Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts

Sunday, November 14, 2010

HT They Gave Us a Republic

To avoid giving gross offense to the Afghan public, and to prevent the appearance of an uncontrolled security state, the US military forbids use on Afghan civilians of the very practices the TSA is now making routine for civilian travelers at US airports.

Human Security Report Project

The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is an independent research centre affiliated with Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver, Canada. Formerly located at the University of British Columbia and known as the Human Security Centre, the HSRP joined SFU in May of 2007.

The HSRP tracks global and regional trends in organized violence, their causes and consequences. Research findings and analyses are published in the Human Security Report, Human Security Brief series, and the miniAtlas of Human Security. HSRP publications have received major coverage in the international media and are regularly cited by national governments, international agencies, and NGOs, as well as the research community.

The HSRP also produces a range of online data, research, and news resources covering a broad range of global security issues.
HSRP In the News

The Associated Press, Le Monde, and The Economist are just some of the prominent media outlets that have used and provided coverage of our publications. Our staff also write op-eds and frequently provide commentary for the media.

Human Security Report
Security Stats
Conflict Monitors
miniAtlas of Human Security

Donors

Our work is made possible by generous support from a number of government departments and agencies.
The Human Security Report Project (HSRP) is made possible by generous support from:
The Department for International Development, United Kingdom (DFID);
The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, (Sida);
The Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Switzerland; and
The Government of Canada.

In the past, the HSRP has also received support from the Government of Norway and from the Rockefeller Foundation.

2009
The Shrinking Costs Of War

The study reveals that nationwide death rates actually fall during the course of most of today's armed conflicts...Challenging commonsense assumptions, the study reveals that nationwide death rates actually fall during the course of most of today’s armed conflicts.

The study argues that wartime mortality, from disease and malnutrition, as well as war-inflicted injuries, has been driven downwards by significant changes in the nature of warfare—evident in the 70 percent decline in the number of high-intensity conflicts since the end of the Cold War, and more than 30 years of highly effective health interventions in poor countries in peacetime—which have cut death tolls from disease during wartime.

The "Shrinking Costs of War" also provides the most comprehensive analysis to date of the claim that 5.4 million people have died because of the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It demonstrates that the true death toll is far smaller.

( All that support for a proposition that sounds as if - reading the label -war reduces the death rate. You have to read closely to see the assertion that current wars are less generally catastrophic - not that it improves upon peacetime. No wonder it's an academic study : who else would have so misleading a label as to content - Fox News? Better yet - what else can it be used for except minimizing reports of murder being levied against the perpetrators ? Isn't that an interesting laundry list of parties commissioning such a distinguished and authoritative report ? Amazing what happens when you 'click the link'. )

Mother Jones
The Iraq Math War
Why the CDC and the Pentagon sought to discredit the first scientific tally of Iraq's civilian death toll.

Congo
Roberts, a former Centers for Disease Control (cdc) epidemiologist who'd taken over as director of health policy for the International Rescue Committee, wanted to see how the locals were faring.
Every morning for weeks, Roberts and his team rode into the jungle. After finding a spot they'd selected randomly on a map, they approached the people living in the area and asked them about recent deaths in their households. When Roberts finally crunched the numbers, he determined that the mortality rate in Katana was two and a half times the peacetime rate. The next year, using a similar approach, he concluded that the war's overall death toll in eastern drc at the time wasn't 50,000, as widely reported, but a staggering 1.7 million.
Roberts' results helped boost the reputation of conflict epidemiology, a fledgling discipline that applies the tools of public health research to the surprisingly difficult question of how many civilians die in war zones. Historically, soldiers and journalists have been the main sources of real-time casualty estimates, leaving the truth somewhere between propaganda and a best guess. Researchers are still revising death tolls for wars that ended decades ago; estimates of civilian deaths in Vietnam even now range from 500,000 to 2 million or more. The methods Roberts helped pioneer aimed to end some of that uncertainty.
( So the Lancet study continues to be attacked. The thing is - there is no drive anywhere to find better methodology. Professional liars - politicians - are not great at hiring people who disprove their fairytales.)

Baghdad Burning October 22, 2007
It is estimated that there are at least 1.5 million Iraqis in Syria today.
A cousin of mine is now attending a school in Qudsiya and his class is composed of 26 Iraqi children, and 5 Syrian children. It’s beyond belief sometimes. Most of the families have nothing to live on beyond their savings which are quickly being depleted with rent and the costs of living.

Within a month of our being here, we began hearing talk about Syria requiring visas from Iraqis, like most other countries. Apparently, our esteemed puppets in power met with Syrian and Jordanian authorities and decided they wanted to take away the last two safe havens remaining for Iraqis- Damascus and Amman.
I was suddenly a number. No matter how wealthy or educated or comfortable, a refugee is a refugee. A refugee is someone who isn’t really welcome in any country- including their own... especially their own.
I cried that night because for the first time in a long time, so far away from home, I felt the unity that had been stolen from us in 2003.

Yes, Lancet lied about Iraq war deaths (My Wkly Std article)
By Michael Fumento
Lancet Denial
100,000 Dead—or 8,000 Fred Kaplan
Over half a million additional deaths in Iraq since US invasion
Oct 2006 Lindsay Beyerstein
Counting Iraqi deaths Glenn Greenwald

The Lancet study did not measure violent death only. it measured premature deaths. Cancers, diabetes, heart disease - deaths caused by chronic conditions. The conflation is astounding, and utterly dishonest, pushed by agenda whores with nothing to lose who think it's fine for other people and other peoples children to die to save face for a madman.
Posted by: Blue Girl, Red State (aka G.C.) on January 10, 2008 at 1:59 PM | PERMALINK

Today in Iraq, the vast majority of violent deaths of civilians are caused by US aerial bombing.

The statistical methods used by the Lancet study are very beneficial to identifying epidemics and how many victims they produce. My understanding is that is why these statistical methods were developed.

Creationists' complaints should be ignored when they discount scientific methods for political reasons.
Posted by: Brojo on January 10, 2008 at 2:09 PM | PERMALINK

Lancet Post Number 200

Dicksonator,

Great posts. You have nailed it directly. The war was illegal according to just about every national and international law - the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Code, and the US Constitution for starters. By that reckoning, the US is responsible for every death that occurred as a result of the invasion. And now Iraq is utterly devastated. One of the region's experts, Nir Rosen, said in 2008 that "Iraq has been destroyed, never to rise again". Pretty much the entire political and social infrastructure of Iraq was blown to smithereens by invaders who were pursuing their own agenda that had nix to do with WMD, promoting freedom or democracy. Yet this myth has repeatedly been rammed down our throats by the corporate and state MSM.

And also note the media's non-coverage of the recent study which showed that cancer cases in Falluja within 2 years of the US bombardment of that city in November of 2004 well exceeded the rate in Hiroshima after the atom bomb was dropped there. Falluja was once a teeming city with 600,000 inhabitants; now it is a burned out shell with the latest census reporting 300,000 residents, meaning that half of the population fled and has not returned or were killed in the US assault.

I find it takes remarkable hubris for anyone to try and downplay the horrific death and destruction inflicted on Iraq, first by the 'sanctions of mass destruction', and then by the illegal invasion. The utter hypocrisy of western foreign policy, part of which Dicksonator has alluded to (e.g. 'worthy' Kurds in Iraq, 'unworthy' Kurds in Turkey) as well as the support of monstrous regimes elsewhere under US control or influence (e.g. Montt, Marcos, Somosza, Pinochet, Mbutu, Suharto) speaks volumes. And those countries who do not play according to the rules set out in the "Washington Consensus" - Venezuela and Bolivia being prime examples - are forever vilified in the media. The fact that outright expansionism, nullification of alternative systems, and subjegation of other country's assets drive western foreign policy should be brazenly obvious by now, even if the body count as a result of such actions is enormous. Yet to many it isn't. We in the rich world prefer to think of ourselves as 'noble victims', and the media cultivate that image well. We trust our politicians, who usually hide their agendas behind a veil of lies and deceit. If one wants to really understand what drives western policies, its easy to do so: read declassified planning documents which are available in most large libraries. They could not be clearer.

Posted by: Jeff Harvey | October 26, 2010 4:33 AM

Data Bomb
Three weeks before the 2006 midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, a shocking study reported on the number of Iraqis who had died in the ongoing war. It bolstered criticism of President Bush and heightened the waves of dread -- here and around the world -- about the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Published by The Lancet, a venerable British medical journal, the study [PDF] used previously accepted methods for calculating death rates to estimate the number of "excess" Iraqi deaths after the 2003 invasion at 426,369 to 793,663; the study said the most likely figure was near the middle of that range: 654,965. Almost 92 percent of the dead, the study asserted, were killed by bullets, bombs, or U.S. air strikes. This stunning toll was more than 10 times the number of deaths estimated by the Iraqi or U.S. governments, or by any human-rights group.Over the past several months, National Journal has examined the 2006 Lancet article, and another [PDF] that some of the same authors published in 2004; probed the problems of estimating wartime mortality rates; and interviewed the authors and their critics. NJ has identified potential problems with the research that fall under three broad headings: 1) possible flaws in the design and execution of the study; 2) a lack of transparency in the data, which has raised suspicions of fraud; and 3) political preferences held by the authors and the funders, which include George Soros's Open Society Institute.
The Lancet II study cost about $100,000, according to Tirman, including about $45,000 for publicity and travel. That means that nearly half of the study's funding came from an outspoken billionaire who has repeatedly criticized the Iraq campaign and who spent $30 million trying to defeat Bush in 2004.
The Lancet study was based on techniques developed by public health experts to determine rates of illness and death from epidemics and famines in large populations. This "cluster" sampling is a relatively new methodology that attempts to replicate the logic of public opinion polling in Third World locales that lack a telecommunications infrastructure.

An Iraq Body Count analysis showed that the Lancet II numbers would have meant that 1,000 Iraqis were dying every day during the first half of 2006, "with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms." The February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque is widely credited with plunging Iraq into civil war, yet the Lancet II report posits the equivalent of five to 10 bombings of this magnitude in Iraq every day for three years.

"In the light of such extreme and improbable implications," the Iraq Body Count report stated, "a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data."

Today, the journal's editor tacitly concedes discomfort with the Iraqi death estimates. "Anything [the authors] can do to strengthen the credibility of the Lancet paper," Horton told NJ, "would be very welcome." If clear evidence of misconduct is presented to The Lancet, "we would be happy to go ask the authors and the institution for an official inquiry, and we would then abide by the conclusion of that inquiry."

Russia "Seriously Worried" as Afghan Insurgency Spreads North
What we are afraid of in Afghanistan is extremism, terrorism, drugs coming from it to our direction.' Former Soviet republics Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan act as transit nations for U.S. Afghan supplies and some have reported armed clashes with Islamist groups."
( Which is the 'reason' for NATO to kill there and why Russia occupied the place - as a result of a C.I.A. 'enticement' fraud. Hmmm. )

Karachi CID building attack underscores Pak jihadi groups' capability to "strike at will"
The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attack on Karachi's Crime Investigation Department compound not only underscores the ties between jihadi groups in Pakistan's biggest metropolis and Al Qaeda and Taliban operating out of the tribal belt between Pakistan and Afghanistan, but also their ability to launch terror strikes at will.

"They just want to tell us that they are still alive and could strike back," the Christian Science Monitor quoted Omar Shahid, the senior superintendent of police at the Crime Investigation Department, as saying.
( This doesn't even pretend that what is being done effectively deals with changing the situation into nonviolence. Given that - is it so strange to believe representations which outline what ends could be served by casting the place into chaos ? )

Online Journal
Obama conducting ‘reign of terror’ against suspected White House leakers
By Wayne Madsen

Expansionary fiscal contraction and the emperor’s clothes
Various eminent economists – amongst them, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Skidelsky – have attacked ‘deficit hysteria’ as based on weak economic evidence and poor theory. In other words, ‘economically illiterate’. The right-wing of the profession – not just in Britain but in Frankfurt and Washington – has struck back, digging hard into the literature to support their case. The result is the popularisation in Britain of the phrase ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ – meaning that closing the budget deficit (fiscal contraction) is expansionary. That is to say, the high road to private sector-led growth. Personally, I find the phrase an oxymoron – but let’s examine the evidence.

What Should Macroeconomics Do?
What is wrong with American macroeconomics? In a nutshell, when 2007-9 came along every single macro textbook (including mine) and every single macro course (save possibly Perry Mehrling's) was of little or no use in helping people who had read or taken them to read publications like the FT as they chronicled the downturn or understand the policy debates hosted by the FT.

At the very minimum, a macro course should teach people enough about the macroeconomy that they can then read the reporting of the FT. And it should teach people enough about the theoretical approaches that underpin policy advocacy that they can then understand and evaluate the policies proposed in contributions to the FT.

Troy said...

As a non-specialist I've gained the most understanding of how the world actually works from Henry George, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress_and_Poverty

and Dr Mason Gaffney in his sinecure at UCR:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/janusg/coe/cofe01.htm

Land economics has been the hidden drain in the economy since they stopped giving productive homesteads away ~100 years ago.

Land is where the Real Money is. It broke Japan in 1990. It has broken our economy, many times from 1797 to now.

donna said...

Where's the theory about the greedy rich sucking up all the available money until nobody else has anything left to spend and then creating inflated asset bubbles to fool them into playing the game a bit longer?

Welcome To The All-New Sott.net!

Monday, October 11, 2010

11 October - First Op-Ed picks

Vancouver Sun

Ballooning public service ranks about to burst: report

Growth in executive jobs reflects the growing complexity of government. Executives are older and retiring at larger numbers and departments have to get the next generation ready to take over.

Canada trailing developing world in 'mobile revolution,' study suggests

( The article glosses over some glaringly obvious points, one being access to a computer workstation would tend to encourage one to move online access to it : another, that cellphone charges - and phone charges generally - are a ripoff compared to fixed fee internet connection charges ).

The Globe and Mail
Veteran’s wife wants bureaucrats to pay for sharing medical info

The bureaucrats responsible for digging through veterans’ advocate Sean Bruyea’s medical files must be held accountable to stop such breaches of privacy from happening again, his wife said Sunday.

The privacy commissioner is launching a review of Veterans Affairs Canada.Mr. Bruyea, a Persian Gulf war veteran, is suing the federal government for $200,000.

Within days of testifying before the Senate in 2005 against the department’s plans to switch to a lump-sum compensation system for wounded veterans – which was ultimately adopted – he had trouble accessing his benefits, Mr. Bruyea said.He discovered he was no longer approved for visits to a psychologist or couples’ counselling under the system, he said, and the department demanded he undergo a psychiatric assessment at a hospital of its choosing.

“Something was being done with my medical file and it was clearly as a result of my advocacy for veterans,” he said.

Ms. Bruyea, who struggled to make ends meet while her husband was entangled with the government, said she had tried at times to dissuade him from speaking out, for fear of reprisals.

Times of India

Autistic kids not good liars

Afghanistan battles mental health issues

( It's all in your head ! What a travesty evading reporting real causes of stress : 'war' on the citizenry by foreign troops. Thank you LibroCons and NATO. )

Two-year colleges lack services to reduce unplanned pregnancies
Half of college-bound students go to community colleges, and fewer than one out of every four students who begin community college finish with a degree -- although some additional students transfer to four-year schools. As public officials talk about graduating an additional 5 million community college students, they neglect to champion one of the most significant things they could do: support efforts to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies.
( Comments are interesting )

Voltaire
Geopolitics of Republican Italy
Tiberio Graziani
Defeated during the Second World War, occupied by the United States after its liberation, integrated into NATO by force during the Cold War, compelled to dissolve into the European Union, Italy is today a prisoner of its past while international relations are speeding ahead. According to Tiberio Graziani, even though Rome may not yet be in a position to frame an independent foreign policy, the time is ripe to start contemplating an exit strategy in keeping with its historical and geographical characteristics.

Today Italy, being an Euro-Mediterranean country subjected to the interests of the USA, finds itself in a tricky situation because, being a member both of the European Union and of the NATO, not only suffers from the tension between the USA and the Russia involving the European continent, especially in the central-east area (see the Polish question concerning the “security”, or the energy problem), but also suffers from the consequences of Washington’s political strategies in the Near- and Middle-East.
Moreover, the subjection of Italy to the USA, that - it is necessary to insist on this point - is clearly shown by the limited sovereignty of the Italian State, enhances the typical weakness of the peninsular regions (due to the tensions between the continental part, even if of limited extension as in the Italian case, and those parts that are properly peninsular and insular), increases the centrifugal dispersion, making difficult even the basic State management.

The recent changes in the global geopolitical frame produced some effects that could allow the “release” of most of the countries that belong to the so-called Western system from the control of the “American friend”. As a consequence of this new global context and according to it, Rome could possibly develop an own geopolitical doctrine. It is well known that the reaffirmation of Russia at the global level and the main roles played by China and India caused a new balance of the relationships between the great Powers and laid the foundations for a new order, based on geopolitical continental units obtained through strategic agreements rather than armed forces.
These changes manifested also in the southern part of the eastern hemisphere, formerly considered the yard of the USA, where the relationships between Brazil, Argentine and Venezuela with the above mentioned Euro-Asian Powers prompted the hypothesis of the South-American continental unit.
As far as the Mediterranean area is concerned, the most important new geopolitical factor is represented by the recent turnaround of Ankara in its foreign politics towards the Near- and the Middle-East regions. The separation of Ankara from Washington and Tel Aviv could act, in the middle term, as an important factor in the process aimed at the establishment of an Euro-Asian geopolitical system. In fact, it represents the first real event able to trigger the process of disunity (or contraction) of the eastern system starting from the Mediterranean basin.
Given the actual conditions, if Italy really wanted to get out of the North-American tutelage, it should pivot on the two geopolitical poles represented by Russia and Turkey.

A Surprise Boost for Euro from China
by F. William Engdahl*
The embattled Euro has gotten a surprise boost from an unexpected quarter―China. The country with the world’s largest foreign exchange currency reserves, China, has pledged to support Greek debt as well as the Euro in what is clearly a geopolitical decision. In doing so, China has signaled it seeks to prevent the US financial warfare attack on Europe and to play the EU off against the USA in a geopolitical chess game of a fascinating dimension.

Wen Jiabao at a press conference early October in Athens when he stated, “‘China is holding Greek bonds and will keep buying bonds that Greece issues. We will undertake to support Eurozone countries and Greece to overcome the crisis.”
The last statement is far the most significant. It indicates that China has made a strategic decision to counter any future attempt by US-based hedge funds and banks to attack the weak countries of the Eurozone, including Ireland, Spain, Portugal or Greece. Early this year, as we noted at the time, Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs, working in tandem with the US-based credit rating agencies, Standard & Poors and Moodys and Fitch, exploded the Greece financial crisis at the precise time China and other major investors were beginning to have serious doubts about the fiscal stability of the United States and of the dollar.
Let me be clear. The Euro as it stands, the supranational European Central Bank and the EU approach to international financial stability is not merely a flawed construct. It is inherently programmed to crises. It was born as the product of flawed rotten political compromises in the 1990’s through the Treaty of Maastricht as an attempt by France and Italy and Britain to control an emerging German economic colossus after German unification.
However, the concerted attack by a group of New York hedge funds such as George Soros’ and others earlier this year, and the precisely timed credit downgrade of Greece to “junk” status were in my view clearly part of a concerted US strategy of financial warfare against that Eurozone, the only potential alternative to the dollar as world reserve currency. Should the US dollar lose its status as the world leading reserve currency—today it still counts for some 65% of central bank currency reserves—the United States would be ultimately doomed as world sole Superpower.
As if specially timed, US hedge fund speculator, George Soros, who is currently appealing a French court conviction for insider trading, [1] has come out publicly blaming the German government of Angela Merkel for austerity measures he says will lead the Euro Zone into a “deflation spiral,” demanding instead more of a US-style fiscal stimulus. Given the respect accorded to words from Soros in financial markets, the effect of his comments is likely to have a negative impact on the Euro-dollar trade.
The US-based credit rating agencies, Moodys and Standard & Poors also played a critical role in weakening the Euro earlier this year. At the time the EU governments announced agreement in principle on a Greek bailout package in order to stabilize the speculative attacks on the euro, on April 27, Standard & Poors announced an unprecedented rating downgrade of Greek government debt by three-levels to “junk grade.” That move insured that pension funds and other investors would be forced to panic sell Greek bonds, a move that greatly exacerbated the pressures on the Euro.

Venezuelan Journalist Alicia Herrera Denounces Bombing of Cubana Civilian Aircraft
I cannot avoid the pain and anger that invades me every October by the impunity of the criminals whose names I cannot pronounce; and whose terrorist actions have continued, thanks to the protection given to them by the millionaire extreme right wing Cuban American elements and US intelligence services.

“It is indignation to know that terrorists like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles are free and continue their plans of destruction and death, while five Cubans have remained in prison for the last 12 years for protecting the Cuban people from criminal attacks.
“We must permanently mobilize to demand justice for the Cuban Five that are incarcerated in the US”, and justice for the victims of the bombing of the Cubana airliner in 1976.

Obama administration fingerprints on Ecuador coup attempt
by Wayne Madsen*
With Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama, coups against unaccommodating Latin American leaders would appear to be back in style. After Honduran President Zalaya’s overthrow in June 2009, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa was the latest target. An outspoken member of ALBA and Hugo Chávez close ally, Correa had been giving Washington a tough time. Behind the abortive coup, Wayne Madsen’s investigation not only unveils the modus operandi of the CIA, but also lays bare Mossad’s murky activities inside Ecuador.
Using the standard CIA playbook on toppling democratically-elected governments in Latin America, the Obama administration, which was not happy with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa’s moves to increase state control over oil companies in the nation and his decision to oust the United States military from its airbase at Manta, appears to have suffered a major defeat in the failed coup attempt in Ecuador by police officers and Air Force personnel who were backed by rightist elements in the National Assembly and business community. Correa was re-elected with an overwhelming majority last year after he gave the U.S. military its walking papers from the Manta airbase. The Pentagon and CIA have been working to topple Correa ever since by pumping money into opposition political parties and other groups through NGOs funded by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy.

Pentagon partners with NATO to create Global Cyber Warfare System

by Rick Rozoff

U.S. Cyber Command is scheduled to be activated this month, in the words of a Reuters dispatch "ready to go to war in cyberspace" with full operational capability.

Cyberspace has proven equal and just as important as air, sea, land and space as a domain. It's clear that it must be defended and operationalized." [1]

His characterization of cyber space as the fifth military domain is consistent with the standard use of that trope by Pentagon officials, a variant of which is fifth battlespace. [2] When the leaders of the mightiest military in the history of the world discuss adding a new dimension to the traditional ones of infantry, air force, navy, marine, and satellite and missile operations, they are planning not only for an extension of warfare preparations to a new realm but into one which is related to and in many ways dominates the others.

The first commander of CYBERCOM, General Keith Alexander, said two weeks after his appointment and CYBERCOM's launching on May 21 that the Pentagon "depends on its networks for command and control, communications, intelligence, operations and logistics" and that the mission of his command is to "deter, detect and defend against emerging threats against our nation in cyberspace."

The general, who is simultaneously head of the Defense Department's National Security Agency, also said that "clear rules of engagement" need to be defined for cyber warfare and that "We have to look at it in two different venues - what we're doing in peacetime and in wartime." [3]

In his first public comments since assuming his new command, Alexander was already speaking of its role within a war context.

A few days before, Strategic Command chief Chilton and Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn also asserted that CYBERCOM's next priority is "to develop the rules of engagement of cyber warfare.

Monday, July 5, 2010

5 Jul - Night Fears

.0: Collect, Highlight and Remember!
http://blog.diigo.com/2010/07/01/diigo-v5-0-collect-highlight-then-remember

Without Sanctuary

The Merchants of Fear: How Israel Profits from Homeland Insecurity
http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com/2010/01/21/the-merchants-of-fear-how-israel-profits-from-homeland-insecurity/#more-15

Framing Pakistan: How the pro-Israel media enables India’s surrogate warfare
http://maidhcocathail.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/framing-pakistan-how-the-pro-israel-media-enables-india%e2%80%99s-surrogate-warfare/#more-72

Israel needs a bigger 'terrorist attack' for its war on Iran

April 10, 2009 rehmat1

The mass anti-Muslim propaganda created after September 11, 2001 attack - had served its intended purpose – to scare the hell out of ordinary American ‘Joe’, whose only world knowledge is what is aired or printed by Zionist propagandists sleeping in bed with Israeli Lobby groups. However, after going through so many false “Red Alerts”; Al-Qaeda’s threatening tapes; loosing freedom at home; increasing unemployment while Zionists at the Wall Street looting hundreds of billion of dollars at taxpayers’ cost, and seeing no new ‘Muslim terrorist attack” for the last seven year – the majority of Americans have stopped to trust their government’s “official” hoax stories.

Propaganda Central - Bush's former strategist is secretly seizing control of the GOP – and amassing $135 million to destroy the Democrats
The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series

How to scare the shit out of America and make them do anything The Rise of Neoconservatism to power in America is documented...
C.I.A. out of control threatening to destroy our Government Documentary outlining chilling activities of the C.I.A. over the last...
Iraq War - Things you won’t see in our Media. WARNING - Video contains graphic violence - should only be...
Al Qaeda Not Existing Before Invasion: ‘So What?’ http://www.daily.pk/world/europe/8714-there-is-no-al-qaeda-says-ex-uk-foreign-secretary.html [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhHamDHk-B0[/youtube] Hide Sites $$('div.d146').each( function(e) { e.visualEffect('slide_up',{duration:0.5}) }); ...
Taxi To The Dark Side Taxi To The Dark Side 1:18 minute Oscar winning documentary...

The Mossad Role in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy
http://afrocubaweb.com/news/mossadjfk.htm
What I find quite remarkable is that while many Israelis today believe that Israeli intelligence played a part in the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, many of Israel’s friends in America have reacted quite hysterically to my contention that the Mossad played a role in the assassination of America’s president.

National Intelligence Strategy 09
http://open.salon.com/blog/susanthur/2010/07/03/national_intelligence_strategy_09

Johann Hari: How Goldman gambled on starvation

This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html

* Those who enjoy debating the existence of God will be pleased to know... there's an app for that. Hat Tip Washington Monthly

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Corporatism & Development

WASHINGTON - FEBRUARY 21: The World Bank Vice...

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

DEVELOPMENT
The Road to the Horizon
Rocky Mountain Institute
Humanitarian Technology Network
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
A National Renewable Ammonia Architecture

Fertilizer
Responsible China
Sustainability, Energy Independence and Agricultural Policy
MAI Watch
Humanitarian Practice Network
StartUp Africa
End Homelessness
Sustainability Education Network
Reforming Federal Chemical Policy

Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)
Desert Research Institute
Chevron in Ecuador

Saturday, March 6, 2010

6 Mar - Salon Esoterica / Invisible Opportunity

Image by saharsh via Flickr

The Invisible Opportunity: Hidden Truths Revealed

GERMANY: Terror Plot Emerges as Secret Service Game

The Sauerland group were declared to be members of the Islamic Jihad Union, an alleged terrorist organisation based in Uzbekistan. The case has ceased to be "the serious terrorist threat" it was called. It is now a mysterious puzzle of secret service games, prosecutors' alarmism spread by the media, and basic failures of justice.

The supposedly dangerous group members have emerged as no more than some muddle-heads. They had no links whatsoever to international Islamic terror groups.

Top Posts
Joe Stack’s Last Message
On February 18, 2009, Joe Stack flew his plane into a building that housed the IRS in Austin, TX. Here are his last words written to the public at large…
If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” The simple truth is that it is complicated and has been coming for a long time. The writing process, started many months ago, was intended to be therapy in the face of the looming realization that there isn’t enough therapy in the world that can fix what is really broken. Needless to say, this rant could fill volumes with example after example if I would let it. I find the process of writing it frustrating, tedious, and probably pointless… especially given my gross inability to gracefully articulate my thoughts in light of the storm raging in my head. Exactly what is therapeutic about that I’m not sure, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
We are all taught as children that without laws there would be no society, only anarchy. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. We are further brainwashed to believe that there is freedom in this place, and that we should be ready to lay our lives down for the noble principals represented by its founding fathers. Remember? One of these was “no taxation without representation”. I have spent the total years of my adulthood unlearning that crap from only a few years of my childhood. These days anyone who really stands up for that principal is promptly labeled a “crackpot”, traitor and worse.
While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say.
Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political “representatives” (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the “terrible health care problem”. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.
And justice? You’ve got to be kidding!
How can any rational individual explain that white elephant conundrum in the middle of our tax system and, indeed, our entire legal system? Here we have a system that is, by far, too complicated for the brightest of the master scholars to understand. Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand. The law “requires” a signature on the bottom of a tax filing; yet no one can say truthfully that they understand what they are signing; if that’s not “duress” than what is. If this is not the measure of a totalitarian regime, nothing is.
How did I get here?
My introduction to the real American nightmare starts back in the early ‘80s. Unfortunately after more than 16 years of school, somewhere along the line I picked up the absurd, pompous notion that I could read and understand plain English. Some friends introduced me to a group of people who were having ‘tax code’ readings and discussions. In particular, zeroed in on a section relating to the wonderful “exemptions” that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy. We carefully studied the law (with the help of some of the “best”, high-paid, experienced tax lawyers in the business), and then began to do exactly what the “big boys” were doing (except that we weren’t steeling from our congregation or lying to the government about our massive profits in the name of God). We took a great deal of care to make it all visible, following all of the rules, exactly the way the law said it was to be done.
The intent of this exercise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the monsters of organized religion to make such a mockery of people who earn an honest living. However, this is where I learned that there are two “interpretations” for every law; one for the very rich, and one for the rest of us… Oh, and the monsters are the very ones making and enforcing the laws; the inquisition is still alive and well today in this country.
That little lesson in patriotism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retirement plans back to 0. It made me realize for the first time that I live in a country with an ideology that is based on a total and complete lie. It also made me realize, not only how naive I had been, but also the incredible stupidity of the American public; that they buy, hook, line, and sinker, the crap about their “freedom”… and that they continue to do so with eyes closed in the face of overwhelming evidence and all that keeps happening in front of them.
Before even having to make a shaky recovery from the sting of the first lesson on what justice really means in this country (around 1984 after making my way through engineering school and still another five years of “paying my dues”), I felt I finally had to take a chance of launching my dream of becoming an independent engineer.
On the subjects of engineers and dreams of independence, I should digress somewhat to say that I’m sure that I inherited the fascination for creative problem solving from my father. I realized this at a very young age.
The significance of independence, however, came much later during my early years of college; at the age of 18 or 19 when I was living on my own as student in an apartment in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. My neighbor was an elderly retired woman (80+ seemed ancient to me at that age) who was the widowed wife of a retired steel worker. Her husband had worked all his life in the steel mills of central Pennsylvania with promises from big business and the union that, for his 30 years of service, he would have a pension and medical care to look forward to in his retirement. Instead he was one of the thousands who got nothing because the incompetent mill management and corrupt union (not to mention the government) raided their pension funds and stole their retirement. All she had was social security to live on.
In retrospect, the situation was laughable because here I was living on peanut butter and bread (or Ritz crackers when I could afford to splurge) for months at a time. When I got to know this poor figure and heard her story I felt worse for her plight than for my own (I, after all, I thought I had everything to in front of me). I was genuinely appalled at one point, as we exchanged stories and commiserated with each other over our situations, when she in her grandmotherly fashion tried to convince me that I would be “healthier” eating cat food (like her) rather than trying to get all my substance from peanut butter and bread. I couldn’t quite go there, but the impression was made. I decided that I didn’t trust big business to take care of me, and that I would take responsibility for my own future and myself.
Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a terrifying start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ contract software engineer… and two years later, thanks to the fine backroom, midnight effort by the sleazy executives of Arthur Andersen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calamities) and an equally sleazy New York Senator (Patrick Moynihan), we saw the passage of 1986 tax reform act with its section 1706.
For you who are unfamiliar, here is the core text of the IRS Section 1706, defining the treatment of workers (such as contract engineers) for tax purposes. Visit this link for a conference committee report (http://www.synergistech.com/1706.shtml#ConferenceCommitteeReport) regarding the intended interpretation of Section 1706 and the relevant parts of Section 530, as amended. For information on how these laws affect technical services workers and their clients, read our discussion here (http://www.synergistech.com/ic-taxlaw.shtml).
SEC. 1706. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN TECHNICAL PERSONNEL.
(a) IN GENERAL – Section 530 of the Revenue Act of 1978 is amended by adding at the end thereof the following new subsection:
(d) EXCEPTION. – This section shall not apply in the case of an individual who pursuant to an arrangement between the taxpayer and another person, provides services for such other person as an engineer, designer, drafter, computer programmer, systems analyst, or other similarly skilled worker engaged in a similar line of work.
(b) EFFECTIVE DATE. – The amendment made by this section shall apply to remuneration paid and services rendered after December 31, 1986.
Note:

“another person” is the client in the traditional job-shop relationship.

“taxpayer” is the recruiter, broker, agency, or job shop.

“individual”, “employee”, or “worker” is you.

Admittedly, you need to read the treatment to understand what it is saying but it’s not very complicated. The bottom line is that they may as well have put my name right in the text of section (d). Moreover, they could only have been more blunt if they would have came out and directly declared me a criminal and non-citizen slave. Twenty years later, I still can’t believe my eyes.
During 1987, I spent close to $5000 of my ‘pocket change’, and at least 1000 hours of my time writing, printing, and mailing to any senator, congressman, governor, or slug that might listen; none did, and they universally treated me as if I was wasting their time. I spent countless hours on the L.A. freeways driving to meetings and any and all of the disorganized professional groups who were attempting to mount a campaign against this atrocity. This, only to discover that our efforts were being easily derailed by a few moles from the brokers who were just beginning to enjoy the windfall from the new declaration of their “freedom”. Oh, and don’t forget, for all of the time I was spending on this, I was loosing income that I couldn’t bill clients.
After months of struggling it had clearly gotten to be a futile exercise. The best we could get for all of our trouble is a pronouncement from an IRS mouthpiece that they weren’t going to enforce that provision (read harass engineers and scientists). This immediately proved to be a lie, and the mere existence of the regulation began to have its impact on my bottom line; this, of course, was the intended effect.
Again, rewind my retirement plans back to 0 and shift them into idle. If I had any sense, I clearly should have left abandoned engineering and never looked back.
Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks. Then came the L.A. depression of the early 1990s. Our leaders decided that they didn’t need the all of those extra Air Force bases they had in Southern California, so they were closed; just like that. The result was economic devastation in the region that rivaled the widely publicized Texas S&L fiasco. However, because the government caused it, no one gave a shit about all of the young families who lost their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned to the wealthy loan companies who received government funds to “shore up” their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.
Years later, after weathering a divorce and the constant struggle trying to build some momentum with my business, I find myself once again beginning to finally pick up some speed. Then came the .COM bust and the 911 nightmare. Our leaders decided that all aircraft were grounded for what seemed like an eternity; and long after that, ‘special’ facilities like San Francisco were on security alert for months. This made access to my customers prohibitively expensive. Ironically, after what they had done the Government came to the aid of the airlines with billions of our tax dollars … as usual they left me to rot and die while they bailed out their rich, incompetent cronies WITH MY MONEY! After these events, there went my business but not quite yet all of my retirement and savings.
By this time, I’m thinking that it might be good for a change. Bye to California, I’ll try Austin for a while. So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work. The rates are 1/3 of what I was earning before the crash, because pay rates here are fixed by the three or four large companies in the area who are in collusion to drive down prices and wages… and this happens because the justice department is all on the take and doesn’t give a fuck about serving anyone or anything but themselves and their rich buddies.
To survive, I was forced to cannibalize my savings and retirement, the last of which was a small IRA. This came in a year with mammoth expenses and not a single dollar of income. I filed no return that year thinking that because I didn’t have any income there was no need. The sleazy government decided that they disagreed. But they didn’t notify me in time for me to launch a legal objection so when I attempted to get a protest filed with the court I was told I was no longer entitled to due process because the time to file ran out. Bend over for another $10,000 helping of justice.
So now we come to the present. After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.
When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.
This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around.
I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes… isn’t that a clever, tidy solution.
As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.
I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.
I can only hope that the numbers quickly get too big to be white washed and ignored that the American zombies wake up and revolt; it will take nothing less. I would only hope that by striking a nerve that stimulates the inevitable double standard, knee-jerk government reaction that results in more stupid draconian restrictions people wake up and begin to see the pompous political thugs and their mindless minions for what they are. Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer. The cruel joke is that the really big chunks of shit at the top have known this all along and have been laughing, at and using this awareness against, fools like me all along.
I saw it written once that the definition of insanity is repeating the same process over and over and expecting the outcome to suddenly be different. I am finally ready to stop this insanity. Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well.
The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.
Joe Stack (1956-2010)
02/18/2010

Locations of Deep Underground Military Bases in America – American Holcaust in the Making?
Posted on October 11, 2007 by Boulderdash
Also see our posts on the 800 FEMA concentration camps in America and Are FEMA Concentration Camps a Myth?
The information in this post, like all information on this blog, is meant to stir thought about what is going on in our world. I do not personally agree with all of the ideas mentioned here while I do think they are worth considering to better understand what goes on behind the scenes.

Video: Japan and China blame the US HAARP Program For Catastrophic Earthquakes
Posted on June 11, 2008 by Boulderdash
Benjamin Fulford investigates a mysterious plasma weapon seen prior to the Niigata earthquake in July 2007 and Red, White & Blue HAARP lights near the epicenter prior to the recent quake in China. Taiwan satellites measured a 50% drop in ionospheric energy above the Sichuan epicenter on the day before the quake. Both earthquakes targeted nuclear military facilities… coincidence or war crime?
Watch the full video to hear and see what HAARP is and does with electromagnetic frequencies to control weather.
Video – Bill Gates on population reduction!
Posted on March 2, 2010 by Boulderdash
No need to watch this whole video. Just cue up to the 4:30 mark and listen for about 30 seconds and you will see that ole Bill Gates is right in the middle of the population reduction scheme…
Or if you really want to save time…
Gates said, “If we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services (abortion), we could lower that (population) by perhaps 10 or 15 per cent.” Really!! He said this!
Vaccines and health care are, the powers that be tell us, are to promote health and quality of life. But Bill spills the beans, telling us that vaccines and health care can help lower population by 10-15%!!!! Is it any wonder that Bill and Melinda fund vaccine programs in the third world to the tune of billions of dollars?

Questioning Chemotherapy
Posted on December 4, 2007 by Boulderdash
A few days ago I posted Why 75% of Doctors Would Refuse Chemotherapy on Themselves. This post has generated a lot of interest. My only intent in posting the article was to give airtime to the information on chemotherapy that is generally ignored, such as how the people on the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Board also work for and profit from Bristol-Myers Squibb, the largest producer of chemotherapy drugs.
We live in an over-medicated world where people are given disinformation, at the peril of human health, to increase pharmaceutical profits. This may or may not be one of those cases. Either way, it’s worth researching. This post contains more information to help those looking for answers.
From Shirleys-Wellness-Cafe.com:
Questioning Chemotherapy
An Australian study suggests that the benefits of chemotherapy have been oversold … Why has it been oversold? Are you suggesting that medical oncologists in Australia are just sort of marketing shysters or what?’ These were some of the questions posed by Dr Norman Swan when he presented the Health Report on ABC Radio National on 18 April 2005. Dr Swan was quizzing Associate Professor Graeme Morgan, the lead author of a controversial article entitled ‘The contribution of cytotoxic chemotherapy to 5-year survival in adult malignancies’. This article reported that chemotherapy has improved survival by less than 3% in adults with cancer. more