation of the occupied section, are totally invalid and cannot change that status.”.In 1980, when Israel adopted the “Jerusalem Law,” through which it attempted to formalize its annexation of East Jerusalem and surrounding areas and to declare the city its “”eternal and indivisible” capital, Security Council Resolution 478 said the law’s adoption constituted “a violation of international law” and “a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East,” declared it “null and void,” and asserted that it “must be rescinded forthwith.” (This resolution was adopted by a vote of 14-0; the U.S. abstained but declined to use its veto power.)
5. In recent days U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has on at least two occasions declared publicly that East Jerusalem, like the West Bank, is occupied territory and that Israel’s settlement expansion plans are “unacceptable.” “Let us be clear,” he said on March 20. “All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped.” NPR has completely ignored Ban’s statements on these issues.
6. The 1,600 Jewish housing units planned for Ramat Shlomo are only a small part of Israel’s plans to “Judaize” East Jerusalem. Ha’aretz and other reputable sources reported on March 11 that some 50,000 new housing units in East Jerusalem are in various stages of the Israeli planning and permitting process. Coming on the heels of the Biden visit and the flap about the 1,600 units, this report got wide circulation around the world. NPR hasn’t mentioned it.
7. Much of the Israeli settlement construction in East Jerusalem is organized and financed by ultra-right-wing Zionist organizations such as Elad and Ateret Cohanim, which openly proclaim their intention to evict Jerusalem’s Palestinians. These groups are funded largely by tax-deductible donations from American Jews, most notably Miami doctor and bingo billionaire Irving Moskowitz. Yet NPR has never once – not just this month, but never, as far back as its archives go – mentioned Irving Moskowitz or Ateret Cohanim; Elad was mentioned only once, last September, as the funder of archaeological digs in the Silwan section of East Jerusalem – which host Robert Siegel referred to only as “the City of David,” the patently ideological name the Zionists recently bestowed upon the area.
Likewise, NPR has never reported on the recent expulsions of Palestinian families from homes built for them in the 1950s by the U.N. in the Sheikh Jarrah section of East Jerusalem – nor on the growing non-violent movement that’s brought thousands of Palestinians and Israelis together to protest these evictions.
8. Even as it repeats Netanyahu’s assertion that “the Jewish people” were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago, NPR has not raised any question or qualification about this claim. If ancient history is to be considered grounds for sovereignty, there are several issues that deserve attention: Many mainstream archaeologists doubt that there was such a thing as a Jewish people or even a Jewish religion 3,000 years. Whoever may have been building there 3,000 years ago, today’s Palestinians have a considerably stronger claim to be their descendants than Ashkenazi Jews like Netanyahu. As Juan Cole has recently pointed out, Jews have ruled Jerusalem for only a few brief moments in its history; Muslims have ruled the city and done most of the building there over the last 1,500 years.
9. If the Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are angry and frustrated, one reason is because Israel treats them like second- or third-class citizens – except that they’re not even citizens. They can’t vote in national elections, and they’re not entitled to Israeli passports. They’re prohibited from engaging in political activity, and Israel has repeatedly barred celebrations of their national culture. Thousands of them have had their Jerusalem residency rights revoked for such “offenses” as spending too much time outside the city. If a Jerusalem Palestinian marries someone from elsewhere in the occupied territories – even from, say, Bethlehem or Ramallah, which are just a few miles away – they’re not permitted to live together, either in Jerusalem or in the territories.
Meanwhile, social and economic conditions in East Jerusalem are miserable and rapidly deteriorating, in part because the giant separation wall Israel has built within and around East Jerusalem cuts the area off from the rest of the Palestinian population and economy. 68.4 percent of the population of East Jerusalem live below the poverty line, yet only 22 percent receive any government social services. While the Palestinians make up 32 percent of Jerusalem’s total population, and the municipality collects around 30 percent of its tax revenue from them, less than ten percent of the municipal budget is spent on services for them. The municipality spends four times as much per pupil on primary schools in West Jerusalem as in East Jerusalem, which suffers from a drastic shortage of classrooms. Entire Palestinian neighborhoods are not connected to a sewage system and do not have paved roads or sidewalks. Almost 90 percent of the city’s sewage pipes, roads, and sidewalks are found in the western part of the city. West Jerusalem has 1,000 public parks, East Jerusalem has 45. West Jerusalem has 34 swimming pools, East Jerusalem has three. West Jerusalem has 26 libraries, East Jerusalem has two. West Jerusalem has 531 sports facilities, East Jerusalem has 33. And so on.
As for housing, NPR somehow hasn’t noticed that the Palestinians too have large families and suffer from a “housing crunch” far more drastic than that afflicting Ramat Shlomo. While the government works overtime to develop plans for additional Jewish settlement construction in East Jerusalem, it’s all but impossible for Palestinians to get construction permits, and if they build anyway, they’re at constant risk of having their homes demolished. (All Things Considered did run a reasonably good report by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro last November about “allegations” by East Jerusalem Palestinians that Israel is “intensifying a campaign to evict them from their homes.”)
10. NPR found time this month for a long story about an Israeli tariff that’s threatening the business of an Illinois company that exports carp for gefilte fish, but the last time the network’s listeners heard that Israel receives $3 billion a year in U.S. aid was when Stephen Walt mentioned it in a July 2006 interview. This month, even as debate about U.S. relations with Israel has boiled up, the network’s news shows haven’t bothered to mention U.S. aid at all. (The subject has come up briefly on Talk of the Nation – once mentioned by guest Ted Koppel, once in a quote from Gideon Levy read by host Neal Conan, and once when a caller from California observed that for $10 million a day, “You would think that would buy us a little more influence than it does” – to which Conan responded “Well, part of that is the billion dollars that we promised both to Israel and to Egypt, that’s included in the peace agreement that got those two people to recognize each other, which is a benefit that I think everybody can agree on.”)
‘CIA seeks using Afghan women to promote war’
Press TV – March 27, 2010
The CIA has called for recruiting Afghan women in a public relations bid to persuade Europeans to support war in Afghanistan, a document leaked to the media has revealed.
“Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing” the mission for European audiences, particularly in France, according to the CIA analysis, posted on WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website, AFP reported. Afghan women’s views would carry special weight as they could express “their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory,” it said.
The proposed PR strategies focus on pressure points that have been identified within these countries. For France, it is the sympathy of the public for Afghan refugees and women. For Germany it is the fear of the consequences of defeat (drugs, more refugees, terrorism) as well as for Germany’s standing in the NATO.
The Central Intelligence Agency declined to confirm or deny the authenticity of the document, but WikiLeaks has previously posted government and corporate documents that were later verified.
The report by a CIA expert on “strategic communications” and State Department analysts of public opinion warned that popular support for the war in Europe was weak and could easily collapse, citing the recent fall of the Dutch government over the issue.
The report also suggested taking advantage of President Barack Obama’s popularity in France and Germany, arguing that appeals from the US president on the importance of the allied role in the war could have a positive effect.
The memorandum is titled: “Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission — Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough.”
Obamacare’s Passage: A Full-Scale Retreat
By Stephen Lendman | March 25, 2010
After eight years under George Bush, people demanded change. Obama and congressional Democrats promised it, then disappointed by accomplishing the impossible – governing worse than skeptics feared, worse than Republicans across the board on both domestic and foreign policies.
They looted the nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, consigned millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures while expanding global militarism through imperial wars, occupations, and stepped up aggression on new fronts with the largest ever “war” budget in history – way over $1 trillion dollars annually plus supplementals and secret add-ons, greater than the rest of the world combined when America has no enemies.
Now the latest. March 21 will be remembered as a day of infamy, the day House Democrat leaders bullied, bribed, cajoled, muscled, and jerry-rigged Obamacare to pass, despite most Americans opposing it with good reason.
HR 4872: Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act of 2010 passed on March 21 – 219 – 212. Along with the October 8, 2009-passed HR 3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the Senate-passed bill, December 24, 2009), Obama’s signature made “health reform” law. House – Senate HR 4872 reconciliation follows that may or may not resolve all fixes. No matter. Legislation, signed March 23, is the law of the land unless the Supreme Court declares it unconstitutional – a process called “judicial review.”
Briefly, it works like this. The High Court doesn’t review federal legislation unless challenged in district court and reaches the appellate level. However, if a clear constitutional violation exists, it may bypass the appellate process and accept a case directly. If it rules the law unconstitutional, it’s nullified, and all actions under it may be reversed, but it doesn’t happen often, easily, or quickly, especially against federal laws.
Also, the High Court may defer a challenge hearing until major provisions take effect – in this case 2014 under a new Congress, and perhaps new president, Court, and political climate.
In the end, it could come down to federal power v. states rights or corporate v. peoples’ rights under the Constitution’s “general welfare” clause – Article I, Section 8 stating:
“The Congress shall have power to….provide for (the) general welfare of the United States” that arguably should mean (but never did) “We the People,” the Preamble’s opening words.
Reality, however, reveals an unfair matchup. Money nearly always trumps people, so why should this time be different, especially given the hundreds of billions of future profits at stake. Little wonder Indian author Arundhati Roy (and others) call democracy “the biggest scam in the world” – for sure the way her country and America practice it.
Also remember – the Supreme Court’s (“headnotes” included) Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad decision granted corporations personhood, giving them the same rights as people but not the obligations. Those unrestricted powers let them subvert the “general welfare” to where one day its last vestige will be gone.
Former high-level Washington/Wall Street insider Catherine Austin Fitts calls the process “Slow Burn,” like boiling a frog that doesn’t know it’s dinner until done. We’re dinner.
Pro and Con Media Responses
Since its 19th century inception, the Nation magazine turned reality on its head. It was once unapologetic about slavery, then later didn’t support minority, labor, or women’s rights. It championed 19th century laissez fare, attacked the Grangers, Populists, trade unions and socialists. In 1999, it called the US/NATO Serbia-Kosovo aggression “humanitarian intervention.”
After 9/11, it backed the official explanation despite convincing evidence debunking it. Initially, it supported the Afghan and Iraq wars, claimed “no evidence” America’s 2004 presidential election was stolen, and in January 2006, ran an offensive full-page anti-Muslim ad titled “Arabian Fables,” claiming Palestinians are prone to violence and deceptions. Two months later, it said Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide was “feared and despised,” then blamed Haitians for their own misery.
Its biased editorials and articles support Democrats, suppress disturbing truths about them, and call business as usual “progressive.” Unsurprisingly, they backed Obamacare from inception, editor Katrina Vanden Heuvel now calling America “a stronger nation for it.”
The Nation’s John Nichols hailed “A Historic Vote for Health-Care Reform,” said Speaker Pelosi “earned a place among the chamber’s greatest leaders,” quoted Majority Whip James Clyburn claiming “the Civil Rights (triumph) of the 21st century,” Majority Leader Steny Hoyer saying the new law “will stand the test of time,” and compared Obama’s struggle to Franklin Roosevelt’s for Social Security – an offensive rationalization comparing genuine universal reform to colossal fraud care rationing for the vast majority of Americans losing out under a hugely destructive measure.
In contrast, Wall Street Journal writer Kimberly Strassel’s “Inside the Pelosi Sausage Factory” article was accurate, showing the Journal at times is right.
“You could see it coming a week ago,” she said. Then it happened on live TV when:
“Never before has the average American been treated to such a live-action view of the sordid politics necessary to push a deeply flawed bill to completion. It was dirty deals, open threats, broken promises and disregard for democracy that pulled ObamaCare to this point, and (Sunday) the same machinations pushed it across the finish line….The final days (to passage) were a simple death watch, to see how the votes would be bought, bribed or bullied, and how many congressional rules gamed, to get the win.”
A handout here, a threat there, a warning that voting no means “unions and other Democrats would run them out of Congress….By the weekend, all the pressure and threats and bribes had left the speaker three to five votes short….The solution?” A “meaningless” presidential Executive Order affirming no federal funding for abortion, though signing it doesn’t change Senate language allowing it through a separate premium besides Medicaid already covering it.
No matter, it got the House bill passed the old-fashioned way – by forcing a majority to ram it through, or as Strassel said: making the “process of passing as politically toxic as the bill itself.”
A March 21 New York Times editorial titled, “Health Care Reform, at Last” called the process:
“wrenching, and tainted to the 11th hour by narrow political obstructionism, but the year-long struggle over health care reform (finally ended) with a triumph for countless Americans who have been victimized or neglected by their dysfunctional health care system.”
From inception, The Times backed the bill, calling it needed progressive reform – no matter its full-scale retreat to ration care, enrich corporate providers, and deliver what Ralph Nader calls a “pay-or-die system that is the disgrace of the Western world.”
At a spring 2009 fundraiser, Obama quoted entertainer Al Jolson’s famous line: “You ain’t seen nothing yet,” and he was right, but who, among his faithful, could have imagined that promise’s destructiveness or fully comprehend it now.
Cynically, however, The Times argued that:
“Over time (health care) reforms could bring about sweeping changes the way medical care is delivered and paid for. They could ultimately rival Social Security and Medicare in historic importance.”
In a March 20 article titled, “The Death of American Populism,” this writer argued otherwise, saying what the 1913 Federal Reserve Act did for bankers, Obamacare may do for insurance and drug cartel predators controlling one-sixth of the economy. They’ll more than ever game by system by:
— making it dysfunctionally worse;
— selling “junk insurance policies” leaving millions underinsured;
— keeping premiums unaffordable for full coverage;
–adding high deductibles and co-pays for less coverage;
— denying care by delaying, contesting, or preventing people from accessing it;
— letting pharmaceutical companies provide toxic drugs at unaffordable prices, and avoid generic competition on new products by lengthy patent protection periods;
— assuring providers more customers and higher profits by requiring individuals and families buy insurance or be penalized; and
— by 2018, imposing an excise tax on so-called “Cadillac” plans to cut corporate costs, make workers pay more, and force many to settle for less and be underinsured.
The Times endorsed Obamacare as a triumph for “hard-working Americans,” never mind the popping champagne corks in corporate board rooms celebrating their gain at the expense of most people losing out to an extent they’ll only discover in the fullness of time when it’s too late to matter.
The Times has a long, sordid record of supporting the powerful, backing corporate interests, endorsing imperial wars, ignoring criminal fraud, championing sham election results, and being comfortable with unmet human needs, increasing poverty, hunger, homelessness, and deep despair for growing millions in a country run by corrupt politicians who don’t give a damn as long as they’re reelected, and corporate fraudsters who prey on the most vulnerable, and profit most by charging more, delivering less, and producing shoddy products.
Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) – Advocates for Universal Coverage
With 17,000 members nationwide, PNHP is an independent, non-partisan, voluntary “physician organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to implementing a single-payer national health program.”
Its March 22 press release expressed dismay with the new law saying it “take(s) no comfort in seeing aspirin dispensed for the treatment of cancer.”
Instead of fixing the “the profit-driven, private health insurance industry….this costly new legislation will enrich and further entrench (it by forcing) millions of Americans to buy” defective coverage leaving them worse off than before at a cost of hundreds of billions of tax dollars given predators to game the system for even more.
PNHP’s listed problems include:
— besides millions underinsured, nine years out, 23 million Americans will be uninsured, “translate(d) into an estimated 23,000 unnecessary deaths annually and an incalculable toll of suffering;”
— millions will be forced to buy insurance “costing up to 9.5 percent of their income but covering” only 70% of their expenses, leaving them one serious health emergency away from bankruptcy and loss of their homes;
— for most, good policies will be unaffordable or “too expensive to use because of the high co-pays and deductibles;”
— Insurers will get around $450 billion in public money “to subsidize (buying) their shoddy products,” and be more than ever emboldened to block future reform;
— safety-net hospitals will lose billions in Medicare and Medicaid payments, threatening tens of millions of under and uninsured;
— workers with employer-based coverage will face higher costs, fewer benefits, and restrictions on selecting providers; most will be hamstrung with future stiff costs because of unrestricted premium hikes, higher deductibles and co-pays;
— costs will keep rising exponentially because Obamacare doesn’t contain them;
— so-called new regulations (like ending pre-existing condition denials) are riddled with loopholes, ambiguities, and legal interpretations to let insurers manipulate them advantageously; and
— “women’s reproductive rights will be further eroded, thanks to the burdensome segregation of insurance funds for abortion and all other medical services.”
As a result, the Obama administration and congressional Democrats scammed the public with a package of expensive mandates, new taxes, sweetheart deals, and “a perpetuation of the fragmented, dysfunctional, and unsustainable system that is taking such a heavy toll on our health and economy today.”
Obamacare may or may not be good politics, but for most Americans it’s disastrous health policy in lieu of simple, effective, affordable solutions – universal single-payer coverage. Everyone in. Nobody out except predatory insurers gaming the system for big profits, declining benefits, and unaffordability for growing millions.
Major bill components won’t kick in until 2014, meaning 180,000 Americans will die in the next four years and hundreds of thousands more won’t have expensive injuries and illnesses treated. PNHP calls these stakes unacceptable in “pledg(ing) to continue (their) work for the only equitable, financially responsible and humane remedy for our health care mess:” universal coverage, “an expanded and improved Medicare for All.” What members of Congress get, you get. Nothing less provided we fight for it until it’s gotten. It’ll come no other way.
It’s Over but not Entirely – State Government Challenges Over Mandated Coverage
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 36 or more states may pass anti-mandate laws, 33 have introduced bills, and Idaho’s CL “Butch” Otter became the first Governor to sign one into law. The Virginia House and Senate passed its own, expected to become law shortly. In Arizona, a proposed constitutional amendment will seek voter approval in November.
In addition, on March 23, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden’s press release said Idaho “has joined a multi-state lawsuit” against the Department of Health and Human Services, Treasury Department, and Department of Labor, “challenging the constitutionality of” new health care legislation, stating:
“Our complaint alleges the new law infringes upon the constitutional rights of Idahoans and residents of the other states by mandating all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage or pay a tax penalty. The law exceeds the powers of the United States under Article I of the Constitution and violates the Tenth Amendment….Additionally, the tax penalty required under the law constitutes an unlawful direct tax in violation of Article 1, sections 2 and 9 of the Constitution.”
The press release also says Obamacare infringes on state sovereignty by imposing onerous unfunded mandates at a time most states face severe budget shortfalls, can’t handle their current obligations, so they’re cutting them.
Joining the lawsuits are the Attorney Generals of South Carolina, Nebraska, Texas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Washington, Florida, and South Dakota. Virginia Attorney General, Kenneth Cuccinelli, plans a separate suit in Richmond federal court, stating:
The Constitution’s Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3) doesn’t apply because:
“If a person decides not to buy health insurance, that person by definition is not engaging in commerce. If you are not engaging in commerce, how can the federal government regulate you?”
Indiana’s Senator Richard Lugar asked his Attorney General to file suit, and other states have pledged to do so. Opponents raise serious concerns over the fundamental “do no harm” patient safety rule. For American Health Care Reform.org:
“Single-payer national health insurance will save our economy, prevent medical bankruptcy and above all, save lives. Medicare for All is the Right Prescription for America. We need National Health Insurance. Anything else is just voodoo.”
Anything less dumps millions of Americans in the trash heap of unaffordable care, poor care, or no care one serious health emergency away from bankruptcy, home loss, or life threatening catastrophe. That’s the reality Obamacare delivered.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com
Low hope for low carbon
By Andrew McKillop | Excerpts | March 22, 2010
Annexed to the climate change and global warming hysteria that received its political kiss of death at the failed Copenhagen “climate summit” in Dec 2009, the rationale for why everybody sensible has to be so concerned about this threat to humanity is that clean and green energy will save us. Not only “the climate” and “the ecology,” including polar bears, low lying countries from Holland to the Maldives, coral reefs, Himalayan glaciers, people living along tropical storm tracks and all the rest — but also jobs in our cities. Along with green jobs, the new crusade for low carbon energy would cut oil import bills to nothing, balance trade with the rest of the world, improve national finances and strengthen the national currency. Everything is possible!
Green growth strategies flourished in the 2003-2009 period, in the wake of constantly rising oil prices and spiraling hysteria about climate change. The bottom line of the climate change priests and soothsayers was that low carbon green energy, developed as the only way to save us from climate apocalypse, would or could also save the economy.
In fact, only high oil prices and high energy prices can make green energy feasible without depending on government aid, the carbon finance circus, and coming carbon taxes, but this is not a politically correct argument. Preferred approaches are to use public funds to sponsor and when it gets necessary, bail out carbon finance gamblers, and supply a raft of public funds to subsidize the green energy fantasies of the corporate elite.
These fantasies already have a bad track record in the short period since “going green” became big business, from about 2003. Several started with a death wish for early bankruptcy, the most recent and biggest example being US maize-based bio-ethanol fuels production, which rode a boom-bust speculative finance cycle through 2005-2008. Making car fuels from food grains and vegetable oils is not only a way to generate high food prices leading to food riots in poor countries, but an expensive, inefficient, low-yielding method to substitute a small amount of present demand for oil-based car fuels. Today’s production overcapacity for windmills and solar photovoltaic power already threatens a repeat of the epic biofuels boom-and-bust, during which even Bill Gates managed to lose money (about US$44 million). Hard-headed short sellers of bio-fuel company stocks, like Steve Cohen’s SAC Capital LLC made hundreds of millions of dollars on the certain and sure collapse of share prices in this overblown sector during 2007.
Coming soon, really big corporate losses feeding short selling profits for some, huge losses for small investors, and demands for government bailouts from the Too Big To Fail among corporate losers, will be generated by the electric car boom-and-bust.
WHY THE HYSTERIA ?
Climate change advocacy and carbon finance have grown together in the OECD countries with corporate interests frenetically wrestling for the widening range of constantly changing government subsidies, aid, carbon credits, clean development offsets, feed-in tariffs and tax favors to develop alternate energy. Advocacy is necessarily tinted with hysteria of the type “We are saving you from death — You don’t ask the price.”
Politicians, who always appreciate any pitch that captivates the child-brained crowd, quickly warmed to global warming hysteria. This was despite its far-out apocalyptic “message” that unparalleled disasters including Biblical-style floods will strike the planet before the end of this century — unless the People behave. Unless the average car buyer gets to like electric and hybrid cars (despite the braking problems), recycles household rubbish to make it easy grubbing out metals, glass and plastic, buys a bicycle imported from China, rides in buses or trains but patriotically buys a government subsidized oil fueled car, pays more for organic and “bio” food, uses less electricity, saves oil in countless ways, and goes green in every confusing and conflicting way they are told.
Maintaining public angst, and public approval were unfortunately confused as being exactly the same thing by political, media and corporate spin doctors. Constant exaggeration of the invented climate menace was decided necessary. This led the high priests of hype, such as Al Gore, Rajendra Pachauri, James Lovelock, James Hansen and other climate change gravy train riders to desperately rival each other, and babble ever more ridiculous fire-and-brimstone at the microphone. Drifting always further in delirious wafts and spirals of lies, distortion, exaggeration and blatant propaganda, the high priests of hype were too stupid, too arrogant to see the end coming in late 2009.
THE CONVERGING PLANKS
Rising hype on global warming soon overshot into stratospheric data fraud by UN credible (that is IN credible) high level experts on climate change, led by former railway engineer Rajendra Pachauri and failed politician Al Gore. The spin and hype on global warming catastrophe was however welcomed by political elites in 2008-2009 as a handy way to take the tiny public mind off gargantuan meltdowns in the finance, bank and insurance sector, and the massive bailouts for government-friendly corporate thieves, gamblers and fools.
Agitprop was needed because the economy went out of control. Recession did serious damage not only to real people and their real jobs, but collateral damage to the credibility of politicians, running the magic New Economy hands free, with only the fingers of their corporate finance friends on the economic jugular vein. These greedy fingers squeezed a lot too hard in 2008, with the result being the house of cards fell apart, needing strenuous diversionary tactics.
Any faltering of economic growth, any loss of credibility in the ability of exactly the same politicians, and exactly their same corporate friends to magically restore the economy when it temporarily (of course) stops growing are two more menaces, needing energetic response. Credibility for “global warming catastrophe” was worked into the same set of political elite fears, as corporate green energy player fears of a decline in government subsidies for their newest and best boom-bust gimmick.
In such strenuous and stirring circumstances, climate extremism and doomsterism richly larded with fake facts from junk science was a basic need. Governments must have their purse strings prized open, and kept open by the corporate and policy elite. Politicians need to be loved and admired, or at least re-elected for their far-seeing decisions. Media owners and operators who revel in Great Causes which sell newsprint, and like to imagine they still control what Mr and Mrs Average think, were quick to come on board for the climate crisis ride. They also stayed too long, forgetting that Internet and even word of mouth were working against them.
Overcapacity of wind power and solar electric power manufacturing capacities is now widespread in many countries, even in China and India, as the “low hanging fruit” of the best sites, the biggest subsidies, the largest public support and acclaim is used up — and oil prices although rising are still far behind the peak attained in 2008. As the economic rationale declines, huge new green energy ventures shift toward ego-trips for politicians, and become purely prestige. Chinese vice minister for Industry and IT, Miao Wei, described massive wind farms in China as essentially “vanity projects,” March 11, 2010 in part due to probable rapid wear and tear of turbines increasingly located in hostile locations, such as China’s dusty deserts, and increasingly in deep water offshore wind-farms ever further from land.
Staying credible is always most difficult as the curve of public knowledge rises, and the new gimmick does not deliver. Probably the biggest threat to corporate and Big Government low carbon energy and the related fantasy of the sustainable economy, is loss of credibility for the “menace of catastrophic climate change.” If the menace isn’t so dire as it seemed before the massive failure of the Copenhagen climate summit in December 2009, why should governments rack up even more debt, to finance unsure, high cost low carbon energy with public loans, grants and support? This is the question that kills, like a wooden stake for errant low flying vampires.
AL GORE STILL HOPEFUL
Al Gore is not fazed by the Copenhagen rout and continues to announce with eye popping sincerity and conviction (in a February 28 interview with the New York Times) that the world faces “unimaginable calamity” from global warming. He added we must all act now to save human civilization as we know it (perhaps a reference to Afghan war, football, Twitter and Facebook?).
Going further because time is limited to less than a century, the selected, tried and tested members of the global warming hysteria circus, with rich pickings from the corporate and political elite’s full adoption of global warming hysteria, are now fighting to stay up the greasy pole. Following the Copenhagen rout and Climategate, the gravy train riders are likely to go one mile further in their fantasies, and need all the ammunition they can grab. Now joined to their predication of the coming apocalypse, “unimaginable calamity” also includes high oil prices, placed by Al Gore at a price level around $80 a barrel. Even if the consumer herd has forgotten the polar bear’s plight and prefers Haiti quake stories to threats of the Maldives sinking (under a million tonnes of concrete tourist coastal works), they will rise like wounded tigers if gasoline prices rise another 50 cents a gallon. Al Gore hopes !
Al Gore rolls his eyes at the microphone and thunders the killer numbers — the oil bill of the USA costs “hundreds of billion dollars a year.” To be sure, Gore also reminds his uncritical if not brain dead admirers that oil exporter countries are run by dangerous and hostile regimes, uninterested and perhaps not even believing in climate change. And that is dangerous.
The most recent record annual net oil costs of the USA achieved a little more than two of those Al Gore “hundreds of billions,” reaching about $220 billion in 2007. This can be compared with the $1,300 billion US budget deficit for fiscal year 2010 recently announced by Obama, or the cumulative amount of financial bailouts to Wall Street by Paulson, under G W Bush, and Geithner under B H Obama in 2008-2009. This totaled at least $1,500 billion. Similar budget deficits, up to 12% of annual GNP, apply in Europe and state bailouts of corporate financial gamblers in Europe have cost similar amounts as those in USA, well above $1,200 billion in 2008-2009.
* This raft of debt-based spending mostly to bail out reckless gamblers in the finance sector would cover roughly 10 years of total OECD oil import costs at an average $100 a barrel.
Al Gore and the ‘extreme global warming community’ have to stay hopeful, and maintain the hype because signs of flagging interest or “conviction” by political and corporate leaders is starting to show in their careful avoidance of climate crisis sound-bytes, post-Copenhagen. Most OECD heads of state, at least before Copenhagen, vied with each other to beat Al Gore with heart-wrenching appeals to citizen concern, calling the failed and bizarre conference held in a Scandinavian capital in deep winter, “the last chance to save the planet from global warming catastrophe.”
This talk has been glaringly absent since December, suggesting OECD heads of state, notably of the US, Germany, France and UK could soon backtrack on their so-sincere conviction that their voter masses need a politically forced, ultra rapid development of “green energy”. […]
ENERGY TRANSITION AND ECONOMIC ROUT
Debt financing of everything, especially the ever rising and unreal goals set for energy transition by heads of state and political leaders in the big oil importer countries, will continue being needed until and unless carbon taxes and trading attain the annual turnover able to generate the funding needed for the ever larger targets announced by political leaders. Another condition for generating the finance needed for these plans includes a return to economic growth. Present carbon finance and trading are proudly estimated by the World Bank as attaining $126 billion in 2008-2009, but trickle-down and spin-off from trading gains and losses on a raft of complex and ramifying climate change paper, to real spending on real world green energy is low.
Falling credibility of climate change hysteria from extremists like Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, and lower-rank members of the climate change circus, such as “Gaia philosophy” writer James Lovelock, James Hansen and Club of Rome intellectuals now suggests falling pay-checks and cheap finance loans for the gambling community. At this time, orating about Apocalypse Now from climate change and always going further in bending the shock figures and statistics could be a losing strategy. The risk is clear: the climate change circus has now talked itself off-stage.
Before the Copenhagen rout, announced goals of energy transition in the OECD countries had attained extreme and impossible highs, for example 80% reductions in CO2 emissions and implied cuts of 80% in the dependence on fossil energy by 2040, as announced with a winning smile by Obama, and the leaders of Germany, France and UK before the climate summit. To keep the public and consumers happy, and make their targets for energy substitution with low carbon yet more fantastic, yet more impossible, these leaders added that total energy production and consumption would keep on growing. Thanks to the green economy, economic growth would not only be restored but also “strengthened.”
Financing needs were never spelled out for these playful fantasies, but can be guessed, and are probably in the 15-30 trillions of US dollars range to 2040, at current dollar values. This can appear possible, but in real terms is impossible. Achieving this kind of long-term transition of the global energy system and forgetting the ideological quest “to save human civilization as we know it,” would need a real Marshall Plan for Energy. More likely, current-crop leaders of the OECD are on track to produce a real Economic Armageddon, becoming more possible each day. […]
Steven Chu, Al Gore, Rajendra Pachauri and many other defenders of a forced march to energy transition either avoid any discussion of cutting energy consumption, or claim that growth in total energy consumption is entirely possible. In the case of Chu however, there is already de facto admission that “greening” electricity supply will need growth of nuclear power, the Smart Grid, and major advances in energy storage. Again in the US case the very fuzzily-defined and technologically fragile domain of “advanced energy storage” is already forecast as needing tens of billions of dollars investment, on top of the tens of billions of dollars that Obama has made available for nuclear power because of its ability to generate constant baseload power. Smart Grid development, to be sure, is also forecast as needing tens of billion dollars investment in the next 10-15 years.
Exactly like national debt, budget deficits and bailouts for “too big to fail” finance sector gamblers, the dozens of billions add on to the hundreds of billions elsewhere. On the ground, almost nothing happens. Apart from the critical and basic lack of realism of most targets and costs of current-crop plans for energy transition, the most basic unreality concerns a very simply question: Who will pay for the Brave New World of soft energy? An even more basic question is: Do we need energy transition?
VHeadline.com oil industry commentator Andrew McKillop can be contacted at: andrew.mckillop@gsoca.com
Tell Me Again, Who Made The Desert Bloom?
Lawrence of Cyberia | March 19, 2010
In December 1945 and January 1946, the British Mandate authorities carried out an extensive survey of Palestine, in support of the work of the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. The results were published in the Survey of Palestine, which has been scanned and made available online by Palestine Remembered; all 1300 pages can be read here.
One of the subjects investigated in the Survey of Palestine is land use; specifically, which crops were Palestine’s leading agricultural products at the end of the British Mandate, and whose farms were producing them.
So, according to the Survey of Palestine, who really made the barley fields of Beersheba bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 210,000 tons of grain.
About 193,400 tons of that grain were cultivated on Palestinian farms; about 16,600 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the melon patches of Jaffa bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 143,000 tons of melons.
About 136,000 tons of those melons were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 7,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the tobacco fields of Safad bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 1,683 tons of tobacco, on 28,169 dunams of land. Virtually all the land under tobacco cultivation was Palestinian.
Who made the vineyards of Hebron bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 40-50,000 tons of grapes, and between 3-4 million litres of wine. About 86% of the land that produced these products was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.
See a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine here.
Who made the olive groves of Tulkarm bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 79,000 tons of olives.
About 78,000 tons of those olives were cultivated on Palestinian farms; a little over 1,000 tons were cultivated on Jewish farms.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here and here.
Who made the banana groves of Tiberias bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 8,000 tons of bananas.
About 60% of the land that produced these bananas was owned and cultivated by Palestinians.
See the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
Who made the vegetable fields of the coastal plain bloom?
The British government survey found that in 1944-45 Palestine’s farmers produced approximately 245,000 tons of vegetables.
About 189,000 tons of those vegetables were cultivated by Palestinian farmers; about 56,000 tons were cultivated by Jewish farmers.
See the precise numbers, from a scan of the relevant page of the Survey of Palestine, here.
So, on the eve of the partition resolution, in which the United Nations proposed to allocate 55 percent of the land to Jewish Palestine (including those parts that produced most of Palestine’s leading crops, with the sole exception of the olive crop), and 45% to Arab Palestine, Palestinian Arabs were producing:
92% of Palestine’s grain
86% of its grapes
99% of its olives
77 % of its vegetables
95% of its melons
more than 99% of its tobacco
and 60% of its bananas.
Palestine’s agricultural produce at that time had an annual value of approximately 21.8 million pounds sterling; 17.1 million of which was produced by Arab cultivation, and 4.7 million by Jewish cultivation. (See the exact numbers here).
So, who made the desert bloom? The Palestinians made the desert bloom.
Photos: All the photographs of Palestinian farmers cultivating their crops in Palestine under the British Mandate are from Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History Of The Palestinians 1876 – 1948, by Walid Khalidi.
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Sam Husseini: The entire US establishment helped lie their way into the Iraq war
By Slava Zilber | American Herald Tribune | October 14, 2019
Sam Husseini is a senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, independent journalist and contributor to The Nation and FAIR.
Slava Zilber: Sam, three years ago, you appeared on Talk Nation Radio with David Swanson and spoke about the case of the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun. You pointed out that the people involved in the spying on the UN and the people authorizing the Iraq War were not held accountable:
“Virtually everybody who went along with the war, whether it is Kerry or Clinton, of course, the Bush administration themselves has falsified their own records in terms of why, what they did, when they did, why they did it, to the extent that they’ve been scrutinised at all.”
You also address it in a recent article. And recently, Joe Biden has been lying about his position on the Iraq War. How can such an important issue escape meaningful scrutiny? … continue
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