Moving sand anime from Ukraine

Gonna pick up posting again soon – just a bit busy right now. But here’s some extremely skillful but rather rather melancholic and soulful sand anime from the Ukraine (looks like it’s related to WWII in the Ukraine, then a part of the USSR). Thanks Inga.

Dick Cheney’s “Executive Assassination Ring”

Was Dr. David Kelly a target of Dick Cheney’s “Executive Assassination Ring”?

By Tom Burghardt

Antifascist Calling

Revelations that the Central Intelligence Agency launched a world-wide assassination program, and then concealed its existence from the U.S. Congress and the American people for eight years, carries an implication that death squads may have been employed against political opponents.

The Wall Street Journal reported July 13 that “A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.”

Investigative journalist Siobhan Gorman writes, “The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.”

The Washington Post however, revealed July 16 that the assassination plan was sanctioned by President Bush. Unnamed “intelligence officials” told the newspaper that “a secret document known as a ‘presidential finding’ was signed by President George W. Bush that same month, granting the agency broad authority to use deadly force against bin Laden as well as other senior members of al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”

According to Post reporter Joby Warrick, Bush’s finding “imposed no geographical limitations on the agency’s actions” and that the CIA was “not obliged to notify Congress of each operation envisaged under the directive.” This implies that targets could be hit anywhere, including on the soil of a NATO ally or inside the United States itself.

According to the Los Angeles Times the program “was kept secret from lawmakers for nearly eight years at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney.”

Despite these reports and hand-wringing amongst congressional Democrats, there’s something fishy here. After all, isn’t the whole point of America’s “global war on terror” to “capture or kill” al-Qaeda suspects? What’s so secretive or controversial about that?

The descriptions of the operation that have so far emerged however, bear a striking resemblance to charges laid earlier this year when investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said that the Bush administration stood-up an “executive assassination ring.”

During a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota in March the veteran journalist told the audience: “After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.”

The program was allegedly shut down by Panetta on June 23, a day after leaning of the agency’s clandestine initiative. What make these revelations all the more significant is that the CIA Director only learned of the program fully four months after assuming office.

“The implications,” socialist analyst Bill Van Auken writes, “are clear. The CIA maintained the secrecy ordered by Cheney even after the latter had left office, and continued to conceal the existence and nature of the covert operation not only from Congress, but from the Obama administration itself.”

But was the program shut down? The Washington Post further revealed that the plan, allegedly “on the agency’s back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a ’somewhat more operational phase’.”

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a former top aide to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell hints that the program was in a “somewhat more operational phase” years earlier, despite repeated denials by CIA officials and congressional staffers.

Wilkerson told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show July 14, “What I suspect has happened is what began to happen while I was still in the government, and that was we’re killing the wrong people. And we’re killing the wrong people in the wrong countries. And the countries are finding out about it, or at least there was a suspicion that the countries might find out about it, and so it was shut down. That’s my strong suspicion.”

According to Wilkerson, the teams may have been dispatched under deep cover, using Joint Special Operations Command as a cut-out, a confirmation of charges made by Seymour Hersh in March. When U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was queried by the State Department, “after some hemming and hawing, which was Rumsfeld’s forte, he finally admitted that he had dispatched some of these teams,” Wilkerson explained.

Powell’s former aide told Maddow, “It’s laughable that the CIA has never lied to Congress. “They lie to Congress on a routine basis.” Much the same can be said of General Powell who lied to the entire world “on a routine basis” during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

It must also be said there is precedence for the CIA’s alleged death squad activities during the Bush era. In Vietnam for example, the CIA and U.S. Special Forces jointly ran a secret assassination program that targeted Vietnamese dissidents. As author Douglas Valentine revealed in his definitive study, The Phoenix Program, Operation Phoenix “was a computer-driven program aimed at ‘neutralizing’, through assassination, kidnapping, and systematic torture, the civilian infrastructure that supported the insurgency in South Vietnam.”

Those programs never died and have since morphed into above top secret “Special Access Programs” used with deadly effect in Central- and South America during the 1980s and across the Middle East today.

Potential neurotoxin in our food

Wired Science published an article a couple of days ago on PBDE, a neurotoxin that also found its way into found in our food.

PBDE (PolyBrominated Diphenyl Ethers) are compounds that are used as flame retardants and therefore can be found in a wide array of products, including building materials, electronics, furnishings, motor vehicles, airplanes, plastics, polyurethane foams, and textiles.

Since the 1990s scientists have questioned their safety. People are exposed to low-levels of PBDEs through ingestion of food and by inhalation. PBDEs bioaccumulate in blood, breast milk, and fat tissues. Personnel associated with the manufacture of PBDE-containing products are exposed to highest levels of PBDEs. Bioaccumulation is of particular concern in such instances, especially for personnel in recycling and repair plants of PBDE-containing products.

People are also exposed to these chemicals in their domestic environment because of their prevalence in common household items. Studies in Canada have found significant concentrations of PBDEs in common foods such as salmon, ground beef, butter, and cheese. PBDEs have also been found at high levels in indoor dust, sewage sludge, and effluents from wastewater treatment plants. Increasing PBDE levels have been detected in the blood of marine mammals such as harbor seals.

Click on the link below to read the Wired Science article.

The impact of war: Military study ties war trauma, violence at home

Soldiers in a single Army unit killed as many as 11 people after returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, the military said last week. One contributing factor? The psychological trauma of war.

NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling talks to Guy Raz about the military’s efforts to deal with soldier trauma and ease their re-entry into civilian life. Go to NPR to listen to the 4 min interview.

Pentagon list claiming former GITMO detainees becoming ‘terrorists again’ is totally unreliable

Lia Tarachansky speaks to Nancy Youssef, Pentagon Correspondent for McClatchy Newspapers currently based in Kabul, Afghanistan. Youssef speaks about a list recently released by Pentagon, identifying that 14% or 74 former detainees of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base detention center are “confirmed or suspected of reengaging in terrorist activities.” Following to story of former inmate #798, Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil who after imprisonment for 6 years in the Bagram Airbase and Guantanamo Bay was found back on the list in spite of the allegation, Youssef says, being baseless. She says that, “It’s not really clear who compiles that list and how they determine who’s a suspected terrorist and who’s a confirmed one. As I mentioned earlier, this is the fourth list that they’ve released, and there are a lot of inconsistencies. The list is not complete. They say that there are 74 people suspected or confirmed as returned to terrorism, but the names listed is only partial ones.”

Bio

Nancy Youssef is McClatchy Newspapers’ chief Pentagon correspondent. She spent the past four years covering the Iraq war, most recently as Baghdad bureau chief. Her pieces focused on the everyday Iraqi experience, civilian causalities and how the US’ military strategy was reshaping Iraq’s social and political dynamics. While at the Free Press, she traveled throughout Jordan and Iraq for Knight Ridder, covering the Iraq war from the time leading up to it through the post-war period.

Israeli soldiers’ revelations from Gaza

Israeli soldiers involved in the attacks on Gaza at the start of this year claim that they were ordered to fire, regardless of the risk to civilians. Israel banned journalists from its invasion of Gaza in December and January, making it hard to verify allegations of indiscriminate firing, the use of phosphorous bombs, and forcing Palestinians to be human shields. Now an Israeli human rights group has produced a disturbing account of what it says happened in Gaza, as told by soldiers.

This Channel 4 clip is already a few days old but it’s good to get a reminder of how the anti-Semitic Nazi State of Israel operates (even though I find it hard to cope with having to listen to Mark Regev).

Political radicalisation and a profound sense of grief

A very thoughtful article by Robert Jensen on his personal process of political radicalisation. Rather than two pathways that readily come to mind, the one of hands-on activism and that of intellectual endeavour, he talks about a profound sense of grief for the pain in the world without whom joy cannot exist.

Getting radicalized, slow and painful

By Robert Jensen
Robert Jensen’s ZSpace Page /ZSpace

[Rob Shetterly, the artist who created the Americans Who Tell the Truth website (http://www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/), asked some of the people he painted to respond to this query: "Everywhere I go, kids and adults want to know how you got started. What was the defining moment that triggered your dedication to fighting for justice or peace, or the environment?" Below are my thoughts.]

My transition to political radicalism — going to the root of problems, recognizing that dramatic and fundamental change in the way society is organized is necessary if there is to be a decent human future — involved a lot of pain, in two different ways.

The first concerned the process of coming to know about the pain of the world. I had never been a na? person who thought the world was a happy place, but like many people who have privilege (in my case, being white, male, a U.S. citizen, and economically secure, though never wealthy) I was able to remain ignorant of the depth of the routine suffering in the world. I was able to ignore how white supremacy, patriarchy, U.S. imperialism, and a predatory capitalist economic system routinely destroy the bodies and spirits of millions of people around the world. When I made a conscious choice to stop ignoring those realities — in my case, when I returned to a university for graduate education with the time to read and study — the process of coming to know about that pain was wrenching. But I found myself wanting to know more.

Why would someone with privilege press to know more about the pain of the world when that knowledge creates tension and emotional turmoil? In my case, coming to understand that the world’s pain is the product of profoundly unjust social systems helped me understand a different kind of personal pain I had been struggling with. Most of my life I had felt like a bit of a freak, like someone out of step with the culture around him. There’s nothing dramatically wrong with me physically or psychologically, but I always struggled to fit in. I had always had a lingering sense that I didn’t want what others around me seemed to want. Because of my privilege, the world offered me a lot, and I am grateful for much of what I have — work I have usually enjoyed, an adequate income, relative safety. But I could never figure out how to be normal — how to kick back with the guys; how to get excited about sports, television, or the latest hit music; how to care about what kind of car I drove. In many ways I had it made, on the surface, but that sense of being out of step always dragged me down.

The best way to deal with our individual struggles is to put them in a larger context. That means both understanding the forces that shape our world as well as placing our problems in perspective. Becoming radicalized politically allowed me to see that I was suffering because I didn’t want to fit into a world shaped by unjust systems; the problem wasn’t my values and desires but the pathology of those systems. That didn’t solve all my personal problems, but it sure helped. Radical politics also helped me understand more clearly how others were suffering much more than I; it shook me out of my self-absorption. Both realizations led me to want to continue the search for more knowledge and understanding about how this all worked, and to commit as much time and energy as I had to movements for social justice.

The paradox is that since I have immersed myself in the pain of the world, I have been able to find new joy. I still understand that the world is not a happy place, and to be truly alive we must face what my friend Jim Koplin calls the “sense of profound grief” that comes with looking honestly at the world. As the writer Wendell Berry has put it, we live on “the human estate of grief and joy” [The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1996), p. 106]. Grief is inevitable, and it is only through an honest embrace of the grief that real joy is possible. The conventional world tries to sell us many pleasures, but it offers us little joy. That’s because the conventional world is also trying to sell us many ways to numb our pain, which keeps us from that grief. So long as we are out of touch with the grief, we are unable to feel the joy. We are left only with the desperate search for pleasure and a panicked scramble to avoid pain.

This process has, for me, been slow and gradual — there have been no epiphanies. I don’t believe in epiphanies, and I don’t trust people who claim to have epiphanies. I don’t think the deep understanding of the world that we strive for can come in a single moment. It comes from the long and painful struggle, with the world and with ourselves. Insight doesn’t magically descend upon us. We have to work for it, and that always takes time.

As the singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkyson (who also happens to be my partner) has put it, “Those are lost who/try to cross through/the sorrow fields too easily” ["He Waits for Me," from the CD "Beautiful World," Red House Records, 2008]. To expand on her metaphor, we cross those fields not in search of a utopia somewhere ahead. Our life is that journey across those fields, facing the grief and celebrating the joy along the way.

———————-

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. His latest book is All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice (Soft Skull Press, 2009). He also is the author of Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002). Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html

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The brutality of the American health & social system: Californian hospitals dump patients on skid row

By Saul Landau
Saul Landau’s ZSpace Page /ZSpace

Amidst interminable “reporting” on the “poor” victims of Ponzi maven Bernie Madoff – would anyone care if people had blown $65 billion trying to get richer in Las Vegas? – an alarming July 5 NY Times headline informs: “Safety Net Is Fraying for the Very Poor.”

In the story, by Erik Eckholm, we learn Obama’s stimulus package has softened the impact of recession on many of the working poor; but the neediest have become more destitute. Estimates of those lacking homes, jobs, and all basic support range as high as 3.5 million.

As dupes of Madoff like Elie Wiesel kvetch about his and his charity’s lost millions, the LA Times reported that “officials at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente West Los Angeles and Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center had discharged patients, put them in cabs and dumped them on skid row.” The hospital officials pleaded that only the most destitute area in Southern California has “a concentration of social services for the patients, including homeless shelters and drug and alcohol programs.” (April 7, 2009)

ABC News showed video of Carol Ann Reyes, 63, being “loaded into a cab by Kaiser Permanente hospital staff and dumped on Skid Row, wearing nothing more than a hospital gown and socks.” Regina Chambers, who works at the Union Rescue Mission, said Reyes “was very disoriented. She didn’t know where she was or what she was doing.”

Marveil Williams, another dumping victim, informed ABC: “They told me I needed to get out that hospital bed and go find somewhere to stay.” The reporter concluded: “His head and eyes still swollen, Williams was dumped on the doorstep of Skid Row’s Union Rescue Mission.” Other area hospitals also far from downtown practiced similar policies. Police officials complained that “the practice worsens the already grim conditions on skid row. They also disputed the hospitals’ contention that the patients taken to skid row are always ready for release.” (March 24, 2006)

Hospital managers insisted “dumping” indigent people assures “the best interests of the patients because skid row offers their best chance of receiving the follow-up services — as well as shelter — that they need once they are discharged.” Mehera Christian, director of public affairs for Kaiser Permanente Metro Los Angeles, whose hospital is eight miles west of downtown, said: “There are just a scarce number of places in the community to assist our homeless.” (LA Times, April 7, 2009)

Since last November, homelessness has increased in California while the state continued to reduce benefits and services to the poor. In May, A., a sixty year old African American woman, complained to her health care worker that she received $154 less on her monthly disability check – leaving her $436 a month. Her rent is $300. She began “working the streets” at age 12. Her godmother eventually took her in and she finished high school, married, had children and worked at a series of unskilled jobs. Then, eight years ago, her boy friend set her on fire in a fit of pique, leaving her unable to work.

“What was I supposed to do when a woman calls me at home and says she’s his wife? He admits it and I tell him to leave and he gets mad, you know, and he drugged me and while I was passed out he poured lighter fluid on me and lit me. Now that shit will wake you up.”

A. earns “bus money” by recycling. The burn scars show vividly on her arms and cover her torso. She spends her days going to crowded soup kitchens to scrounge enough food, and visits her new “boy friend” at a state supported rehab home where he is recovering from a stroke. “You can’t have too much of a social life on $136 a month,” she chuckles.

J., white and 36, begins the day by injecting herself with 2 grams of heroin “just to get well.” She says she wants to go on methadone and stop using, but it never works out. It began 20 years ago, she recalls, when a pimp pretending to love her got her hooked and turned her out. Once on the habit she had to work to meet the cost of her daily intake, now $200. She earns this by giving blow jobs and shoplifting. “You steal a box of detergent, find a receipt on the sidewalk or in the trash to match the purchase price and the store refunds the money,” she explains. “After several hours of this and a couple of blow jobs she makes enough to score,” says a person who treats her at a free clinic.

Recently, J. met a bus driver who promised to pay her $12 a day in methadone fees. “He really likes me. He says he wants to go into business with me. You know, I could do graphic art.” She repeats this pipe dream of a man who will “save me, take care of me, get me off dope.”

The abscesses from 20 years of daily injecting have left her arms and legs a mass of cavernous scar tissue. She clings to the dream that someone will come along and save her. But she lacks the will to go to the methadone clinic by herself and rescue herself.

Nan, a former high school teacher, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. A female student assaulted her with a knife, but didn’t actually cut her. The incident and subsequent mental and emotional problems caused her to quit teaching. She got disability payments and then got a job in a bakery. But she had problems relating to her boss and had to leave that position as well. Back on disability, she could not afford to pay the rent on her apartment. Last November, she became homeless and now lives in a secluded spot in the Oakland hills with her dog. She still has access to a social worker and some psychological help, but the budgets for these programs are being cut. She has no hope of getting a roof over her head, especially with her only friend, the dog. From teacher to homeless woman without a viable agenda!

The people who lost millions or hundreds of thousands speculating with Madoff have generated media attention, which they would not have done if they had lost their money in a Vegas casino. The truly poor remain marginal in all arenas of consciousness. We see them on downtown streets, begging, talking to themselves, sleeping, or just staring into space.

In 1997, my wife and I stopped our car on Nebraska Avenue in Northwest Washington DC. We were on our way out of town. A man in his thirties lay on the curb, moaning. “I fell. I couldn’t walk any more,” he told my wife, a nurse. We helped him sit up. He had just been discharged from DC General Hospital despite the fact that he suffered from acute pancreatitis. “I was a practicing lawyer and let the bottle get the better of me,” he explained in the next few minutes. “So now I’m jobless, homeless, without my family and hospitals don’t keep people for more than a day.” We gave him $20 and hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to the homeless shelter.

Most of us do not want to admit the obvious: there but for the grace of God — or State legislatures – go I. Responding to recession, people who feel absolutely assured by God’s Grace, Members of State legislatures in almost half of the states have dramatically cut programs for the disabled and elderly and reduced public schools budgets as well. The states remain in the red to the tune of tens of billions.

In the 1960s, California built public colleges and universities, expanded state parks and made libraries more accessible.  But the wealthy don’t use public education, health or transportation and own parks on their estates.

Tax cuts – the mantra of the right wing – means less money for public services. It also means more homeless, jobless, and hopeless people.

Funny, how few Members of Congress even hesitate before voting $800 billion for a war system – excuse me, defense, that doesn’t defend us – and hopeless far away wars. The wretched of our country, however, don’t merit even much newspaper sympathy – compared to those swindled by the iniquitous Madoff.

Landau won Chile’s Bernardo O’Higgins award for human rights. Counterpunch published his A BUS AND BOTOX WORLD. He is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose films on DVD are available. (roundworldproductions@gmail.com)

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• L.A. Ranked the ‘Meanest City’ toward Homeless, Mayor’s Office Says it’s Wrong (laist.com)

It happened all before: the 1976 swine flu pandemic and the US government vaccination propaganda that caused deaths and long-term illnesses

The WHO and the US administration in alliance with Big Pharma are involved in a major propaganda campaign to implement compulsory vaccination. There is no more “honest reporting” by mainstream TV as in this 1979 CBS TV program. Today, with some exceptions, network TV in America and in other Western countries such as Australia is complicit with the government’s disinformation campaign.

This is how The 1979 CBS program begins: “”The flu season is upon us. Which type will we worry about this year, and what kind of shots will we be told to take? Remember the swine flu scare of 1976? That was the year the U.S. government told us all that swine flu could turn out to be a killer that could spread across the nation, and Washington decided that every man, woman and child in the nation should get a shot to prevent a nation-wide outbreak, a pandemic.

Well 46 million of us obediently took the shot, and now 4,000 Americans are claiming damages from Uncle Sam amounting to three and a half billion dollars because of what happened when they took that shot. By far the greatest number of the claims – two thirds of them are for neurological damage, or even death, allegedly triggered by the flu shot”. (CBS, 60 MINUTES, 1979)

Source: Global Research, which also has the full transcript of the 60 Minutes show.

Chuck D and wife Gaye Theresa Johnson discuss rap, Malcom X, Obama and black political tradition

Excellent interview with Chuck D and his wife Gaye Theresa Johnson. It raises to our awareness the importance of black radical politics and black activism for a history that is not America’s as white liberals claim, but that is that of the black people in that country. Obama might be a symbol of that struggle, but neither does he acknowledge the roots of the wave that swept him to the presidency nor is he part of that tradition. He might still be subject to racism, but being the product of Ivy League education and identifying himself with the conservative Democratic political structure, he never was or will be part of that political struggle that Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcom X and many others represented.

Manipulation is rife on stock markets

Are Our Markets Being Manipulated By “Rogues” Or Firms?

Jul 15, 2009 By Danny Schechter

Danny Schechter’s ZSpace Page / ZSpace

There’s New Evidence to Suggest that Crime In The Financial Markets is Rife

Everyone has heard of the Wikipedia but not everyone knows about the Investopedia, a Forbes website, that monitors finance for market players.  One of the issues it is concerned about is market manipulation, actions by rogue and not so rogue players who, working alone or together, unduly influence the way our supposed “free” markets function.

It is a fascinating source of information for the uninitiated who hear the daily reports on the ups and downs of the Dow and believe that somehow it is all part of the natural order of the universe.

It isn’t

Thanks to an even more informative web site, Gamingthemarket.com, we learn that in fact markets are subject to, prone to, and characterized by all sorts of manipulative practices. Here’s one you may not have heard of.

Ghosting: An illegal practice whereby two or more market makers collectively attempt to influence and change the price of a stock. Ghosting is used by corrupt companies to affect stock prices so they can profit from the price movement.

This practice is illegal because market makers are required by law to act in competition with each other. It is known as “ghosting” because, like a spectral image or a ghost, this collusion among market makers is difficult to detect. In developed markets, the consequences of ghosting can be severe. -Investopedia

It looks like we have gone from the age of the trustbuster to the era of the ghost buster as fiction once again turns into “faction.”

Last week, the price of oil mysteriously shot up. There were reports of yet another “rogue” trader. The New York Times later reported:

“Reacting to recent swings in oil prices, federal regulators said they were considering limits on “speculative” traders in markets for oil and other energy products.”  Of course, the big banks and Wall Street firms are expected to zealously oppose more oversight.

Some things don’t change. Anyone remember Nicholas Leeson, a one man engine of speculation who lost over a billion dollars and brought down his own bank before going to jail? He later gloated on his website; “How could one trader bring down the banking empire that had funded the Napoleonic Wars?”

Noam Chomsky: season of travesties – freedom and democracy in mid-2009

Noam Chomsky’s ZSpace Page / ZSpace

June 2009 was marked by a number of significant events, including two elections in the Middle East: in Lebanon, then Iran. The events are significant, and the reactions to them, highly instructive.

The election in Lebanon was greeted with euphoria. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that he is “a sucker for free and fair elections,” so “it warms my heart to watch” what happened in Lebanon in an election that “was indeed free and fair — not like the pretend election you are about to see in Iran, where only candidates approved by the Supreme Leader can run. No, in Lebanon it was the real deal, and the results were fascinating: President Barack Obama defeated President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.” Crucially, “a solid majority of all Lebanese — Muslims, Christians and Druse — voted for the March 14 coalition led by Saad Hariri,” the US-backed candidate and son of the murdered ex-Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, so that “to the extent that anyone came out of this election with the moral authority to lead the next government, it was the coalition that wants Lebanon to be run by and for the Lebanese — not for Iran, not for Syria and not for fighting Israel.” We must give credit where it is due for this triumph of free elections (and of Washington): “Without George Bush standing up to the Syrians in 2005 — and forcing them to get out of Lebanon after the Hariri killing — this free election would not have happened. Mr. Bush helped create the space. Power matters. Mr. Obama helped stir the hope. Words also matter.”

Two days later Friedman’s views were echoed by Eliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign relations, formerly a high official of the Reagan and Bush I administrations. Under the heading “Lebanon’s Triumph, Iran’s Travesty,” Abrams compared these “twin tests of [US] efforts to spread democracy to the Muslim world.” The lesson is clear: “What the United States should be promoting is not elections, but free elections, and the voting in Lebanon passed any realistic test….the majority of Lebanese have rejected Hezbollah’s claim that it is not a terrorist group but a `national resistance’…The Lebanese had a chance to vote against Hezbollah, and took the opportunity.”

Reactions were similar throughout the mainstream. There are, however, a few flies in the ointment.

A station master’s comment on turncoat Garrett

My respect goes out to the Hazelbrook station master for putting this little note on the station’s notice board yesterday. Nice touch to raise political awareness of the Labor goverment and in particular of one of its most disgusting, spineless and hypocritcal apostates.

A small addendum: Garrett’s back flip on uranium mining is not his first sellout; here is a small number of other turnarounds:

• At the end of January 2009, Garrett announced he will give the go ahead to the $110 million expansion expansion of an open cut mine that will divert the McArthur River in the Northern Territory six kilometres off course. His ministerial decision overruled the Federal Court that said that the original approval was granted inappropriately. The survival of migrant birds and fish that depend on the McArthur are threatened through Garrett’s decision;  Aboriginal groups who have fought hard to cease the expansion said they were ignored. Xstrata, the company in control of the mine, has refused since 1993 to pay compensation to Aboriginal people and has been accused of denying traditional owners access to sacred sites. It should be remembered, that Garrett as the former lead singer of Midnight Oil was famous for his protest songs in support of indigenous land rights and self-determination.
• Gunns’ Limited, while battling significant public pressure and repeated setbacks trying to build a pulp mill in Tasmania’s Tamar Valley, has enjoyed numerous concessions from both the previous Coalition government and now Garrett. While trying to appear tough on the controversial pulp mill plans, Garrett has followed the same environmental approval procedure that was arranged by Malcolm Turnbull when he was environment minister in 2007. Turnbull, for his part, was accused of “doing deals” and accepting donations on behalf on the Liberal party from Gunns throughout his term, the October 2, 2007 Australian reported. Choosing to ignore massive public disapproval and outrage — an internet poll on January 15 found that 47% of Tasmanians strongly disagree with approving the pulp mill — Garrett has indicated initial construction can start if the company chooses to doso. He indicated he will give full approval once his “tough conditions” are met. The “tough conditions”, however, are exactly what Gunns offered to abide by in the first place.
• On August 28, 2008 Garrett approved expanding the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia’s far north-east. The Beverley mine is known for a burst pipe that leaked 62,000 litres of radioactive material in 2002. The mine also is owned by an affiliate to one of the largest arms dealers in the world, General Atomics, which will own the just approved Four Mile mine.
• Soon after, when the WA Liberal government announced lifting the ban on uranium mining on November 18, 2008 Garrett offered no challenge. “We knew that Western Australia had a policy for opening up its uranium mining — that’s a decision that the West Australian government has taken”, he told the Australian on November 18, 2008.
• Instead of demanding “let’s pay the rent, let’s give it back”, as he sung in “Beds are Burning” and call for an end to the racist Northern Territory intervention, Garrett offered this for Aboriginal people on May 26, 2008: “We should be introducing it [income management] here, in my electorate, in [the Sydney suburb of] La Perouse”.
• Rather than continuing to oppose the US/Australia military alliance — as Garrett urged in the classic protest song “US Forces” — Garrett backtracked in 2004 saying “I don’t believe [US military facility] Pine Gap should be closed.” He also “unreservedly” supported the establishment of a US military spy facility near Geraldton, telling journalists on February 17, 2007: “Of course you change your mind about some things over time.”

Garrett’s conversion from activist to conservative politician and the accompanying values sellout isn’t a new phenomena; he telegraphed his political backsliding before he took office. He confirmed suspicions of many by telling the 7.30 Report on June 10, 2004, he was “ready to come mainstream”. “I’ve matured my views”, he said. And he has justified his conservative politics as “a part of growing up”, according to the Herald Sun in 2004. Garrett also was present when the ALP voted to drop its “no new uranium mines” policy at the national conference in 2007. Then shadow environment minister, Garrett did not fight the decision and instead pledged to accept and promote it, wanting to be a “team player”, said The Age on April 29, 2007.

Former rock star now environment minister approves uranium mine owned by one of the world’s biggest arms dealers

That the former Midnight Oil leader singer and one-time leader of the Australian Conservation Foundation, Peter Garrett, approved the country’s latest environmentally dangerous uranium mine is not the latest news anymore. What is though is that the mine will be owned by a subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest arms dealers, the Sydney Morning Herald reported this morning. The dealer, James Neal Blue, is also being linked to the development of drones being used by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq and to the CIA financed contra guerrillas that fought Nicaragua’s Sandinista government during the 1980s. Garrett would have known all that given that the already operating Beverly mine is also owned by an affiliate to Mr Blue’s General Atomics.

All of this shows the incredible depth of the moral and ethical sellout by the former passionate anti-uranium campaigner and fervent environmental activist Garrett. There’s a litany of former union representatives in Australia who turned from standing for worker’s rights to becoming workers’ adversaries (Bob Hawke even became the country’s first neo-conservative prime minister), but it’s the first time I have seen this ethical corruption occurring in a leading environmental campaigner.

The Four Mile Uranium Project is located 550km north of Adelaide in South Australia

Revealed: secretive arms tycoon behind new uranium mine

Ben Cubby Environment Reporter

July 16, 2009

THE new uranium mine approved by the Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, will be owned by a subsidiary of one of the world’s biggest arms dealers.

A colourful but reclusive billionaire named James Neal Blue, who helped devise the Predator unmanned aircraft being used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is a director of Quasar Resources – the company that will control the Four Mile mine.

Quasar Resources is an affiliate of General Atomics, a US weapons and nuclear energy corporation which is chaired by Mr Blue, and reportedly holds $US700 million ($877 million) in Pentagon contracts. Mr Blue, 74, first came to prominence during the 1980s as a self-described “enthusiastic supporter” of US involvement in a covert war against the left-wing government in Nicaragua.

Next to the new Four Mile mine is the Beverley uranium mine, which is owned by Heathgate Resources, also affiliated to Mr Blue’s General Atomics, meaning that almost 200 square kilometres is now dedicated to the two related mines.

Mr Garrett yesterday defended the decision to grant environmental approval for the Four Mile mine, saying there would be strict monitoring of radioactive waste.

The decision was endorsed by the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, and by the Minerals Council of Australia.

Mr Garrett, a former environmental campaigner who protested against both uranium mining and the US military presence in Australia, denied yesterday that he had compromised his principles.

“Look that is an old song, it’s an old cycle that we hear from political opponents who seem to forget that I joined the Labor Party, I became a member of the Government and I said at the time that I would accept, as a team player, the decisions that the Government took,” he said.

“And my job, as a consequence of that, is to support the Government’s decision clearly and make sure as Environment Minister that I set the bar on environmental protection as high as it needs to go and that is world’s best practice and that is what we have done with this decision.”

However environmental groups have serious concerns about the height of that bar, pointing out that there is no requirement for the company to ever clean up the radioactive plumes which can be expected to drift slowly around in the water table.

The Beverley mine, which uses the same acid corrosion technique to extract uranium from aquifers as will be used at Four Mile, has recorded 59 spills of radioactive material in the past decade, according to the South Australian Department of Primary Industries and Resources.

Mr Blue’s Quasar Resources has joined the Australian mineral exploration company Alliance Resources to set up the mine.

According to The New York Times, Mr Blue once part-owned a cocoa and banana plantation in Nicaragua with the family of former president Anastasio Somoza.

He told the paper he was supportive of the Contra guerillas that fought Nicaragua’s Sandinista government but refused to discuss any link to CIA operations in that country.

Mr Blue’s brother, Linden, was briefly imprisoned by the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro after apparently violating Cuban air space in a private aircraft.

Mr Blue established a business empire based on oil and real estate, before moving into weapons and nuclear power.

He is regarded as a pioneer of the unmanned aircraft that the US military uses to spy on and bomb its enemies.

General Atomics has also prospered, and between 2000 and 2005 it was the biggest corporate sponsor of travel for members of the US Congress and their families and aides.

Mr Blue bought tracts of uranium-rich land in Australia decades ago, before the Federal Government had approved uranium mining, according to a profile in Fortune magazine.

Uranium from the Four Mile mine will gradually replace ore from the decade-old Beverley mine, with most of the exported uranium expected to be sent to reactors in the US.

There is a solution to bailed out banks refusing California’s request to tide over loans until October

This is an example for the Obama administration’s economic policies in action. It bails out the banks after they have been managed badly, and then the same banks refuse to use a small amount of that public money to give a loan reprieve to the State and therefore people of California, accusing the state of having been mismanaged, even though the crisis was caused by those very banks in the first place. And the Obama administration stands on the sidelines, passively watching. It showers Wall Street with hundreds of billions of dollars but it doesn’t want to give California a mere loan guarantee of US$ 6 billion nor will it force the banks to act supportively. There is a creative way out of this situation though for California, one which once and for all might cut it’s dependency on the financial institutions, reports Ellen Brown on Global Research.

Four Wall Street banks, which received $15-25 billion each from the taxpayers, have rejected California’s IOUs because the State is supposedly a bad credit risk. The bailed out banks would seem to have a duty to lend a helping hand, but they say they don’t want to delay an agreement on further austerity measures. State legislators are not bowing quickly to the pressure, but what is the alternative?

In the latest twist to the California budget saga, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and JPMorgan Chase (which each got $25 billion in bailout money from the taxpayers) and Bank of America (which got $15 billion) have refused California’s request for a loan to tide it over until October. Until the State can get things sorted out, it has started paying its creditors in IOUs (“I Owe You’s” or promises to pay bearing interest, technically called registered warrants). Its Wall Street creditors, however, have refused to take them. Why? The pot says the kettle is a poor credit risk!

California expects to need to issue only about $13 billion in IOUs through September, and all its Governor has asked for in the way of a loan from the federal government is a guarantee for $6 billion. Total loans, commitments and guarantees to rescue the financial sector and stem the credit crisis have been estimated at $12.8 trillion. But California has not been invited to the banquet. The total sum California needs to balance its budget is $26.3 billion. That is about the same sum given to Citigroup, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan in bailout money; and it is only about one-tenth the sum given to AIG, a mere insurance company. Corporations evidently trump States and their citizens in the eyes of the powers controlling the purse strings. California has a gross domestic product of $1.7 trillion annually and has been rated the world’s eighth largest economy. Its 38.3 million people are one-eighth of the nation’s population and a key catalyst for U.S. retail sales. When the California consumer base falters, businesses are shaken nationwide. If AIG and the other Wall Street welfare recipients are too big to fail, California is way too big to fail.

Fitch Rating Agency has downgraded California’s municipal bonds to junk bond status,triple B. Why? AIG and Lehman Brothers had A ratings right up until they declared bankruptcy. California has never defaulted on its bonds, and it cannot arbitrarily decide to default; the State Constitution mandates that debt principal and interest must be paid as promised. California bonds lost their triple A rating only when the municipal bond insurers (Ambac and MBIA) lost theirs. It was these insurers, not the State of California, that got into hot water gambling in derivatives. The State Attorney General has opined that California’s IOUs are valid and binding obligations of the State. In rejecting them, however, Wall Street may have ulterior motives. A lower credit rating can justify investors in demanding higher interest rates. The interest offered on the IOUs is substantially lower than the interest banks can get on triple B rated municipal bonds.

There may be deeper motives than that. Considering the enormous importance of the California economy to the country, and the relatively small sum it needs in loans, the refusal to support the State financially seems highly suspicious, especially when much more has been given to less creditworthy private institutions. The banks say they want to keep the pressure on California legislators to work it out among themselves, but what does that mean? The options are even higher taxes, even more cuts in services, or even more fire sales of public assets; in short, the sort of austerity measures expected of supplicants reduced to Third World debtor status. State legislators are understandably reluctant to crawl into that debt pit. Governor Schwarzenegger has refused to approve higher taxes, while Democratic leaders say further cuts in services could leave some Californians starving in the streets.
Solution
There is an alternative to that dark future, and perhaps it is to keep the public from waking up to it that arms are being twisted to accept the new burdens quickly. If Wall Street and the Feds won’t extend credit to California on reasonable terms, the State could simply walk away and create its own credit machine. California could put its revenues in its own state-owned bank and fan these “reserves” into many times their face value in loans, using the same “fractional reserve” system that private banks use. Many authorities have attested that banks simply create the money they lend on their books. Congressman Jerry Voorhis, writing in 1973, explained it like this:

[F]or every $1 or $1.50 which people, or the government, deposit in a bank, the banking system can create out of thin air and by the stroke of a pen some $10 of checkbook money or demand deposits. It can lend all that $10 into circulation at interest just so long as it has the $1 or a little more in reserve to back it up.

President Obama himself has acknowledged this “multiplier effect.” In a speech at Georgetown University on April 14, 2009, he said:

“[A]lthough there are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of banks; where’s our bailout?,’ they ask, the truth is that a dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollars of loans to families and businesses, a multiplier effect that can ultimately lead to a faster pace of economic growth.”

If private banks can leverage deposits into multiple amounts of “credit” on their books, a state-owned bank could do the same thing, and return the profits to the public purse. One State already does this. North Dakota boasts the only state-owned bank in the nation. It is also one of only two states (along with Montana) that are currently able to meet their budgets. The Bank of North Dakota was established by the legislature in 1919 to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the State must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the State guarantees its deposits. The bank’s surplus profits are returned to the State’s coffers. The bank operates as a bankers’ bank, partnering with private banks to lend money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It makes 1% loans to startup farms, has a thriving student loan business, and purchases municipal bonds from public institutions.

North Dakota is not suffering from unemployment or feeling the pinch of the economic downturn. Rather, it sports the largest surplus it has ever had. If this isolated farming State can escape Wall Street’s credit crisis, the world’s eighth largest economy can do it too!

To sign a petition that will go electronically to Governor Schwarzenegger and to elected officials in your State, click here. You could also try faxing this article or a letter to Governor Schwarzenegger at 916-558-3160. See http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact.

Ellen Brown developed her research skills as an attorney practicing civil litigation in Los Angeles. In Web of Debt, her latest book, she turns those skills to an analysis of the Federal Reserve and “the money trust.” She shows how this private cartel has usurped the power to create money from the people themselves, and how we the people can get it back. Her earlier books focused on the pharmaceutical cartel that gets its power from “the money trust.” Her eleven books include Forbidden Medicine, Nature’s Pharmacy (co-authored with Dr. Lynne Walker), and The Key to Ultimate Health (co-authored with Dr. Richard Hansen). Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.

Ellen Brown is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ellen Brown

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• Banks balk at accepting Calif. IOUs (msnbc.msn.com)
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• California’s IOU’s (crooksandliars.com)

When will Obama stand and fight for the people?

Chris Britt

The answer is: never. I’m not sure what it is that makes the so-called progressives not wake up from their illusions about Obama. The guy is part of the political establishment, which in turns is massively enmeshed with big business. Obama’s track record so far has clearly indicated that he does not stand on the social-justice and environment protection platform his pretended to be on. Ron Daniel’s article below gives a range of examples to back up this judgment, and so do sites like politfact that runs an up-to-date scorecard on how Obama sticks to 500 of his promises.

While there are areas where he has taken positive actions, like “removing brush, small trees and other overgrown vegetation that serve as fuel for wildfires”, it’s the nature of many important promises he’s either fulfilled, compromised on, stalled, broken or so far taken no action on that show his credentials of supporting the rich, powerful and military elites … from not following through on commitments to creating tougher rules against revolving doors for lobbyists and former officials to stalling the restoration of habeas corpus rights for “enemy combatants” to sending more soldiers to Afghanistan to wanting to water down health care reform and the Employee Free Choice Act to creating industry-friendly carbon trading legislation. The list is long with unsurprisingly very little real benefits to people, either achieved so far or to be realised. So I wonder why even critical thinkers like the author of the article below still don’t seem to have given up hope …

Ed Stein

By Ron Daniels
Ron Daniels’s ZSpace Page / ZSpace

When President Barack Obama took office after a brilliant and historic election campaign, there were great hopes that he would utilize his margin of victory and enormous popularity to usher in an era of “change you can believe in.” Though it is far too early to predict the ultimate legacy of his presidency, there are troubling signs that rather than boldly and robustly articulating and fighting for his policy proposals, Obama is emerging as a cautious pragmatist who is more obsessed with “bi-partisanship” than seizing the moment to create substantial change in this country. Time and time again, President Obama has advocated or settled for less than the power of his mandate, popularity and majority in the Congress suggests was possible. I am beginning to ask when Obama will decide to stand and fight for what he promised. The first sign of concern came when President Obama appointed an economic team led by seasoned Wall Street insiders, Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, who some analysts argue were key players in financial institutions whose reckless practices precipitated the disastrous free fall of the U.S. and global economies.

It is difficult to imagine how they can think outside the box when they have been inside the box for so long. As a consequence, the economic recovery plans proposed by the Administration lacked the vision and scope to shape a more socially responsible economy. From the outset, Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winning economist, contended that the economic stimulus package needed to be at least 1 trillion dollars to have significant impact. But instead of putting forth and fighting for a budget of 1.2 – 1.5 trillion so that he would have leverage in the negotiations, Obama offered up a package of only 800 billion. Eager to have “bi-partisan support for his plan, he meekly watched the budget get trimmed to 785 billion in a compromise that only three Republican Senators signed off on.

In the mortgage rescue plan which, was supposed to bring relief to those on “Main Street,” Obama quickly bowed to the conservative mantra that home buyers who bought homes they couldn’t afford” should not be eligible for relief. Instead of standing firm and educating the American people about the deception and malicious, greed oriented intent of mortgage brokers and lenders, Obama essentially disqualified a category of people who have been most seriously victimized by the sub-prime mortgage debacle. When the revised Toxic Assets Recovery Program (TARP) was unveiled, it was a sweet deal full of incentives and rewards for the bankers and financers who created the crisis and billions of dollars of risk for the taxpayers if the program fails. And, while the focus has been placed on saving existing private financial institutions, Obama failed to lay out a plan to strengthen and expand community-based financial institutions like credit unions and community banks or even a public/federal bank, a people’s bank, to compete with the Barracudas on Wall Street. The so called bail-out of the auto industry followed a similar pattern. Indeed, the industry was allowed to dangle in the breeze, while huge concessions were forced on the union and its retired workers. The Administration’s proposed regulation of the financial industry and the new energy bill have some decent features but fall far short of the bold changes required to permanently check the greed of the moneyed interests. But, Obama’s most critical lack of leadership thus far has been the failure to stand up and fight for his signature pledge to deliver health care to the 47-50 million people who are currently uninsured. As a State Senator in Illinois, he embraced a Single Payer system as the most cost effective and efficient way to deliver health care for all. And, though I have consistently argued that progressives must build a movement strong enough to create the political space for Obama to operate, the converse is also true. President Obama could use his position to educate the public on the merits of particular policy prescriptions and aggressively mobilize grassroots support for the proposals he’s advocating.

This is certainly true when it comes to the issue of universal health care. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll revealed that “Americans overwhelming support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government run insurance plan to compete with private insurers.” This is the “public option” feature in the bills being advanced by committees in the House and the Senate. Obviously many progressives prefer HR 676, the Single Payer bill sponsored by Congressman John Conyers which has more than 70 sponsors. Moreover, there is a vibrant movement called Health Care Now which is mobilizing significant public support for HR 676 around the country. Given Obama’s stated views on Single Payer, these factors would seem to offer an ideal opportunity for him to educate and lead on this issue. Instead of choosing to support Single Payer, he has settled on a hybrid formulation which includes a “public option” within a system that will include plans offered by the insurance industry. Frankly, having a meaningful public option as the single-payer component of the final bill would be an acceptable fall back position. But, there is a danger that the public option will be shelved. The Republicans and the insurance companies hate Single Payer and see the public option as a Trojan Horse, which will ultimately evolve into a Single Payer system. What has President Obama’s strategy been as the debate rages in the Congress?

On occasion he has hinted that Single Payer has merits but has been unwilling to stand up and fight for it. His initial posture was to take what seemed like an uncompromising position in favor of a public option. In his most recent press conference, however, he refused to draw a line in the sand in favor of a public option as a component of the legislation he would be willing to sign. When the strategy should be to fight first and compromise when necessary, Obama has apparently capitulated before putting up a fight. Therefore, the outcome is predictable; the insurance companies will carry the day. There will be no public option in the “bi-partisan” plan which is adopted. Millions of Americans will secure health care coverage. Unfortunately, it will be within a system that is ultimately doomed to crash from spiraling cost to the government and taxpayers because the program will be tailored to meet the pecuniary needs of the insurance industry rather than the health care needs of the people. This outcome could be avoided if President Obama were willing to stand and fight!

Dr. Ron Daniels is President of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century and Distinguished Lecturer at York College City University of New York. He is the host of Night Talk, Wednesday evenings on WBAI 99.5 FM, Pacifica New York. His articles and essays also appear on the IBW website www.ibw21.org

Grand Ayatollah Montazeri suggests Iran’s politcal system is illegitimate (part 2)

more about “The Real News Network – Grand Ayatoll…“, posted with vodpod

Part 2 of Nader Hashemi on Iranian Grand Ayatollah Montazeri’s fatwa in which the Ayatolla suggests that the country’s Supreme Leader, its government and some of its institutions are illegitimate, and calls on Iranians to fight oppression. Nader Hashemi in this video answers questions relating to the democracy movement.

Nader Hashemi is Assistant Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver He has a PhD from the University of Toronto

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Grand Ayatollah Montazeri suggests Iran’s politcal system is illegitimate (part 1)

Iranian Grand Ayatollah Montazeri suggests that Iran’s Supreme Leader and the country’s government and institutions are illegitimate, and he urges Iranians to fight oppression.

G20 or G192? The global economy needs structural change and not restoration

Let’s face it: the UN does not represent the people of countries but their governments, and governments in general do not represent their people either. Nevertheless, the tussle represented in the two videos above is an interesting one: it reflects a power differential, that between the political and economic North and South, and it shows a growing unwillingness by the least developed countries (LDCs) to accept it.

It is quite astonishing that the G20 sees itself as a global representative – given that the UN has 192 member countries. Who gave the G20 that mandate for global representation? Certainly not the 172 countries excluded form the swanky club. The UN General Assembly’s Conference on the Economic Crisis certainly seems much more appropriate than the G20 to discuss the economic disaster – not just because 192 nations are represented, but also because it’s the ‘developing countries’ whose populations suffer most from a ‘recession’ primarily manufactured by the US, Europe (in particular Britain) and some other Western governments who were flying high the flag of neo-conservative economics.

While most of the ‘developed’ world can pump billions of taxpayers dollars into troubled banks, the crisis continues to spread across the globe’s South which doesn’t have the clout and means to burden its population with bailout debt. And when this part of the world wants to democratise discussions and target the basic elements of the ‘developed’ world’s financial architecture for drastic reform, they are being told by the ever arrogant US and Canada that they lack the expertise and mandate to demand changes to that system. It is with such flimsy arguments that the West so far has sought to shut out the LCDs of the discussions around international finance.

But whose expertise actually led to the financial meltdown? Whose global institutions (such as IMF or Worldbank) forced structural changes on the least developed countries that the ‘global financial crisis’ rendered unworkable? And who, in addition to practically demonstrating financial incompetence, enforced on those countries unfair trade rules and exposed them to a freefall of some commodity prices and steep rises in others (including those resulting from energy profiteering)? Whose economic model is responsible for more than 1 billion people starving?

With this track record, the West’s hubris and insolence in refusing the LDCs a seat at the table of discussions seeking sustainable solutions to the crisis of the economic world order is not surprising: the West wants to restore the old system it has nicely benefitted from for a long time. For the G20 recovery means business as usual, so the rich can get even richer, the planetary destruction can continue unabated and the domains of power will remain unchanged.

Martin Khor is the Executive Director of The South Centre, an intergovernmental organization that provides research and policy advice to 50 governments of the Global South. Prior to this, he was the Director of the Third World Network, a developing-country organization carrying out research in trade, environment and development issues. He has served as Editor of the South-North Development Monitor and is a member of the United Nations Committee on Development Policy. He sat on a wide array of commissions and boards, serving on the Board of the South Centre (1996-2002), the Helsinki Group on Globalisation and Democracy, the International Task Force on Climate Change (2003-2005), the Expert Group on Democracy and Development, Commonwealth Secretariat (2002-2003), the United Nations Secretary-General’s Task Force on Environment and Human Settlements (1998), and the Working Group of Experts on the Right to Development, the UN Commission on Human Rights. He was educated in Economics in Cambridge University (U.K.) and the Universiti Sains Malaysia, and has authored many books and papers on trade, sustainable development, intellectual property rights, and development.

Byron Blake is an Ambassador to the UN from his home of Jamaica, and serves as a Special Adviser to the current President of the UN General Assembly, Miguel D’Escoto-Brockmann. Blake served at CARICOM (Caribbean Community Secretariat) for almost 30 years, before leaving his position as Assistant Secretary-General, in charge of trade and economic integration. He has also served as an Ambassador to the UN for the government of Antigua and Barbuda, at which time he served as a spokesperson for the G-77 + China, a diverse group of developing countries making up the UN’s largest voting bloc. Blake has a Master’s Degree in Economics from the University of the West Indies.

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USW president supports single-payer health care

Leo Gerard: I think we should fight for single-payer health care, fight for a principled position

Paul Jay speaks to Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers’ union about his fight for single-payer health care reform and the unionization legislation. Gerard says that, “the unions are first and foremost going to be very active in the fight to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and the fight for health care reform.” Speaking on the proposals of the Chairman of the Finance Committee, Gerard says, “I think Senator [Max] Baucus (D-MT) is off the mark,” because the Senator’s proposal to tax employer provided health care will, “drive more people out of the health care system.”

Leo W. Gerard is a steelworker and president of the United Steelworkers (USW). He was involved in the formation of the Industrial Union Council of the AFL-CIO, and in February 2003, was appointed to serve on the AFL-CIO’s Executive Committee, as well as serving on its Executive Council. He was named Chair of the AFL-CIO’s Public Policy Committee in March 2005.

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