If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him!'s topics - tribe.net

Hersh: Cheney ‘Left A Stay Behind’ In Obama’s Government, Can ‘Still Control Policy Up To A Point’

Moriji — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:11:55 GMT

My favorite comment:

"The only way we can ever be sure Darth Penquin is gone from government is when his black cinder of a heart finally stops pumping and they don’t put in a new one from someone who has died 'accidentally'."

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In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air yesterday, host Terry Gross asked investigative journalist Seymour Hersh if, as he continues to investigate the Bush administration, “more people” were “coming forward” to talk to him now that “the president and vice president are no longer in power.” Hersh replied that though “a lot of people that had told me in the last year of Bush, ‘call me next, next February,’ not many people had talked to him. He implied that they were still scared of Cheney.

“Are you saying that you think Vice President Cheney is still having a chilling effect on people who might otherwise be coming forward,” asked Gross. “I’ll make it worse,” answered Hersh, adding that he believes Cheney “put people back” in government to “stay behind” in order to “tell him what’s going on” and perhaps even “do sabotage”:

HERSH: I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay behind that you can continue to contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence.

The idea that Cheney would seed the government with trusted contacts is not surprising. As Hersh noted in his talk with Gross, Cheney has “been around forever” and “understands bureaucracy much better” than almost anyone in government. In 2006, Robert Dreyfuss reported for The American Prospect that when Cheney helped staff the Bush administration in 2001, he put together a “corps of hard-line acolytes” that served “as his eyes and ears” in the federal bureaucracy. Former officials called them “Dick Cheney’s spies.”

Additionally, before leaving office, the Bush administration aggressively placed political appointees into permanent civil service positions as part of a process known as “burrowing.” Some of the burrowed former political appointees have close ties to Cheney, such as Jeffrey T. Salmon, who was a speechwriter for Cheney when he served as defense secretary. In July, he was named deputy director for resource management in the Energy Department’s Office of Science

Transcript:

GROSS: You investigated the Bush administration throughout the Bush administration. Always looking for ways that they may, might have been going beyond executive authority in taking on new powers. And now that the Bush administration is over, you’re still investigating what they did and where they might have violated the law. Is investigating that any different for you as a journalist post-Bush administration than it was during the Bush administration? Are more people coming forward now, now that the president and vice president are no longer in power?

HERSH: You know, that’s a great question because I did think, I had a lot of people that had told me in the last year of Bush, “call me next, next February.” And, so far, even people who are out are still cherry because, you know, not so much Bush, but Cheney really is…he’s really smart. In the article this week, in the New Yorker, that’s coming out this week, I mention that at one point last fall, Mr. Miliband, the young foreign secretary of Britain, unilaterally, without telling the White House made a trip to Syria to see the president, Assad, and his intelligence chief, his MI6 chief went before him. And Bush-Cheney didn’t know about it until actually was, they were actually there. And Cheney at a meeting — and I do have, I can tell you I do have access and have had and I’ve been careful of how I use it, to a lot of stuff from meetings in the White House — and at a meeting he railed on about perfidious Albion, you know, the old Shakespeare term for England and that was used during the Revolutionary war as a pejorative term for England. Perfidious Albion he said. He is, Cheney is really underestimated. It’s easy to make a caricature of him. He’s very very bright. And he’s also in person, a much more open-minded in the sense, I’m talking about not politically. You could go and the most despaired people in the world go and have social evenings with him and his wife and talking about current, as long as you don’t get into politics, movies and stuff like that. It’s, he’s easy to make a caricature, but he’s much more formidable than people think. Got a rap clap memory. Understands bureaucracy much better, he’s been around forever, has had every job.

GROSS: Are you saying that you think Vice President Cheney is still having a chilling effect on people who might otherwise be coming forward and revealing things to you about what happened in the Bush administration?

HERSH: I’ll make it worse. I think he’s put people left. He’s put people back. They call it a stay behind. It’s sort of an intelligence term of art. When you leave a country and, you know, you’ve driven out the, you know, you’ve lost the war. You leave people behind. It’s a stay behind that you can continue to contacts with, to do sabotage, whatever you want to do. Cheney’s left a stay behind. He’s got people in a lot of agencies that still tell him what’s going on. Particularly in defense, obviously. Also in the NSA, there’s still people that talk to him. He still knows what’s going on. Can he still control policy up to a point? Probably up to a point, a minor point. But he’s still there. He’s still a presence. And again, because of the problems this administration’s having filling jobs, a lot of people who served in the Bush Cheney government, particularly even in the White House people on most sophisticated staffs are still there. You simply can’t get rid of everybody, you may not even want to. Some are professional people. But Cheney is, I would never call it admiration, but, you know, formidable, yeah, this guy. This guy is the real McCoy.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/hersh-cheney-behind/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Storm Track Changes

seal — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 06:51:30 GMT

Interesting picture on the link of where it is, especially since it hasn't really snowed here since Jan 4!! A couple half inches here and there, and last week when NorCal got hit there was a whopping 1 1/2 inch! But it explains what friends down south are saying...

Drier, Warmer Springs In US Southwest Stem From Human-caused Changes In Winds
ScienceDaily (Aug. 23, 2008) —

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080819082600.htm

Human-driven changes in the westerly winds are bringing hotter and drier springs to the American Southwest, according to new research from The University of Arizona in Tucson.

Since the 1970s the winter storm track in the western U.S. has been shifting north, particularly in the late winter. As a result, fewer winter storms bring rain and snow to Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado and western New Mexico.

"We used to have this season from October to April where we had a chance for a storm," said Stephanie A. McAfee. "Now it's from October to March."

The finding is the first to link the poleward movement of the westerly winds to the changes observed in the West's winter storm pattern. The change in the westerlies is driven by the atmospheric effects of global warming and the ozone hole combined.

"When you pull the storm track north, it takes the storms with it," said McAfee, a doctoral candidate in the UA's department of geosciences.

"During the period it's raining less, it also tends to be warmer than it used to be," McAfee said. "We're starting to see the impacts of climate change in the late winter and early spring, particularly in the Southwest. It's a season-specific kind of drought."

Having drier, warmer conditions occur earlier in the year will affect snowpack, hydrological processes and water resources, McAfee said.

Other researchers, including the UA's Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research Director Tom Swetnam, have linked warmer, drier springs to more and larger forest fires.

McAfee's co-author Joellen L. Russell said, "We're used to thinking about climate change as happening sometime in the future to someone else, but this is right here and affects us now. The future is here."

McAfee and Russell, a UA assistant professor of geosciences, will publish their paper, Northern Annular Mode Impact on Spring Climate in the Western United States, in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded the research via the Climate Assessment for the Southwest program at the UA.

Atmospheric scientists have documented that the westerly winds, or storm track, have been shifting poleward for several decades. The southwestern U.S. has experienced less winter precipitation during the same period.

Computer models of future climate and atmospheric conditions suggest the storm track will continue to move north and that precipitation will continue to decrease in the southwestern U.S.

The timing of the change from wet, cool winter weather to the warmer dry season is important for many ecological processes in the arid Southwest. Therefore, McAfee wanted to know how the shift in the storm track affected precipitation during the transition from winter to spring.

For the period 1978 to 1998, the researchers compared the month-to-month position of the winter storm track, temperature and precipitation records from the western U.S., and pressure at different levels in the atmosphere.

The team used a statistical method called Monte Carlo simulations to test whether the coincidence of storm track and weather patterns had occurred by chance.

Russell said the results of the simulation showed, "It's very rare that you get this distribution by chance." Therefore, she said, the changes in late winter precipitation in the West from 1978 to 1998 are related to the changes in the storm track path for that same time period.

McAfee said her next step is investigating whether western vegetation has changed as the storm track has changed.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Predators Patrol Canadian Border

seal — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:54:49 GMT

This is ugly. Means they cold be swooping down overhead since I'm damn close to the border!

Unmanned drone prowls over the lonely prairie

As the Predator patrols near Manitoba, U.S. politicians say it's a needed security measure. But Canadian experts say it's a PR exercise

PATRICK WHITE

February 18, 2009

WINNIPEG -- Famed for prowling the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, a remote-control Predator aircraft took flight over the wheat fields of South Dakota yesterday, the first in a network of surveillance drones that could soon patrol the American border with Canada from Maine to Washington state.

While security-conscious politicians applauded the start of Predator flight operations along the largely unmonitored northern border, some border experts regard it as a mere public-relations exercise.

"I think this has far more to do with the theatre of security than with dealing seriously about issues surrounding the northern border," said border security expert Ben Muller, a political science professor at Simon Fraser University.

For now, the South Dakota drone will be confined to a 370-kilometre stretch along the Manitoba border to test how it holds up to Prairie winters. By 2010, however, U.S. border officials hope to see the $10.5-million unmanned aircraft monitoring both sides of the B.C. border during the Winter Olympics.

"If the RCMP or Canadian government believes they can make use of the aircraft for support during the Olympics, we will be more than willing to provide it," said Juan Munoz-Torres, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Already the agency has established five bases to act as launch sites for the drones in Bellingham, Wash., Great Falls, Mont., Grand Forks, N.D., Detroit and Plattsburgh, N.Y.

The plan, called the Northern Border Air Wing, is a holdover from the 9/11 Commission Report, which recommended that the United States shore up security along borders with Mexico and Canada.

"It seems a palliative measure," said Michael Kergin, chairman of the Canadian International Council working group on border issues and a former ambassador to the United States, "but it does provide them with some assurances."

Five Predator drones currently patrol the Mexican border, and border officials give the aircraft partial credit for stopping more than 4,000 illegal immigrants and 8,000 kilograms of marijuana from crossing the southern boundary.

With a range of 5,900 kilometres and a maximum speed of more than 450 km/h, a single Predator will be capable of scouring a vast portion of the 9,000-km Canada-U.S. border. Sensors fastened to the plane's belly will take both infrared and HD video of anything within a 40-km radius.

Flight restrictions prevent the drone from flying any closer than 16 km to the Canadian border. That still leaves a roughly 24-km swath of Canadian borderland open to U.S. government eyes.

"There is no reason for Canadians to be concerned about this," Mr. Munoz-Torres said. "This is a military weapon adopted for civilian purposes."

But that relationship to bomb-ready military hardware is too close for some, who say the Predator challenges the border's distinction as the longest undefended border in the world.

"Post-9/11, there has been a significant militarization of the border," Dr. Muller said. "This certainly fits in with that."

More than a public-safety measure, the drone buzzing 20,000 feet over the prairies represents the clout of certain American political constituencies, Dr. Muller says.

"There has been a lot political pressure suggesting that these technological solutions will fix the security problem," he said. "They have this idea that if it's watched, we're all safer, but I'm very skeptical. They are the same people rolling out over and over again these examples that supposedly prove Canada is a terrorist hotbed."

Senators Kent Conrad and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota have applied much of that political pressure.

Both have been instrumental in attracting federal funding for the Northern Border Air Wing by highlighting drug-trafficking and terrorism problems along the northern border.

"It is vital to America's security that we protect our borders, particularly the northern border," said Mr. Conrad upon the drone's arrival in Grand Forks. "The Grand Forks Air Branch plays an essential role in helping shut the door on terrorists who want to sneak across remote border points to strike on U.S. soil."

Their efforts to draw political attention to northern border security issues may eventually result in 20 unmanned air vehicles, or UAVs, being housed at the Grand Forks base.

And plans are under way to create an unmanned aircraft program at the University of North Dakota.

For the most part, the RCMP is on board with the U.S plan to secure the border using drones. Some officers even attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony in Grand Forks on Sunday.

The plan fits a larger North American strategy to scrutinize the border without bogging down crossing times.

"It's a technology that's not intrusive and is relatively user-friendly," Mr. Kergin said. "I would argue that it's a useful tool."

*****

Privacy concerns

For Cliff Graydon, reports that an unmanned U.S. surveillance plane would soon be watching his 3,000-acre farm came out of the blue.

"Before yesterday, I knew nothing about it," he said.

And as the MLA for a riding that covers much of Manitoba's border with South Dakota, he has serious reservations about a drone that will peer as far as 30 kilometres across the border using infrared sensors and high-definition video.

"Privacy is the biggest concern," he said. "Many of my constituents already have fences up for privacy on the ground. Now they'll have someone up in the sky watching them. How would you like someone staring in your window all day?"

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said the Predator drone, which began patrolling the border today, can remain aloft for up to 18 hours.

Mr. Graydon said some constituents have asked him why they should be the first in Canada to come under the drone's surveillance.

"They are asking if we are a hot spot for drug smuggling, guns or terrorism. Not that I'm aware of, but maybe we are not getting the whole story."

The agency said it deployed the northern drone along the Manitoba border because of the vast, remote regions along the boundary that go largely unmonitored.

"I don't want to minimize the need for security in any country," Mr. Graydon said. "But this raises a lot of concerns."

Patrick White

*****

U.S. UNIT WATCHING CANADA AS IT WATCHES MEXICO

The deployment of an unmanned drone over Manitoba's border is a just one part of a much larger U.S. strategy to watch the Canadian border more closely.

In the wake of 9/11, U.S. politicians lobbied for the formation of an entirely new unit of Customs and Border Protection whose sole purpose would be to keep tabs on the Canadian border from the air.

In 2004, the Northern Border Air Wing was born.

"We wanted to establish the same type of air operations we already had along the southwest border to the northern border," U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Juan Munoz-Torres said.

With five main bases and three sub-bases stretching from Houlton, Me., to Bellingham, Wash., the unit today watches over all 9,000 kilometres of Canadian border on a regular basis.

The Predator drone joins a fleet that will eventually include two Blackhawk helicopters, four Cessnas and roughly 50 pilots.

Some critics wonder if the buildup will simply invite cross-border criminals to be craftier.

"Generally speaking, when border security is intensified, the problem doesn't go away," border security expert Ben Muller said. "They will use other strategies to get across."

In addition to regular border surveillance, the unit responds to natural disasters.

"With both sides of the border around North Dakota known for flooding," Mr. Munoz-Torres said, "we will make good use of this during emergencies."

Patrick White

*****

Eyes in the sky

The United States has installed a Predator drone spy plane base near the Canadian border to tighten up security.

HOW THE NEW PATROL WORKS

1. MQ-9 Reaper Predator B

A Predator drone observes suspicious behaviour at the border from a distance where it cannot be heard

2. It shines an invisible laser beam onto suspects and pinpoints their exact location.

3. Helicopter pilot sees laser with night vision goggles and swoops in for the arrest

MQ-9 REAPER PREDATOR B

Length: 11 metres

Wingspan: 20.1 metres

Weight: 1.68 tonnes (empty)

Flight radius: 3,022 km

Ceiling: 15,240 m

Cost: $17.5-m per plane

Grand Forks: The first of five U.S. Customs and Border Protection Unmanned Aircraft Operations Centers

BASES

Established bases

Bellingham

Great Falls

Detroit

Plattsburgh

Secondary bases

Spokane

Toronto

Ottawa

Houlton

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Neocons never existed...says Pearl

seal — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:22:06 GMT

This is so bizarre an interview that I'm posting it in a couple of places...

Published on Friday, February 20, 2009 by the Washington Post
Prince of Darkness Denies Own Existence
by Dana Milbank

Listening to neoconservative mastermind Richard Perle at the Nixon Center yesterday, there was a sense of falling down the rabbit hole.

In real life, Perle was the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack. But at yesterday's forum of foreign policy intellectuals, he created a fantastic world in which:

1. Perle is not a neoconservative.

2. Neoconservatives do not exist.

3. Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.

"There is no such thing as a neoconservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."

So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neoconservative foreign policy? "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group," Perle explained. "I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."

Mm-hmm. And the two letters to the president, signed by Perle, giving a "moral" basis to Middle East policy and demanding military means to remove Saddam Hussein? "I don't have the letters in front of me," Perle replied.

Right. And the Bush administration National Security Strategy, enshrining the neoconservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom? "I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."

The Prince of Darkness -- so dubbed during his days opposing arms control in the Reagan Pentagon -- was not about to let details get in the way of his argument that "50 million conspiracy theorists have it wrong," as the subtitle of his article for National Interest put it. "I see a number of people here who believe and have expressed themselves abundantly that there is a neoconservative foreign policy and it was the policy that dominated the Bush administration, and they ascribe to it responsibility for the deplorable state of the world," Perle told the foreign policy luminaries at yesterday's lunch. "None of that is true, of course."

Of course.

He had been a leading cheerleader for the Iraq war, predicting that the effort would take few troops and last only a few days, and that Iraq would pay for its own reconstruction. Perle was chairman of Bush's Defense Policy Board -- and the president clearly took the advice of Perle and his fellow neocons. And Perle, in turn, said back then that Bush "knows exactly what he's doing."

Yesterday, however, Perle said Bush's foreign policy had "no philosophical underpinnings and certainly nothing like the demonic influence of neoconservatives that is alleged." He also took issue with the common view that neocons favored using American might to spread democratic values. "There's no documentation!" he argued. "I can't find a single example of a neoconservative supposed to have influence over the Bush administration arguing that we should impose democracy by force."

Those in the room were skeptical of Perle's efforts to recast himself as a pragmatist.

Richard Burt, who clashed with Perle in the Reagan administration, took issue with "this argument that neoconservatism maybe actually doesn't exist." He reminded Perle of the longtime rift between foreign policy realists and neoconservative interventionists. "You've got to kind of acknowledge there is a neoconservative school of thought," Burt challenged.

"I don't accept the approach, not at all," the Prince of Darkness replied.

Jacob Heilbrunn of National Interest asked Perle to square his newfound realism with the rather idealistic title of his book, "An End to Evil."

"We had a publisher who chose the title," Perle claimed, adding: "There's hardly an ideology in that book." (An excerpt: "There is no middle way for Americans: It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory.")

Regardless of the title, Heilbrunn pursued, how could so many people -- including lapsed neoconservative Francis Fukuyama -- all be so wrong about what neoconservatives represent?

"It's not surprising that a lot of people get something wrong," Perle reasoned.

At times, the Prince of Darkness turned on his questioners. Fielding a question from the Financial Times, he said that the newspaper "propagated this myth of neoconservative influence." He informed Stefan Halper of Cambridge University that "you have contributed significantly to this mythology."

"There are some 5,000 footnotes," Halper replied. "Documents that you've signed."

But documents did not deter denials. "I've never advocated attacking Iran," he said, to a few chuckles. "Regime change does not imply military force, at least not when I use the term," he said, to raised eyebrows. Accusations that neoconservatives manipulated intelligence on Iraq? "There's no truth to it." At one point, he argued that the word "neoconservative" has been used as an anti-Semitic slur, just moments after complaining that prominent figures such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld -- Christians both -- had been grouped in with the neoconservatives.

"I don't know that I persuaded anyone," Perle speculated when the session ended.

No worries, said the moderator. "You certainly kept us all entertained."

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Global warming seen worse than predicted

Moriji — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 03:23:03 GMT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The climate is heating up far faster than scientists had predicted, spurred by sharp increases in greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries like China and India, a top climate scientist said on Saturday.

"The consequence of that is we are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously," Chris Field, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

Field said "the actual trajectory of climate change is more serious" than any of the climate predictions in the IPCC's fourth assessment report called "Climate Change 2007."

He said recent climate studies suggested the continued warming of the planet from greenhouse gas emissions could touch off large, destructive wildfires in tropical rain forests and melt permafrost in the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gasses that could raise global temperatures even more.

"There is a real risk that human-caused climate change will accelerate the release of carbon dioxide from forest and tundra ecosystems, which have been storing a lot of carbon for thousands of years," Field, of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science, said in a statement.

He pointed to recent studies showing the fourth assessment report underestimated the potential severity of global warming over the next 100 years.

"We now have data showing that from 2000 to 2007, greenhouse gas emissions increased far more rapidly than we expected, primarily because developing countries, like China and India, saw a huge surge in electric power generation, almost all of it based on coal," Field said.

He said that trend was likely to continue if more countries turned to coal and other carbon-intensive fuels to meet their energy needs. If so, he said the impact of climate change would be "more serious and diverse" than the IPCC's most recent predictions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE51D29E20090214?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Quandary

Moriji — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:15:20 GMT

What is one to do after you realize that one of the rightwing editors on Human Events that you've been reading to do opposition research turns out to be a friend from a long time ago that you went to high school with? I wish I could say this wasn't the case, but it is...

http://www.humanevents.com/search.php?author_name=Jack+Langer

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 47 replies

Reality-based Outlook? Oh my

seal — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 20:17:38 GMT

I don't think anybody is really ready for this kind of shit...

Published on Monday, February 2, 2009 by TruthDig.com

It’s Not Going to Be OK
by Chris Hedges

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won't have to wait long to find out.

There are a few isolated individuals who saw it coming. The political philosophers Sheldon S. Wolin, John Ralston Saul and Andrew Bacevich, as well as writers such as Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, David Korten and Naomi Klein, along with activists such as Bill McKibben and Ralph Nader, rang the alarm bells. They were largely ignored or ridiculed. Our corporate media and corporate universities proved, when we needed them most, intellectually and morally useless.

Wolin, who taught political philosophy at the University of California in Berkeley and at Princeton, in his book "Democracy Incorporated" uses the phrase inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism and the Constitution while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Political candidates are elected in popular votes by citizens, but they must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to compete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals who write the legislation. A corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and imposes a bland uniformity of opinion or diverts us with trivia and celebrity gossip. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. "Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true," Wolin writes. "Economics dominates politics-and with that domination comes different forms of ruthlessness."

I reached Wolin, 86, by phone at his home about 25 miles north of San Francisco. He was a bombardier in the South Pacific during World War II and went to Harvard after the war to get his doctorate. Wolin has written classics such as "Politics and Vision" and "Tocqueville Between Two Worlds." His newest book is one of the most important and prescient critiques to date of the American political system. He is also the author of a series of remarkable essays on Augustine of Hippo, Richard Hooker, David Hume, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx and John Dewey. His voice, however, has faded from public awareness because, as he told me, "it is harder and harder for people like me to get a public hearing." He said that publications, such as The New York Review of Books, which often published his work a couple of decades ago, lost interest in his critiques of American capitalism, his warnings about the subversion of democratic institutions and the emergence of the corporate state. He does not hold out much hope for Obama.

"The basic systems are going to stay in place; they are too powerful to be challenged," Wolin told me when I asked him about the new Obama administration. "This is shown by the financial bailout. It does not bother with the structure at all. I don't think Obama can take on the kind of military establishment we have developed. This is not to say that I do not admire him. He is probably the most intelligent president we have had in decades. I think he is well meaning, but he inherits a system of constraints that make it very difficult to take on these major power configurations. I do not think he has the appetite for it in any ideological sense. The corporate structure is not going to be challenged. There has not been a word from him that would suggest an attempt to rethink the American imperium."

Wolin argues that a failure to dismantle our vast and overextended imperial projects, coupled with the economic collapse, is likely to result in inverted totalitarianism. He said that without "radical and drastic remedies" the response to mounting discontent and social unrest will probably lead to greater state control and repression. There will be, he warned, a huge "expansion of government power."

"Our political culture has remained unhelpful in fostering a democratic consciousness," he said. "The political system and its operatives will not be constrained by popular discontent or uprisings."

Wolin writes that in inverted totalitarianism consumer goods and a comfortable standard of living, along with a vast entertainment industry that provides spectacles and diversions, keep the citizenry politically passive. I asked if the economic collapse and the steady decline in our standard of living might not, in fact, trigger classical totalitarianism. Could widespread frustration and poverty lead the working and middle classes to place their faith in demagogues, especially those from the Christian right?

"I think that's perfectly possible," he answered. "That was the experience of the 1930s. There wasn't just FDR. There was Huey Long and Father Coughlin. There were even more extreme movements including the Klan. The extent to which those forces can be fed by the downturn and bleakness is a very real danger. It could become classical totalitarianism."

He said the widespread political passivity is dangerous. It is often exploited by demagogues who pose as saviors and offer dreams of glory and salvation. He warned that "the apoliticalness, even anti-politicalness, will be very powerful elements in taking us towards a radically dictatorial direction. It testifies to how thin the commitment to democracy is in the present circumstances. Democracy is not ascendant. It is not dominant. It is beleaguered. The extent to which young people have been drawn away from public concerns and given this extraordinary range of diversions makes it very likely they could then rally to a demagogue."

Wolin lamented that the corporate state has successfully blocked any real debate about alternative forms of power. Corporations determine who gets heard and who does not, he said. And those who critique corporate power are given no place in the national dialogue.

"In the 1930s there were all kinds of alternative understandings, from socialism to more extensive governmental involvement," he said. "There was a range of different approaches. But what I am struck by now is the narrow range within which palliatives are being modeled. We are supposed to work with the financial system. So the people who helped create this system are put in charge of the solution. There has to be some major effort to think outside the box."

"The puzzle to me is the lack of social unrest," Wolin said when I asked why we have not yet seen rioting or protests. He said he worried that popular protests will be dismissed and ignored by the corporate media. This, he said, is what happened when tens of thousands protested the war in Iraq. This will permit the state to ruthlessly suppress local protests, as happened during the Democratic and Republic conventions. Anti-war protests in the 1960s gained momentum from their ability to spread across the country, he noted. This, he said, may not happen this time. "The ways they can isolate protests and prevent it from [becoming] a contagion are formidable," he said.

"My greatest fear is that the Obama administration will achieve relatively little in terms of structural change," he added. "They may at best keep the system going. But there is a growing pessimism. Every day we hear how much longer the recession will continue. They are already talking about beyond next year. The economic difficulties are more profound than we had guessed and because of globalization more difficult to deal with. I wish the political establishment, the parties and leadership, would become more aware of the depths of the problem. They can't keep throwing money at this. They have to begin structural changes that involve a very different approach from a market economy. I don't think this will happen."

"I keep asking why and how and when this country became so conservative," he went on. "This country once prided itself on its experimentation and flexibility. It has become rigid. It is probably the most conservative of all the advanced countries."

The American left, he said, has crumbled. It sold out to a bankrupt Democratic Party, abandoned the working class and has no ability to organize. Unions are a spent force. The universities are mills for corporate employees. The press churns out info-entertainment or fatuous pundits. The left, he said, no longer has the capacity to be a counterweight to the corporate state. He said that if an extreme right gains momentum there will probably be very little organized resistance.

"The left is amorphous," he said. "I despair over the left. Left parties may be small in number in Europe but they are a coherent organization that keeps going. Here, except for Nader's efforts, we don't have that. We have a few voices here, a magazine there, and that's about it. It goes nowhere."

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Great Depression II = suicide

seal — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:33:13 GMT

Been a couple of these up here lately; evictions, nowhere to go no jobs no New Deal programs to help-nothing, and subzero weather cold and ice and gloomy gray skies. People are saying fuck it. Never makes the national news of course as this article mentions.

Glad I own my house. When the food is gone I have no idea what'll happen then of course...eat the dogs maybe...

Meltdown Madness
The Human Costs of the Economic Crisis
By Nick Turse

The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida.

In the three months since, the pain has been migrating upwards. A growing number of the world's rich have garnered headlines for high profile, financially-motivated suicides. Take the New Zealand-born "millionaire financier" who leapt in front of an express train in Great Britain or the "German tycoon" who did much the same in his homeland. These have, with increasing regularity, hit front pages around the world. An example would be New York-based money manager René-Thierry Magnon de la Villehuchet, who slashed his wrists after he "lost more than $1 billion of client money, including much, if not all, of his own family's fortune." In the end, he was yet another victim of financial swindler Bernard Madoff's $50 billion Ponzi scheme.

An unknown but rising number of less wealthy but distinctly well-off workers in the financial field have also killed themselves as a result of the economic crisis -- with less press coverage. Take, for instance, a 51-year-old former analyst at Bear Stearns. Learning that he would be laid off after JPMorgan Chase took over his failed employer, he "threw himself out of the window" of his 29th-floor apartment in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Or consider the 52-year-old commercial real estate broker from suburban Chicago who "took his life in a wildlife preserve" just "a month after he publicly worried over a challenging market," or the 50-year-old "managing partner at Leeward Investments" from San Carlos, California, who got wiped out "in the markets" and "suffocated himself to death."

Beverly Hills clinical psychologist Leslie Seppinni caught something of our moment when she told Forbes magazine that this was "the first time in her 18-year career that businessmen are calling her with suicidal impulses over their financial state." In the last three months, alone, "she has intervened in at least 14 cases of men seriously considering taking their lives." Seppinni offered this observation: "They feel guilt and shame because they think they should have known what was coming with the market or they should have pulled out faster."

Still, it's mostly on Main Street, not Wall Street, that people are being driven to once unthinkable extremes. And while it's always impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to drastic acts, violent or otherwise, many of those recently reported are undoubtedly tied, at least in part, to the way the bottom seems to be falling out of the economy.

As a result, reports of people driven to anything from armed robbery to financially-motivated suicide in response to new fiscal realities continue to bubble to the surface. And since only a certain percentage of such acts receive media coverage, the drumbeat of what is being reported definitely qualifies as startling.

Breaking the Bank

In September 2008, a 23-year-old woman from West Norriton, Pennsylvania, robbed a bank, police reported, to pay her rent. According to East Norriton Detective Sgt. Peter Mastrocola, "She said that the reason that she went to PNC Bank and committed the robbery was because she was two months behind in her rent and she was going to be evicted." In fact, after stealing $1,410, the young woman reportedly told police that she "took the cash from the robbery and went to another bank where she purchased a cashier's check for $1,410 made payable to Westover Village Apartments…"

The next month, in Northampton, Pennsylvania, a 49-year-old woman reportedly robbed a bank and, just 18 minutes later, "arrived at a check-cashing business and arranged for several money orders -- totaling $1,090 -- to pay a portion of the rent she owed her landlord." According to court papers, a "confidential informant" told police the woman had confided that "she was going to rob the bank to satisfy about $1,800 in back rent." The police reported that she was "in the process of being evicted."

This, however, is no Keystone State phenomenon. As the Los Angeles Times recently reported, "Another sign of the bad economic times… [b]ank robberies, which had been declining for years, rose in 2008 in Southern California… [by] 22% compared to 2007." In Orange County, the spike was especially acute, a jump of 41% to 145 robberies. Similarly, Inland Empire News Radio reported that authorities attributed a 13% rise in bank robberies in Riverside and San Bernardino counties to a "poor economy."

"We've certainly seen a rise in bank robberies across the country particularly in our metropolitan areas," FBI Special Agent Scott Wilson recently pointed out. "The bank robbery rate has risen dramatically."

Last year, according to the New York City Police Department, bank robberies in that city jumped to more than 430, a 54% rise over 2007. On December 29th alone, CNN noted, "robbers targeted five banks in the Big Apple, some striking in broad daylight and near famous landmarks." Interviewed by the New York Times, a customer in one of the robbed banks put the obvious into words: "It makes me think that the recession is making people go to extreme measures." Illinois Wesleyan University Economics Professor Mike Seeborg agrees. Commenting on a similar local spike in crime, he told a Central Illinois TV station, "There's a clear linkage nationwide that when the economy is in bad shape, when unemployment begins to increase, if people lose their jobs and output falls, that crimes against property especially increase."

Suicidal Tendencies

At least 33 people chose to commit suicide in national parks in 2008. And there seemed to be an economic component to at least some of the cases. For example, an Associated Press report noted that a "49-year-old builder blamed the economy in a note he left for his ex-wife and attorney before killing himself at the edge of the woods at Georgia's Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park." Similarly, in October, Bruce J. Colburn, a "[f]reshly unemployed, former business executive" from Reading, Pennsylvania, traveled to Montana's scenic Glacier National Park where "he shot himself in the chest with a handgun, according to park officials."

Others stayed closer to home.

On October 14, 2008, a woman in Bogart, Georgia, was "supposed to go to court for an eviction hearing." Instead, she called the police and informed them that she was thinking of killing herself. Not long afterward, she shot herself in the head. On October 29th, a 47-year-old man from Blount County, Tennessee, "killed himself when sheriff's deputies tried to evict him from his rented home." The next month, according to Mike Witzky, the executive director of the Mental Health and Recovery Board in Union County, Ohio, two local men committed suicide due to financial problems, while another failed in his attempt.

On December 5, 2008, Ricky Guseman of West Palm Beach, Florida, was to be evicted. Instead, local officials told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, he "barricaded himself in a mobile home… set the place on fire and then shot himself in the head with a shotgun."

In December, coroner's investigators in Kern County, California, revealed that they were "seeing a wave of people committing suicide because of financial stress," a 5-10% increase over 2007.

An analysis of 2008 "death reports" in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, by local ABC television affiliate WISN-TV found "[f]inancial pressure in a difficult economy has led to desperate measures." Of 108 suicides -- a 20% jump over any of the last three years -- at least 25% of the victims "were struggling financially." For example, Wauwatosa resident Tom Brisch, a married father of two, fell on hard times after his wife of 20 years, Sherry, lost her job. At the same time, his job as a commission-only Ford car salesman fell victim to the sluggish auto market. As Sherry summed the situation up after his suicide, "[T]he economic picture with a kid going to college, another one starting high school... was pretty grim and we were struggling." She returned home one day to find that her husband had hanged himself. In his shirt pocket was a suicide note in which "he asked for forgiveness and wrote that he could not get it together to provide for them."

WISN-TV uncovered a host of similar tragedies including:

* A 21-year-old Milwaukee man who shot himself in the face after "he ran out of unemployment [insurance]."

* A 43-year-old West Allis man who hanged himself in his basement with a belt. "[T]he mortgage payments are behind," his girlfriend told the police. "There are astronomical medical bills."

* A 40-year-old Milwaukee woman who overdosed after having "financial problems."

* A 24-year-old Milwaukee man, "fired from his job three weeks before," who suffocated himself with Saran Wrap.

* And a 38-year-old Milwaukee man who shot himself in the head. He'd lost his job six weeks earlier.

In January, less than an hour's drive south of Milwaukee, 37-year-old Staci Paul's car was pulled from Lake Michigan, but they couldn't find the body of the Kenosha, Wisconsin, woman. As an article in the Kenosha News noted, however, friends "said they knew things hadn't been easy for Paul. A single mother, she worked hard to find jobs and as the economy worsened, friends speculated, Paul might have run into some financial trouble. Court records also show Paul had been evicted from her home in October."

Distress Signals

Paul apparently felt she had to deal with her problems on her own. Others, however, have called for help. According to a January 9th report in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, local police received a phone call concerning a 64-year-old resident of Westview, Pennsylvania, who was "apparently distraught over losing his house." When they arrived at the home, they found him "sitting in a lawn chair in his driveway with a rifle under his chin." He was later taken into custody and sent to a psychiatric clinic for "evaluation."

Increasing numbers of desperate souls have also called the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which logged a record 568,437 calls in 2008. (There were only 412,768 such calls the previous year.) Similarly, a recent investigation by USA Today's Marilyn Elias found that suicide hotlines in Dallas, Pittsburgh, suburban San Francisco, Hyattsville (Maryland), Georgia, Delaware, and Detroit have all reported "increases in callers since the economy slid." The report added:

"In Boston, more hotline callers with mental health problems mention job losses, evictions or fear that they'll lose their homes, says Roberta Hurtig, executive director at Samaritans Inc. [a not-for-profit volunteer organization dedicated to reducing the incidence of suicide.] In Kalamazoo, Mich[igan], and other locales, callers with mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder say loss of insurance and cutbacks in public health programs are preventing them from getting medications.

"At the Gary, Ind[iana], Crisis Center, suicidal callers with economic worries are increasing, and their depression is more severe, says Willie Perry, program coordinator for the hotline."

In Franklin County, Ohio, suicide hot line volunteers are "logging more calls from people in financial distress, says Mary Brennen-Hofmann, coordinator of suicide-prevention services at North Central Mental Health Services in Columbus." She continued, "We have seen a lot more calls dealing with financial problems, evictions, foreclosures and job loss."

Similarly, the Hopeline of North Carolina Inc. in Raleigh saw a 50% jump in calls in October and November. "We get calls from people who are suicidal because the stock market is down," said executive director Courtney Atwood. "They have lost money and are not able to provide for their family."

In Los Angeles, calls to the city's "busiest suicide hot line" increased by as much as 60% last year. "A year ago, many of the calls we would get were from people with mental illnesses," commented Sandri Kramer, the program director of the center that operates the hot line. "Now many of the calls are from people who have lost their home, or their job, or who still have a job but can't meet the cost of living."

Domestic Disturbances

Not surprisingly, the economic meltdown has also strained marriages and, according to experts, is contributing to a rise in domestic violence. Retha Fielding, a spokeswoman for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, notes that calls increased 18% between October 2007 and October 2008 and attributes the spike to the poor economy. "It is bringing increased stress and violence into the home. Domestic violence is about control. If you lose your job, that's control you don't have, so you may want to have more control at home."

Sometimes economically exacerbated violence can turn deadly.

On December 9th, for example, 59-year-old Thomas Garrett of Midwest City, Oklahoma, murdered his wife. According to Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes, "Garrett told officers he shot his wife because he didn't know how to explain that they were evicted from their home while she was in the hospital." He apparently planned to kill himself too, but was stopped by the police.

Thirty-one-year-old Eryn Allegra had lost her home as well as her job, and had, according to press accounts, been thinking about suicide for weeks. On Christmas day, the Port St. Lucie, Florida, resident reportedly checked into a hotel, gave her 8-year-old son over-the-counter medicine to put him to sleep, and then smothered him. She subsequently slit her own wrists in a failed suicide attempt.

Noting a man's pickup truck parked in his driveway at a time when he was normally at work, neighbors in an "upscale neighborhood" in Manteca, Georgia, entered his home which a bank had recently approved for a short sale. (A short sale often takes place when a buyer in default is trying to avoid foreclosure.) According to the Manteca Bulletin, they found him "lying in the foyer of the home… dead of a gunshot wound." Arriving at the scene soon after, police discovered the body of his wife nearby "and located a firearm near the two bodies."

On January 11th, Pinole, California police responding to a domestic disturbance call found 43-year-old Kimberly Petretti sitting on the curb in front of the home. She was being evicted that morning. Inside the house, which "showed no signs of a preparation for the move," they found the woman's mother, 62-year-old Claudia Petretti, dead -- shot in the head with an assault rifle. According to Deputy District Attorney Harold Jewett, a two-page letter on the scene indicated a murder-suicide plan linked to the family's financial difficulties. "It was a significant event in their lives that may have precipitated this tragic and desperate act," he said.

Last October, a man in Los Angeles, beset by financial troubles, shot his wife, mother-in-law, and three sons before turning the gun on himself. An eerily similar scene replayed itself this week, when another Los Angeles resident apparently killed his wife and five children -- an 8-year-old girl, twin 5-year-old girls, and twin 2-year-old boys -- before faxing a letter to a local television station and then killing himself. "This was a financial and job-related issue that led to the slayings," Deputy Chief Kenneth Garner http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/4-children-moth.htmlsaid. "In these tough economic times, there are other options. In my 32 years, I've never seen anything like this."

As the World Burns

On December 15th, a 41-year-old Dubuque, Iowa man "used liquid pre-shave to set his apartment on fire because he thought he was going to be evicted."

On December 21st, a 31-year-old woman who had been evicted from her Orange Park, Florida, apartment, "started a weekend fire that caused an estimated $500,000 in damage" to the complex that was her former home. That same day, a woman in St. Augustine, Florida, "was charged with arson… after vacating a house she was evicted from that was later found burning."

On January 5, 2009, Bobby Crigler, the property manager for Holly Street Apartments in Fayetteville, Arkansas, said, "I went over and had a confrontation with [tenants about an eviction notice], and they got belligerent." After that, he sent the property's maintenance man, his son, 49-year-old Kent Crigler, to change the locks at another tenant's apartment. When friends of the tenant facing eviction spotted Kent, they assumed, according to Bobby, that he was there to evict their buddy. They set upon Kent, punching and kicking the father of four to death, according to a report in the Northwest Arkansas Times.

Generally, however, if you weren't a multimillionaire intent on suicide, what you did to your house, your husband, your wife, your child, your bank, your neighbors, your landlord, or yourself remained a distinctly local story, a passing moment in the neighborhood gazette or a regional paper. And for the range of such acts, unlike sports statistics, there are no centralized databases toting up and keeping score. Every now and then, though, a spectacular act of extreme desperation makes it out of the neighborhood and into the national news.

One of these occurred this January, although the media generally played it as a sensational screwball story rather than another extreme act stemming from the economic crisis. In December, Marcus Schrenker, a money manager and sometime stunt pilot, penned a letter that read, in part: "It needs to be known that I am financially insolvent… I am intending on filing bankruptcy in 2009 should my financial conditions continue to deteriorate." They did.

As the Indiana investment adviser grew more desperate to escape mounting financial difficulties and legal issues stemming from accusations of investor fraud, he reportedly hatched a plan that was splashed all over national television as it unfolded. According to news reports, he staged a Hollywood-style getaway from his rapidly deteriorating life, complete with a fake mid-air mayday call, a parachute jump over Alabama, and a faked death from a plane he put on autopilot that crashed in a swamp near a residential area in the Florida Panhandle. Schrenker then raced away on a carefully pre-stashed motorcycle, before being discovered by federal marshals just after he had slashed his wrists at a Florida campsite. He recently pleaded not guilty in federal court to charges that he willfully destroyed an aircraft and made a fake distress call.

Going to Extremes

Across the United States, people have been reacting to dire circumstances with extreme acts, including murder, suicide and suicide attempts, self-inflicted injury, bank robberies, flights from the law, and arson, as well as resistance to eviction and armed self-defense. And yet, while various bailout schemes have been introduced and implemented for banks and giant corporations, no significant plans have been outlined or introduced into public debate, let alone implemented by Washington, to take strong measures to combat the dire circumstances affecting ordinary Americans.

There has been next to no talk of debt or mortgage forgiveness, or of an enhanced and massively bulked-up version of the Nixonian guaranteed income plan (which would pay stipends to the neediest), or of buying up and handing over the glut of homes on the market, with adequate fix-up funds, to the homeless, or of any significant gesture toward even the most modest redistributions of wealth. Until then, for many, hope will be nothing but a slogan, the body count will rise, and Americans will undoubtedly continue going to extremes.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com. His work has appeared in many publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. A paperback edition of his first book, The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books), an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, will be published this spring. His website is Nick Turse.com.

[Note: A special bow should be offered to undervalued small-town newspapers and local television stations across the country that have done the grunt work in covering the tragic results of the global economic crisis in their own communities. They continue to offer a real service to the public by documenting how individuals in cities and towns across America are suffering and just what that suffering drives them to do. By way of a Newsweek article on the "Killer Economy?" I recently became aware of an excellent resource on some of the human fallout of the financial crisis, "Greenspan's Body Count" an ongoing feature on the W.C. Varones Blog. Since early 2008, it has provided an invaluable record of "mortgage-related suicides" and other "victims of (former Chairman of the Federal Reserve) Alan Greenspan."]

Tomgram: Nick Turse, Desperate Times and Desperate Measures

The headlines tell the story. My hometown paper played the news relatively mildly as "Layoffs Spread to More Sectors of the Economy"; the Washington Post chose the slightly stronger, "Layoffs Cut Deeper into Economy"; the Los Angeles Times picked "Deluge of Layoffs Hits U.S. Economy"; the Indianapolis Star, "50,000 New Pink Slips Pile Up"; and the San Jose Mercury, "Bloody Monday: U.S. firms slash 50,000 jobs." At a news conference, the new president rattled off selected names from the all-star line-up of companies that were tossing out bodies and shutting down lives: "Over the last few days we've learned that Microsoft, Intel, United Airlines, Home Depot, Sprint Nextel, and Caterpillar are each cutting thousands of jobs. These are not just numbers on a page. As with the millions of jobs lost in 2008, these are working men and women whose families have been disrupted and whose dreams have been put on hold."

Meanwhile, the one-day estimate of the number of layoffs, depending on how you were counting and whether you were speaking nationally or globally, rattled around the world -- more than 40,000, 50,000, 55,000, more than 60,000, 71,400, 76,000. Whatever way you cut it, these were staggering tallies that, as Econowhiner wrote in her blog, gave the phrase "Bloody Monday" new meaning in our world.

Add in the possibility that the flood of foreclosures might possibly be even larger than imagined and, as Nick Turse indicates in his latest post, "bloody" is no longer just a metaphor. Increasingly, the "bloody" layoffs and "bloody" foreclosures lead to "bloody" facts on the American ground. This is a crucial story that Turse first began covering back in October in a piece, "The Rising Body Count on Main Street," that explored local press reports nationwide about extreme acts by economically distressed and desperate Americans. Like his "Fallen Legion" series of the Bush era -- an invaluable record of those government insiders who "fell" while fighting to hold the line against the administration from hell -- this is a subject TomDispatch expects to return to regularly. After all, as "Bloody Monday" makes all too clear, the bloody count of extreme acts in America is likely to rise for a long, long time to come. Tom

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 6 replies

Monument to Bush shoe-throwing shines at Iraqi orphanage

Moriji — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:13:29 GMT

For the war-beaten orphans of the northern Iraqi city of Tikrit, this big old shoe fits.

A huge sculpture of the footwear hurled at President Bush in December during a trip to Iraq has been unveiled in a ceremony at the Tikrit Orphanage complex.

Assisted by children at the home, sculptor Laith al-Amiri erected a brown replica of one of the shoes hurled at Bush and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by journalist Muntadhir al-Zaidi during a press conference in Baghdad.

Al-Zaidi was jailed for his actions, and a trial is pending. But his angry gesture touched a defiant nerve throughout the Arab and Muslim world. He is regarded by many people as a hero. Demonstrators in December took to the streets in the Arab world and called for his release.

The shoe monument, made of fiberglass and coated with copper, consists of the shoe and a concrete base. The entire monument is 3.5 meters (11.5 feet) high. The shoe is 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) long and 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) wide.

The orphans helped al-Amiri build the $5,000 structure -- unveiled Tuesday -- in 15 days, said Faten Abdulqader al-Naseri, the orphanage director.

"Those orphans who helped the sculptor in building this monument were the victims of Bush's war," al-Naseri said. "The shoe monument is a gift to the next generation to remember the heroic action by the journalist."

"When the next generation sees the shoe monument, they will ask their parents about it," al-Naseri said.

"Then their parents will start talking about the hero Muntadhir al-Zaidi, who threw his shoe at George W. Bush during his unannounced farewell visit."

Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader toppled by the United States in 2003, was from the Tikrit region.

Al-Zaidi marked his 30th birthday in jail earlier this month. One of his brothers said he is "in good health and is being treated well."

Al-Zaidi's employer, TV network al-Baghdadia, keeps a picture of him at the top left side of the screen with a calendar showing the number of days he has spent in detention. The network has been calling for his release.

By tradition, throwing a shoe is the most insulting act in the Arab world.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/29/iraq.shoe.monument/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Masturbation can be good for the over-50s

Moriji — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:05:27 GMT

Seal, don't forget to jerk off...

-----

Removal of toxins built up over a lifetime reduces the risk of prostate cancer

Masturbation may be good for you – or bad, depending on your age. The solitary sexual activity that is widely practised but little discussed, is linked with an increased risk of prostate cancer when practised frequently by young men in their twenties and thirties, doctors say.

But by the time men reach their fifties, it may protect against the disease because it helps remove toxins that have built up over a lifetime.

Prostate cancer is known to be driven by the male hormone testosterone, and men with high levels of testosterone tend to have a higher sex drive and a higher risk of the cancer.

But most research has examined older men because prostate cancer is unusual under 50. Researchers at the University of Nottingham studied the link between sexual activity in younger men and the disease to see if it affected their long-term risk. More than 400 men with prostate cancer diagnosed before the age of 60 were questioned about their sexual habits over the preceding decades and the results compared with 400 controls.

The findings showed that those who had been most sexually active in their twenties – having sexual intercourse or masturbating more than 20 times a month – were more likely to have the cancer. Frequent masturbation, but not sexual intercourse, in the twenties and thirties was significantly linked with the later development of prostate cancer.

In their 50s men who were most sexually active (more than 10 times a month for sexual intercourse and masturbation combined) enjoyed a small protective effect. The effect was greater when masturbation was assessed on its own.

Polyxeni Dimitripolou, who led the study published in the British Journal of Urology International, said: "It seems as if keeping up a certain level of sexual activity through the decades is better than having a high level early [in the 20s and 30s] and then nothing."

"One theory is that during the early years the prostate gland is more susceptible to hormonal changes and is still developing. As men age and accumulate toxins from the diet or through their lungs , sexual activity may help release them. Studies have found toxins in the semen and the fluid produced in the prostate. As you age it is more important to flush them out."

However, she admitted that there was no good explanation of why masturbation should have a greater impact on prostate cancer, either by increasing or reducing the risk, than sexual intercourse.

"For our sample there was no association with intercourse – all the effect was coming from masturbation. But it may have to do with our group of men. With a different group there could be different findings."

She added: "What makes our study stand out from previous research is that we focused on a younger age group than normal and included both intercourse and masturbation at various stages in people's lives."

"A possible explanation for the protective effect that men in their fifties appear to receive from overall sexual activity, and particularly masturbation, is that the release of accumulated toxins during sexual activity reduces the risk of developing cancer in the prostate area. This theory has, however, not been firmly established and further research is necessary."

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/masturbation-can-be-good-for-the-over50s-1516792.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Bush last speech, says worse than Great Depression

seal — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:57:30 GMT

Caught this and it showed up on CommonDreams today so I thought I'd post it. Along with Obama calling for "austerity" I think it's pretty relevant.

Got your bunker stocked up?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/22

*****In fact, our last president -- in that remarkable final news conference of his ("the ultimate exit interview," he called it) in which he swanned around, did his anti-Sally Fields imitation (you don't like me, right now, you don't like me!), sloshed in self-pity while denouncing self-pity, brimmed with anger, and mugged (while mugging the press) -- even blurted out one genuine, and startling, piece of news. With the Washington press corps being true to itself to the last second of his administration, however, not a soul seemed to notice.

Reporters, pundits, and analysts of every sort focused with laser beam predictability on whether the President would admit to his mistakes in Iraq and elsewhere. In the meantime, out of the blue, Bush offered something strikingly new and potentially germane to any assessment of our moment.

Here's what he said:

"Now, obviously these are very difficult economic times. When people analyze the situation, there will be -- this problem started before my presidency, it obviously took place during my presidency. The question facing a President is not when the problem started, but what did you do about it when you recognized the problem. And I readily concede I chunked aside some of my free market principles when I was told by [my] chief economic advisors that the situation we were facing could be worse than the Great Depression.
"So I've told some of my friends who said -- you know, who have taken an ideological position on this issue -- why did you do what you did? I said, well, if you were sitting there and heard that the depression could be greater than the Great Depression, I hope you would act too, which I did. And we've taken extraordinary measures to deal with the frozen credit markets, which have affected the economy."

Hold onto those "worse than the Great Depression... greater than the Great Depression" comments for a moment and let's try to give this a little context. Assumedly, our last president was referring to his acceptance of what became his administration's $700 billion bailout package for the financial system, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. He signed that into law in early October. So -- for crude dating purposes -- let's assume that his "chief economic advisors," speaking to him in deepest privacy, told him in perhaps early September that the U.S. was facing a situation that might be "worse than the Great Depression."

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Cheney pulls muscle moving, in wheelchair

Moriji — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:29:28 GMT

Is this fitting or what?

-----

Vice President Dick Cheney will be in a wheelchair during Tuesday's Presidential Inauguration, after pulling a muscle in his back while moving, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said

"Under his physician's recommendation, the Vice President will be in a wheelchair for the next couple of days, including for tomorrow's inauguration, The Vice President is looking forward to being there for tomorrow's historic inaugural activities," Perino said in a statement.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/19/cheney-pulls-muscle-moving-in-wheelchair/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 6 replies

President Obama’s Inaugural Address

Moriji — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:59:05 GMT

Placing his hand on the Bible once used by Lincoln, Barack Obama took the Oath of Office at 12:05 p.m. on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Immediately following, he delivered his Inaugural Address to a sea of flag-waving Americans, which stretched down the National Mall to the Lincoln Memorial and beyond. The full text of his address is below.

Now the newly-inaugurated will escort outgoing President Bush to a helicopter taking him back to his native Texas and then President Obama will attend a luncheon inside the Capitol. Later he’ll make his way down Pennsylvania Avenue to his parade review stand in front of the White House where he’ll watch more than 90 parade groups march by.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land - a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of short-cuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted - for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things - some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act - not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions - who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works - whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account - to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day - because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart - not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort - even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West - know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment - a moment that will define a generation - it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].“

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

http://www.pic2009.org/blog/entry/president_obamas_inaugural_address/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

fake ranch dressing

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:43:32 GMT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/bush-drops-fake-cowboy-sh_b_158186.html
only fitting way for the bozo to go out really...

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Entropa

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:57:12 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/world/europe/15mosaic.html?_r=3
I can only imagine what he would do for the US if he was commissioned to do a piece for our individual states...

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Top Saudi cleric: Ok for young girls to wed

Moriji — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 09:59:52 GMT

The debate over the controversial practice of child marriage in Saudi Arabia was pushed back into the spotlight this week, with the kingdom's top cleric saying that it's OK for girls as young as 10 to wed.

"It is incorrect to say that it's not permitted to marry off girls who are 15 and younger," Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Sheikh, the kingdom's grand mufti, said in remarks quoted Wednesday in the regional Al-Hayat newspaper. "A girl aged 10 or 12 can be married. Those who think she's too young are wrong and they are being unfair to her."

The issue of child marriage has been a hot-button topic in the deeply conservative kingdom in recent weeks.

In December, Saudi judge Sheikh Habib Abdallah al-Habib refused to annul the marriage of an 8-year-old girl to a 47-year-old man.

The judge rejected a petition from the girl's mother, whose lawyer said the marriage was arranged by her father to settle a debt with "a close friend." The judge required the girl's husband to sign a pledge that he would not have sex with her until she reaches puberty.

Al-Sheikh was asked during a lecture Monday about parents forcing their underage daughters to marry.

"We hear a lot in the media about the marriage of underage girls," he said, according to the newspaper. "We should know that Shariah law has not brought injustice to women."

Christoph Wilcke, a Saudi Arabia researcher for Human Rights Watch, recently told CNN that his organization has heard many other cases of child marriages.

"We've been hearing about these types of cases once every four or five months because the Saudi public is now able to express this kind of anger, especially so when girls are traded off to older men," Wilcke said.

Wilcke explained that while Saudi ministries may make decisions designed to protect children, "It is still the religious establishment that holds sway in the courts, and in many realms beyond the court."

Last month, Zuhair al-Harithi, a spokesman for the Saudi government-run Human Rights Commission, said his organization is fighting against child marriages.

"The Human Rights Commission opposes child marriages in Saudi Arabia," al-Harithi said. "Child marriages violate international agreements that have been signed by Saudi Arabia and should not be allowed." He added that his organization has been able to intervene and stop at least one child marriage from taking place.

Wajeha al-Huwaider, co-founder of the Society of Defending Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia, told CNN in December that achieving human rights in the kingdom means standing against those who want to "keep us backward and in the dark ages."

She said the marriages cause girls to "lose their sense of security and safety. Also, it destroys their feeling of being loved and nurtured. It causes them a lifetime of psychological problems and severe depression."

The Saudi Ministry of Justice has not made any public comment on the issue.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/01/17/saudi.child.marriage/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Burnout

DevastatorJr — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:03:15 GMT

Sorry Maple, I've been a bit absent from your Tribe lately, because, frankly, after the election I have a case of pollitical burnout. I just can't be bothered to think about it anymore. I think the whole country needs to take a NAP!

Anybody else feeling this?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Eight Years of Madoffs

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 22:34:38 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/opinion/11rich.html?_r=2&emc=eta1

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

What will the new world order look like in 2012

Ted — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 01:33:03 GMT

As I flew home for a visit I felt like I had an apifany, with the way the world is hooked now with technology, it began to dawn on me that the new world order could be something incredibley good.

Way beyond our imagination to almost imagine, maybe it was a futuristic dreamy thought as I flew in the airplain, for it seems that the new world order is being created now and basicly you can be for it or against it, either way this one world government will happen, it will do some bad things and some good things, but at that moment it seems like it would happen irregaurdless, of course the new world order will snuff out all oppostion as any movement does that rises to power, I think the split in the new world order will come in itself after it has established itself, but before that happens it seems like as it rises to power I think we don't have to look at it all bad, I realize this may be concidered a Fascist perspective on my part and that I might be in serious error and of course it will be an ileet privledged movement at first but it could open up to benifit all, wisdom tells me that I can probly see it in this dreamy light because I am not being hurt by it,

All govrning bodies or empires I should say have an enemy and they will always create an enemy and attempt to create geniside, I am convinced after studing history that mankind as a whole is not capable of behaving in an enlightened way on the global governing level, the thurst for power and the impulse to control will always be with Homosapiens unless the whole species takes a shit load of DMT.

Well there you have it the whole trueth and the no trueth so help me GODS

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

Eustace Mullins

Ted — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:10:45 GMT

So have you guys heard of Eustace Mullins?
I read that he was a protegae of Ezra Pound and that while Ezra was under house arrest during the the MacArthy era, Ezra comissioned him to investigate the Federal Reserve, Ezra seemingly connected Eustace with some of the Big wigs in Washington D.C. and i guess other Diplomates of the world at the time, basicly from what I gather his information lead him to the bankers of Europe that seemingly funded our resserve and hence controlled our market, from what i saw he conclued that the Rothchild Bankers of Eurpoe predominately held the rains to our market.

After movies like ZIETGIEST and the other indi movie about the federal reserve that just came out last year, these accusations are nothing new, however Eustace wrote/published SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE, in something like 1950, and only through a tribe bulletin did I find out about this amazing, yet also warpt dude.

He also seems to be a proud southern anti semetic; "go figure"

But like a lot of political heros he was absoluteley herassed by undercovder U.S. agents.

To make matters even more complex he seems to be coming from an ultra far right angle that I don't quite understand.

Not unlike Ron Paul.

O.k. would love to here some Fead back from you guys about this fellow, definately a free thinker, that understands the system inside and out, you can see him on google video and youtube he is in his 80's now and has some other conspericy books that are completely un P.C.

But this brain you just can't throw out with all his other incongruency, he is really something else, and movies like ZIETGUEIST might not even exist if he hadn't.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Naomi Kline on C-Span

DevastatorJr — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:09:14 GMT

Yes, I've been burned out, but not too burned out to catch my secret girlfriend (it's a secret from her,) Naomi Klein rip Wallstreet a new one on C-Span. Did anybody else see this? Check it out --

http://cspanjunkie.org/?s=naomi+klein

Has anybody read her book The Shock Doctrine? I haven't picked it up yet but will eventually, No Logo was like a bible to me for a while.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Well, would you believe it?

Moriji — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:36:54 GMT

I got my tribe shirt today. I'm not kidding. I'm shocked!

Anyone else got theirs?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 9 replies

My Country is now an Autocracy

Moriji — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 20:15:04 GMT

Eniad, what has happened to your country???

-----

I thought this type of thing only happened in rogue African nations.

The Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, was just given the go-ahead to shut down the Canadian parliament to avoid a vote of non-confidence by the majority of the House of Commons. This all sounds very bland I know, but it amounts to the formation of an autocracy against the will of the citizens.

For those of you not up on Parliamentary governments this means that the House of the People, where the elected officials of our nation go to make and break laws and the only real balance of power to the leadership of the Prime Minister and his Cabinet was forced to shut down today.

It would be kind of like President Bush shutting down the Congress and Senate and rule without any checks and balances.

Except this is worse.

With Parliament forced to shut down by the Prime Minister of the country, we are now an autocracy - we are now governed by a single ruler against the will of the majority of our elected officials and the citizenry.

So what is the average person to do?

I would suggest that people get outraged if they aren't already. There is one thing in Canada we cherish more than anything and that is the protections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that allow us to speak our minds, to be outraged. It's these rights and freedoms that protect us from things like, well.... an autocracy.

There are rallies planned for tonight and this weekend across the country - you can go here to find one in your city. If there isn't one in your city, plan one.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/my-country-is-now-an-auto_b_148461.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Hunger Growing Fast

seal — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 07:40:43 GMT

Hunger mounts in the US
By Tom Eley
20 December 2008

www.wsws.org/articles/20...ng-d20.shtml

As the economic crisis deepens, its human toll is becoming more evident. A new survey of food charities in the United States has revealed a dramatic increase in hunger. Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief organization in the US, says that a growing number of families face difficulties in securing adequate nutrition. Meanwhile food banks have proven ill-equipped to meet the increased demand caused by layoffs and increased food costs, and many have collapsed or have restricted the allotments of food they make.

In a nationwide survey of 160 local food assistance programs, with operations covering virtually every county in the US, Feeding America found that there has been a 30 percent increase in requests for emergency food assistance, and that every food bank has seen an increase in demand for food relief. An opinion poll commissioned by the organization and released simultaneously found that a growing number of low-income families lack sufficient nutrition.

In a chilling statement on social conditions in the US, 72 percent of surveyed food charities said that they are unable to meet the current demands of local communities for assistance. In most cases, the charities have responded by offering smaller distributions to the hungry, and some have been forced to close down.

This is taking place in every region of the country. To cite a few examples, the Food Bank of New York City reported that organizations under its direction "have regularly reported over the past year that their shelves are bare and that they have had to turn people away due to their lack of food." The Cleveland Foodbank reported that the crisis "is moving at a pace so fast that our staff cannot catch a breath." The Food Bank of Corpus Christi, Texas, said that "our agencies are seeing such a drastic increase in new clients that they are having a hard time getting the money to acquire the food we need," while "other agencies are burning out and we are seeing a number of agencies closing their doors." Second Harvest Food Bank of Northeast Tennessee reported that its agencies have asked that it not refer new clients "because they are running out of food."

In its survey of households, Feeding America found that nearly two thirds of low-income households—defined as having an income at less than 200 percent of the official poverty level—said that within the past year "their food didn't last and they could not afford to buy more." Forty percent "ate less than they felt they should," and 36 percent "cut the size of meals or skipped meals because there wasn't enough money for food." A large majority of low-income respondents, 70 percent, said that they are reducing food spending, while 62 percent said they make multiple shopping trips for food "because they didn't have enough money to buy everything at one time." In New York City, in 2008, nearly 40 percent of all households said that they had faced difficulties in procuring sufficient food for their families, a sharp increase over figures from 2007.

Hunger is affecting ever-wider sections of the working class, including two-parent households and the gainfully employed. The survey of food banks found user increases of 99.4 percent among "first-time" users, 74 percent among unemployed workers, 59 percent of those with jobs, and 48 percent among families with children seeking assistance.

"When you hear someone say, ‘I never thought that I would have to come to the pantry to get food,' or to have someone say, ‘I used to donate to the pantry and now I am using it,' that's when you realize how tough things are," a representative of the Community Food Banks of South Dakota said.

A food charity in Bloomington, Indiana, reported that a food bank in what it called "a higher income per capita" area saw an increase from 60 visits per month last year to 700 this year. A food bank in Long Island, New York, said that it has witnessed "increased need among middle class people making between $40,000-$70,000, who are recently unemployed, having health problems, having difficulties managing mortgage payments, and going to pantries and soup kitchens for emergency food assistance." A survey of New York City households found that even among the college-educated, 36 percent faced hardship in 2008 in buying needed food, an increase from 11 percent in 2003. A food assistance program in California reported that it is "seeing people coming to us who have never been a part of our system and who never thought that they would need food assistance."

"We are in a national crisis," said Vicki Escarra, the president and CEO of Feeding America. "We have some food banks reporting as high as a 65 percent increase in need. There are record numbers of new men, women and children, who never thought they would need food assistance."

Financial hardship forces many families to choose among necessities such as food, health care, and home heating. The survey of households revealed that 40 percent of low-income families had, in the past year, been forced to choose between eating and paying for utilities.

The economic crisis is at the root of the growth in hunger. Upwards of 90 percent of food banks attribute the increase in hunger to rising food prices and unemployment. Sixty percent also cite fuel costs, and 52 percent listed the inadequacy of state food stamp programs as a cause.

A press release by Feeding America calls on Congress "to pass economic recovery legislation that will offer desperately needed relief to both low-income Americans and the nation's food banks, as the recent surge in unemployment has pushed millions to the brink of hunger."

Estimates on the size of the "economic stimulus" package that President-elect Barack Obama will put in place have ranged from $400 billion to $900 billion. Democrats have hedged their bets, moreover, by asserting that its passage will depend upon minority Republican support. But whatever its final size and content, Obama's "stimulus" will prove woefully inadequate in the face of the deepest social crisis since the Great Depression. The sums being discussed represent a small fraction of the more than $8 trillion that has already been doled out to the largest financial institutions.

Meanwhile, in the 2009 Federal Budget, only $62 billion has been appropriated for all food assistance programs, including food stamps and school lunches, which for many children provide the only substantial meal of the day.

More than 9 percent of all US households now rely on food stamps, the Supplemental Food Assistance Program, to help meet dietary needs. This is a sharp increase from 2001, when 6 percent used food stamps. But indications are that this number will rise sharply. A number of states, including Oregon and Washington in the Pacific Northwest, have seen record requests for food assistance. Food stamps function as vouchers that can be redeemed at grocery stores. Generally, they may be exchanged only for the cheapest items in stock, and only for staples such as milk, meat, and bread.

The program will not meet the level of hunger provoked by the crisis. In the Feeding America survey of households, one third of food stamp recipients said "their benefits only lasted for two weeks or less." Bureaucratic hurdles prevent a large number of eligible families from receiving aid. Undocumented immigrants, as well as immigrants who have been in the country legally for less than five years, are not eligible. Assistance is pegged to 130 percent of the official poverty level, meaning that large numbers of the so-called "working poor" are ineligible, including many of those surveyed by Feeding America.

Though they paint a grim portrait, the Feeding America surveys on hunger offer only a glimpse of the level of social misery to come. Significantly, the surveys were conducted at the end of November. Since then, layoffs have mounted precipitously.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Amsterdam's Gay Christmas Features Mary In Drag

Moriji — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 22:31:34 GMT

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Amsterdam hosted a Christmas celebration for its gay community on Sunday featuring a nativity tableau with a male Mary in drag that church organizations denounced as an affront to traditional values.

Organizers said the event was meant to raise Amsterdam's profile as a gay capital at a time when homosexuals feel threatened.

Christians for Truth, an independent religious group, had asked the city council to cancel the "Pink Christmas," event, saying it made a mockery of Christian tenets. The city did not comment.

A male entertainer known as Wendy Mills posed as Mary in a blonde wig and high-heeled black boots and holding a plastic doll. Another man played Joseph in black leather trunks and a silver shawl.

The five-person manger scene was staged off the street, in the courtyard of a nightclub. Visitors were invited to be photographed with the group. The first was 3-month-old Lily Pink Albers, Mills' niece.

"By portraying Joseph and Mary as homosexuals, a twisted human fantasy is being added to the history of the Bible," Christians for Truth said in a statement ahead of the event.

A few dozen visitors wandered through the 100-yard (meter) long Pink Market past stalls selling leather goods and Christmas cards with gay themes on a downtown street known for its gay nightlife and popular restaurants.

Frank van Dalen, chairman of Pro Gay, which organized the event, said gays were not satisfied with being tolerated, but wanted to be "socially accepted as an indivisible part of society."

He said the Amsterdam city council sponsored the euro15,000 ($21,000) event, which he hoped would become a regular event, like the annual floating summertime gay pride parade through the city's canals that attracts tens of thousands of visitors.

"Our objective is not to be offensive. This is about visibility," he said.

Van Dalen pointed to a report last month that said homophobia was an ingrained problem in Amsterdam, despite the city's freewheeling reputation.

The study by the University of Amsterdam reported 67 violent attacks against gays in 2007, which police said was about average.

Van Dalen said gays were feeling increasingly uncomfortable in public in recent years, and that they perceived Dutch society as more assertive about "classical values."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/21/amsterdams-gay-christmas-_n_152689.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Obama Sets Expansive Goal for Jobs

Moriji — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 05:54:07 GMT

So how do you like this Seal, eh? New Deal II is coming to a town near you this January...

-----

Plan Aims to Create or Save 2.5 Million Positions by 2011

President-elect Barack Obama is developing a plan to create or preserve 2.5 million jobs over the next two years by spending billions of dollars to rebuild roads and bridges, modernize public schools, and construct wind farms and other alternative sources of energy.

The plan, which Obama announced yesterday during the weekly Democratic radio address, is more expansive -- and undoubtedly more expensive -- than anything proposed so far to revive the nation's deteriorating economy. Obama said the darkening economic outlook demands that Washington act "swiftly and boldly" to diminish the risk that the nation "could lose millions of jobs next year."

"The news this week has only reinforced the fact that we are facing an economic crisis of historic proportions," Obama said, citing chaotic financial markets, rising jobless claims and the specter of a "deflationary spiral that could increase our massive debt even further." He provided few details and no price tag, but said his economic team is working on "a plan big enough to meet the challenges we face that I intend to sign soon after taking office."

While cast as a response to a rapidly worsening crisis, the plan could enable Obama to shift massive sums to domestic priorities that Democrats say have long been neglected, such as health care and education. It also could provide seed money to reshape major U.S. industries, hastening the production of wind and solar energy and fuel-efficient cars, for example. Obama said the plan would be "a down payment on the type of reform my administration will bring to Washington."

Obama has scheduled his second formal news conference since the election for tomorrow to introduce his economic team, including Federal Bank of New York President Timothy F. Geithner, Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary. According to Democratic sources, Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, a Clinton administration Treasury chief, will be named director of the National Economic Council. In this capacity, Summers will coordinate the Obama administration's overall economic policy.

Obama's advisers are coordinating with Democrats in Congress to craft a proposal intended to spur economic activity. Congressional leaders have said they hope to pass it shortly after the new Congress convenes next year and have it on Obama's desk soon after he takes office on Jan. 20.

Obama's address echoed many of the same ideas Democrats on Capitol Hill have been advocating for nearly a year.

Obama said his plan would launch "a two-year nationwide effort to jump-start job creation in America and lay the foundation for a strong and growing economy. We'll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels," as well as producing fuel-efficient cars.

"These aren't just steps to pull ourselves out of this immediate crisis; these are long-term investments in our economic future that have been ignored for far too long," he said.

Economists have called on the federal government to spend at least $150 billion and as much as $500 billion to ease the effects of what is expected to be the most painful and prolonged recession since World War II. A stimulus package signed by President Bush in February cost $168 billion.

House Democrats have been talking about a new package worth at least $150 billion, and possibly much more. During the presidential campaign, Obama proposed a two-year, $175 billion stimulus package with money for cash-strapped state governments and infrastructure projects as well as a $1,000 tax credit for working families.

The campaign did not release an estimate of the number of jobs that his latest proposal would create. But congressional aides who have been involved in developing stimulus proposals said that any plan to create 2.5 million jobs is likely to be significantly larger -- probably well over $200 billion, or between 1 and 2 percent of the gross domestic product.

Such a plan would be bold by historic standards. President Bill Clinton, facing a weak economy when he took office in 1993, proposed a $16 billion stimulus package, which was blocked in the Senate. Obama's proposal would be an order of magnitude larger, even when adjusted for the larger size of today's economy.

Some economists have compared Obama's proposals to the spending spree President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched during his early months in office in 1933. Roosevelt offered jobs programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps, and cash for public-works projects, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, in hopes of easing the pain of the Great Depression.

While the stimulus plan Obama discussed on the campaign trail included tax cuts, he did not mention any changes in tax policy in his address yesterday. But House Democrats say they expect to push much of Obama's tax-cutting agenda along with a stimulus measure in January. That could mean enacting legislation that would extend Bush tax cuts for families who earn less than $250,000 past the 2010 expiration date.

Democrats are debating whether to roll back the tax cuts for wealthier families or let them expire on Dec. 31, 2010, as current law requires. Allowing them to expire would give the government additional revenue without forcing Democrats to vote to raise taxes. It also would avoid enacting a tax hike during a recession, which economists say would be unwise.

Without details, it is impossible to say if Obama's goal of creating 2.5 million jobs is realistic. It is also likely to be difficult to assess its effectiveness. Because unemployment is expected to soar in the coming months, the country is expected to shed jobs regardless of any government action. Obama is pledging to add 2.5 million jobs to that lower employment level.

There also is no assurance that Congress will approve such a large package. Republicans, particularly in the Senate, have resisted additional spending on the economy. While Democrats will have stronger majorities in both chambers in January, Obama acknowledged that "passing this plan won't be easy." He called on both Republicans and Democrats to offer "ideas and suggestions."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/11/22/ST2008112202544.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 18 replies

Charting the psychology of evil, decades after 'shock' experiment

Moriji — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:34:21 GMT

This is why I'm against the concept of just-going-along and following-orders-no-matter-what which is so prevalent in our society, especially amongst conservatives. It doesn't lead to more order, but rather to more evil.

-----

If someone told you to press a button to deliver a 450-volt electrical shock to an innocent person in the next room, would you do it?

Common sense may say no, but decades of research suggests otherwise.

In the early 1960s, a young psychologist at Yale began what became one of the most widely recognized experiments in his field. In the first series, he found that about two-thirds of subjects were willing to inflict what they believed were increasingly painful shocks on an innocent person when the experimenter told them to do so, even when the victim screamed and pleaded.

The legacy of Stanley Milgram, who died 24 years ago on December 20, reaches far beyond that initial round of experiments. Researchers have been working on the questions he posed for decades, and have not settled on a brighter vision of human obedience.

A new study to be published in the January issue of American Psychologist confirmed these results in an experiment that mimics many of Milgram's original conditions. This and other studies have corroborated the startling conclusion that the majority of people, when placed in certain kinds of situations, will follow orders, even if those orders entail harming another person.

"It's situations that make ordinary people into evil monsters, and it's situations that make ordinary people into heroes," said Philip Zimbardo, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University and author of "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil."

How Milgram's experiments worked

Milgram, who also came up with the theory behind "six degrees of separation" -- the idea that everyone is connected to everyone else through a small number of acquaintances -- set out to figure out why people would turn against their own neighbors in circumstances such as Nazi-occupied Europe. Referring to Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann, Milgram wrote in 1974, "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

His experiment in its standard form included a fake shock machine, a "teacher," a "learner" and an experimenter in a laboratory setting. The participant was told that he or she had to teach the student to memorize a pair of words, and the punishment for a wrong answer was a shock from the machine.

The teacher sat in front of the shock machine, which had 30 levers, each corresponding to an additional 15 volts. With each mistake the student made, the teacher had to pull the next lever to deliver a more painful punishment.

While the machine didn't generate shocks and a recorded voice track simulated painful reactions, the teacher was led to believe that he or she was shocking a student, who screamed and asked to leave at higher voltages, and eventually fell silent.

If the teacher questioned continuing as instructed, the experimenter simply said, "The experiment requires that you go on," said Thomas Blass, author of the biography "The Man Who Shocked The World: The Life and Legacy of Stanley Milgram" and the Web site StanleyMilgram.com.

About 65 percent of participants pulled levers corresponding to the maximum voltage -- 450 volts -- in spite of the screams of agony from the learner.

"What the experiment shows is that the person whose authority I consider to be legitimate, that he has a right to tell me what to do and therefore I have obligation to follow his orders, that person could make me, make most people, act contrary to their conscience," Blass said.

An update

Because of revised ethical standards for human subject research, this kind of experiment cannot be replicated exactly. But Jerry Burger, professor of psychology at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, made some tweaks to see if Milgram's results hold up today.

His study's design imitated Milgram's, even using the same scripts for the experimenter and suffering learner, but the key difference was that this experiment stopped at 150 volts -- when the learner starts asking to leave. In Milgram's experiment, 79 percent of participants who got to that point went all the way to the maximum shock, he said.

To eliminate bias from the fame of Milgram's experiment, Burger ruled out anyone who had taken two or more college-level psychology classes, and anyone who expressed familiarity with it in the debriefing. The "teachers" in this recent experiment, conducted in 2006, also received several reminders that they could quit whenever they wanted, unlike in Milgram's study.

The new results correlate well with Milgram's: 70 percent of the 40 participants were willing to continue after 150 volts, compared with 82.5 percent in Milgram's study -- a difference that is not statistically significant, Burger said.

Still, some psychologists quoted in the same issue of American Psychologist questioned how comparable this study is to Milgram's, given the differences in methods.

The idea of blind obedience isn't as important in these studies as the larger message about the power of the situation, Burger said. It's also significant that the participant begins with small voltages that increase in small doses over time.

"It's that gradual incremental nature that, as we know, is a very powerful way to change attitudes and behaviors," he said.

Stanford Prison Experiment

This idea of circumstances driving immoral behavior also came out in the Stanford Prison Experiment, a study done in 1971 that is the subject of a film in preproduction, written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie. Work on the film will resume in 2009 after McQuarrie's "Valkyrie" is released, his spokesperson said.

In this study, designed by Stanford's Zimbardo, two dozen male college students were randomly designated as either prison guards or prisoners, and lived in the basement of the university's psychology building playing these roles in their respective uniforms.

Within three days, participants had extreme stress reactions, Zimbardo said. The guards became abusive to the prisoners -- sexually taunting them, asking them to strip naked and demanding that they clean toilet bowls with their bare hands, Zimbardo said. Five prisoners had to be released before the study was over.

Zimbardo's own role illustrated his point: Because he took on the role of prison administrator, he became so engrossed in the jail system that he didn't stop the experiment as soon as this cruelty began, he said.

"If I were simply the principal experimenter, I would have ended it after the second kid broke down," he said. "We all did bad things in this study, including me, but it's diagnostic of the power situation."

Turning the principle around

But while ordinary people have the potential do to evil, they also have the power to do good. That's the subject of the Everyday Heroism project, a collection of social scientists, including Zimbardo, seeking to understand heroic activity -- an area in which almost no research has been done, he said.

Acts such as learning first aid, leading others to the exit in an emergency and encouraging family members to recycle are some heroic behaviors that Zimbardo seeks to encourage.

"Most heroes are everyday people who do a heroic deed once in their lifetime because they have to be in a situation of evil or danger," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/12/19/milgram.experiment.obedience/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

All about the Alex Jones show

Ted — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 03:39:13 GMT

Thank you Seal!

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 12 replies

I Destroyed America

Moriji — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:32:49 GMT

I came across this great poem that I thought you guys might like... * snicker *

-----

Yesterday was beautiful
I watched the sun rise
On a desolate America
Gone are the "Spacious skies"

I gave government control
And now they dominate
They own our medicare
And our income rate

I made gas prices skyrocket
And citizens live in fear
We're addicted to foreign oil
Because we won't drill here

I raised taxes on companies
So a layoff was forced
Now 1000's are unemployed
And their work is outsourced

Many don't even try
I've made a land of slobs
Because now welfare pays better
Than American jobs

I destroyed American values
What our forefathers believed in
Now the government tells us
What is and isn't sin

I enabled gun control
In every American State
This makes every home a target
And no one can sleep safe

Now the criminals get guns
Even though their victims couldn't
I destroyed the constitution
Though I promised that I wouldn't

We rehabilitate murderers
And then set them free
Until they kill again
See I banned death penalty

I let foreign families starve
And the innocent bleed
I don't send our army help
Or weapons that they need

Soldiers sacrificed for nothing
Since I brought the rest back
While terrorist rebuild
And prepare another attack

Today I killed a baby
4,000 to be exact
This isn't a statistic
It's just a gruesome fact

No I didn't hold the knife
Or literally harm one soul
But I brought down America
This Nation as a whole

I did my part this year
So I can proudly tip my hat
I helped destroy my Country
I voted Democrat

© Shannon Richards 2008

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 21 replies

THEY BAILED OUT THE BIG 3!

Ted — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:42:14 GMT

What a load of shit!

The electric car is just about to kill the petrol car, the big 3 could have been the leaders but they were so bizzy licking each others butts that they never got there heads out of there ass to wake up to the times,
what a bunch of dildos!

And congress gave them the money,

Now that's Leadership!

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Ice melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says

Moriji — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:37:23 GMT

For Seal...

-----

Between 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska has melted at an accelerating rate since 2003, according to NASA scientists, in the latest signs of what they say is global warming.

Using new satellite technology that measures changes in mass in mountain glaciers and ice sheets, NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke concluded that the losses amounted to enough water to fill the Chesapeake Bay 21 times.

"The ice tells us in a very real way how the climate is changing," said Luthcke, who will present his findings this week at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, California.

NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission uses two orbiting satellites to measure the "mass balance" of a glacier, or the net annual difference between ice accumulation and ice loss.

"A few degrees of change [in temperature] can increase the amount of mass loss, and that contributes to sea level rise and changes in ocean current," Luthcke said.

The data reflects findings from NASA colleague Jay Zwally, who uses different satellite technology to observe changing ice volume in Greenland, the Arctic and Antarctica.

In the past five years, Greenland has lost between 150 gigatons and 160 gigatons each year, (one gigaton equals one billion tons) or enough to raise global sea levels about .5 mm per year, said Zwally, who will also present his findings at the conference this week.

GRACE measured that mountain glaciers in the Gulf of Alaska lost about 84 gigatons each year, about five times the average annual flow of the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, according to NASA.

"Every few extra inches of sea level have very significant economic impacts, because they change the sea level, increase flooding and storm damage," said, Zwally, ICESat Project Scientist. "It's a warning sign."

Melting ice, especially in Greenland and the Arctic, is also thought to contribute to global warming, Zwally said. When the vast ice sheets and glaciers melt, they lose their reflective power, and instead, oceans and land absorb the heat, causing the Arctic waters and the atmosphere to warm faster.

"We're seeing the impacts of global warming in many areas of our own lives, like agriculture," Zwally said.

As an example, he cited the pine beetle infestation of this summer in the forests of Colorado and western Canada.

"They were believed to be spreading because the winter was not cold enough to kill them, and that's destroying forests," he said.

In the 1990s, Greenland took in as much snow and water as it let out, Zwally said. But now, about 15 years later, sea levels are rising about 50 percent faster, making the global climate situation even more unpredictable.

"The best estimates are that sea levels will rise about 18 to 36 inches by the end of the century, but because of what's going on and how fast things are changing, there's a lot of uncertainty," he said.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/16/melting.ice/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

The Mumbai Attacks

Moriji — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:04:42 GMT

The Mumbai operation that killed more than 150 people over two days in the heart of India's commercial capital marks the emergence of an unprecedented hybrid of terror tactics. "This didn't involve suicide bombers and booby-trapped cars that we commonly see in Islamist terror attacks — ones which usually end with the explosion-deaths of the kamikazes carrying them out," notes French terrorism specialist Roland Jacquard. "This is essentially a small army sent into the heart of society with orders kill and keep killing as long as possible. And they're technically capable of creating a lot of damage and death before they can be killed. So this is more like terrorism fused with insurgency and guerilla warfare."

Despite the reports the Mumbai assailants initially sought out British, American and Israeli guests in the luxury hotels they raided, the vast majority of victims so far have been Indian. That suggests that their soft-target selection wasn't designed, as a number of recent spectacular terror strikes have been, to kill as many Westerners as possible — the Mumbai attackers appear simply to have killed whomever they could.

"This detail suggests the group behind this has regional and political objectives particular — and perhaps unique — to Indian Islamists," Jacquard says. "Despite a few common elements with al-Qaeda-inspired attacks, this one didn't come out of the usual international jihad playbook. The state and its security forces aren't being attacked as you'd see in Algeria, Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. And the open-ended and complex nature of the Mumbai operation is strikingly different from the sudden suicide missions we see in Iraq or Afghanistan."

Security officials have long viewed attacks on unprotected targets around the globe frequented by Westerners as a Plan B to the more ambitious attacks on Western populations in their home cities. "The jihadist symbolism may not be as great as attacking an enemy state head on, at home," one French counter-terrorism official argued prior to the Mumbai attacks. "But the panic and horror inflicted by soft-target strikes abroad can unfortunately often be just as great — and as deadly." So much so, in fact, that European security officials see their citizens being at greater risk of being targeted by terrorists abroad than they would be at home. That's one reason France and most other nations have requested citizens to stay out of terror-prone countries such as Algeria, and advise against non-essential travel to places such as Pakistan and Yemen.

In spite of heightened security around the globe in the wake of 9/11 and attacks that followed in Bali, Madrid, London, Casablanca and elsewhere, terrorists can contemplate shopping malls, cinemas or sports events among myriad soft targets available in every city in the world.

"Wherever it is, a soft target is by definition one that's fat and relatively unprotected, and the only way of avoiding them are basically to stay locked away at home and shun all the activities, events, and celebrations that often make life a joy," the French official says. "But if we do that, we give the terrorists what they want."

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1862795,00.html?cnn=yes

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

The Tao Jones takes another plunge!

Ted — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:04:23 GMT

Have yourself a merry little,...

(I mean)...

." little"....

....

" little"..

....

..

"christmass"

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 17 replies

What the Big Bank Hedge Funders do the Small Hedge Funders does Better!

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 01:39:09 GMT

Move over Goldman Sachs, American Bank... Selling Not-money for Money is not just the skill for the smartest biggest financial genius Wall Streeters..

The small Wall Street guy he out does you selling Not-money for Money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/business/12scheme.html?em

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Standoff continues as workers protest layoffs

Moriji — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 07:29:12 GMT

Man, we haven't seen stuff like this in a while huh?

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Workers are refusing to leave a Chicago factory they have occupied since Friday.They started a sit-in after getting three days notice that the plant was being shutdown.

"We've been here since yesterday and last night, and we're not going anywhere. We are committed to this," worker Melvin Maclin said.

The protestors are calling their demonstration a peaceful occupation. Some 200 workers at Republic Windows and Doors are staying inside their plant, in shifts, even though the company has told them that - as of yesterday - their jobs no longer exist.

"I do whatever I have to do to support my family," said Armando Robles, who also was laid off.

Robles, a husband and father of three children, says Republic's abrupt closing means no more health insurance for his family. He and other members of the unionized, largely Hispanic workforce have been told that they should not expect any severance or vacation pay they say they've already earned.

"Chicago is a working class town. We're gonna stand together 'til we win this battle," one union leader said.

Saturday afternoon, members of other unions rallied in support of the Republic workers. Their argument is that the company violated federal labor laws by not notifying the workforce at least two months in advance of its plan to close.

Employees say they got the news only four days ago. Illinois law requires a 75-day notification if a company the size of Republic intends to close its doors.

"And what that does is, it allows workers to go into the collective bargaining agreement, to renegotiate terms of the contract to make sure they get everything that's entitled to them," DePaul Univ. Labor Educator Cynthia Martinez.

Republic has reportedly suffered a huge, rapid decline in sales, and the company maintains it had no choice but to shut down.

"It's clear to us that the company has been moving resources and production elsewhere," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez also says he's seeking answers at a meeting with Republic and its lender, Bank of America, Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, the workers say they're staying at the building.

"I'm gonna stay to the end. If they're gonna tell me I have to leave, they have to arrest me. I'll take the chance," one worker said. "I'm prepared to be arrested if necessary," Armando Robles said.

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=6542348

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Imperial transition = NO CHANGE

seal — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 19:20:07 GMT

Published on Monday, December 8, 2008 by TomDispatch.com
The Imperial Transition
44, The Prequel
by Tom Engelhardt

Did you know that the IBM Center for the Business of Government hosts a "Presidential Transition" blog; that the Council on Foreign Relations has its own "Transition Blog: The New Administration"; and that the American University School of Communication has a "Transition Tracker" website? The National Journal offers its online readers a comprehensive "Lost in Transition" site to help them "navigate the presidential handover," including a "short list," offering not only the president-elect's key recent appointments, but also a series of not-so-short lists of those still believed to be in contention for as-yet-unfilled jobs. Think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People Magazine for post-election political junkies.
Newsweek features "powering up" ("blogging the transition"); the policy-wonk website Politico.com offers Politico 44 ("a living diary of the Obama presidency"); and Public Citizen has "Becoming 44," with the usual lists of appointees, possible appointees, but -- for the junkie who wants everything -- "bundler transition team members" and "lobbyist and bundler appointees" as well. (For those who want to know, for instance, White House Social Secretary-designate Desiree Roberts bundled at least $200,000 for the Obama campaign.)

The New York Times has gone whole hog at "The New Team" section of its website, where there are scads of little bios of appointees, as well as prospective appointees -- including what each individual will "bring to the job," how each is "linked to Mr. Obama," and what negatives each carries as "baggage." Think of it as a scorecard for transition junkies. The Washington Post, whose official beat is, of course, Washington D.C. über alles, has its "44: The Obama Presidency, A Transition to Power," where, in case you're planning to make a night of it on January 20th, you can keep up to date on that seasonal must-subject, the upcoming inaugural balls. And not to be outdone, the transitioning Obama transition crew has its own mega-transition site, Change.gov.

Earliest, Biggest, Fastest

And that, of course, only begins to scratch the surface of the media's transition mania -- I haven't even mentioned the cable news networks -- which has followed, with hardly a breath, nearly two years of presidential campaign mania. Let's face it, whether or not the Obama transition is the talk of Main Street and the under-populated malls of this American moment, it's certainly the talk of medialand -- and at what can only be termed historic levels, as befits a "historic" transition period.

Believe me, no one's sparing the adjectives right now. This transition is the earliest, biggest, fastest, best organized, most efficient on record, even as Obama himself has "maintained one of the most public images of any president-elect." It's cause for congratulations all around, a powerful antidote, we're told, to Bill Clinton's notoriously chaotic transition back in 1992. In fact, we can't, it seems, get enough of a transition that began to gather steam many months before November 4th and has been plowing ahead for more than a post-election month now.

It's kind of exhausting, really, just thinking about that awesomely humongous transition line-up. Check out the list of transition review teams and advisors at Change.gov and you'll find that it goes over the horizon. According to the Washington Post, 135 transition team members, organized into 10 groups, all wearing yellow badges, backed by countless transition advisers, "have swarmed into dozens of government offices, from the Pentagon to the National Council on Disability" preparing the way for the new administration. This, like so much else, has been "unprecedented."

And don't get anyone started on the veritable "army" of volunteer lawyers giving "unprecedented scrutiny" to possible administration appointees in a vetting process that began at the moment of Obama's nomination, not election. As the Washington Post's Philip Rucker described it:

"Embarrassing e-mails, text messages, diary entries and Facebook profiles? Gifts worth more than $50? Relatives linked to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG or another company getting a federal bailout? Obama is conducting the vetting much as he managed his campaign: methodically, thoroughly and on a prodigious scale."
That process includes a distinctly unprecedented invasion of privacy via a seven-page, 63-question form that all potential appointees have had to fill out. Imagine, for instance, that after 62 "penetrating" questions on every aspect of your life, you faced this catch-all 63rd question: "Please provide any other information, including information about other members of your family, that could suggest a conflict of interest or be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family, or the president-elect." (For anyone worried about privacy issues, what this means practically -- as Barton Gelman explained in his book Angler on the vice-presidential 200-question vetting process by which Dick Cheney chose himself as candidate and then used private information sent in by the other candidates for his own purposes -- is major dossiers on about 800 people.)

Everything in this "transition" is, in fact, more prodigious and more invasive than in any previous transition, including, of course, the ongoing media fascination with all those positions Obama is filling with "the best and the brightest." We're not just talking about his vast economic team or his national security team, but the presidential liaison to Capitol Hill, the White House press secretary, the president's speechwriter, his communications director, and his White House staff secretary, not to speak of the First Lady's deputy chief of staff and, of course, that White House social secretary. And then there's always that bout of "fantasy football for foodies," the speculation over who will be the new White House chef.

The Transition Bulks Up

Talk about confident and organized, Peter Baker and Helene Cooper of the New York Times report that Obama invited former Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Jones to meet with him and all but offered him a key national security post "a full 13 days before the election." (He clearly felt that he had a pretty good idea of who was going to be president-elect by then.) And the rest of his transition, so efficiently organized by former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, has been on a (steam)roll ever since. Post-November 4th, it has been rolling out the key appointments at a historically "unprecedented" pace.

Five weeks past victory, according to the Times, Obama had announced 13 of the 24 "most important positions in a new administration," including Jones as his national security adviser. At the equivalent moment in their transitions, Jimmy Carter had filled two of these positions; Ronald Reagan, two; George H.W. Bush, 8 (but his was largely a carry-over administration); Bill Clinton, one; and George W. Bush (distracted by an electoral battle wending its fateful way to the Supreme Court), one.

Bated breath hardly catches the media mood, facing the thrilling almost daily roll-outs of new appointments and record numbers of president-elect press conferences against a backdrop of enough American flags to outfit a parade and announced from a White-House press-room-style podium carefully -- not to say ornately -- labeled The Office of the President Elect." At such moments, the Obama transition can seem anything but transitional.

Given the overwhelming, largely congratulatory focus on specific appointments and their attendant drama -- will the strong personalities of Hillary, Bob, and Jim clash? Are the Obama-ites in a desperate scramble for a new CIA Director? Is Larry Summers next in line for the Fed? -- the larger architecture of this moment, and what it portends for the presidency to come, is ignored.

Think of it this way: After the Imperial Campaign -- that two-year extravaganza of bread and circuses (and money) -- comes the Imperial Transition. Everything in these last weeks, like the preceding two years, has been bulked up, like Schwarzenegger's Conanesque pecs. In other words, since November 5th, what we've been experiencing in the midst of one of the true crisis periods in our history has essentially been an unending celebration of super-sized government. Consider it an introduction to what will surely be the next Imperial Presidency.

As the transition events indicate, whatever its specific policies of change, the administration-to-come is preparing to move, and in force, into an empty executive branch as it already exists. Wherever there's an opening, that is, Podesta's guys are rushing to fill it.

The particular transition moment that caught my eye occurred two weeks ago when the chief strategist of the Obama election campaign, David Axelrod, was appointed senior adviser to the president. To be more specific, he was given Karl Rove's old slot (and, assumedly, office) in the White House. As the Boston Globe's Peter Canelos wrote:

"[I]t's now obvious that there's one part of George W. Bush's political legacy that Obama and Axelrod aren't eager to change: the very dubious notion of having the president's campaign strategist rubbing elbows with all the policy wonks in the West Wing."
True, presidents have often wanted trusted advisors near at hand, but the institutionalization of that urge in an actual office in the White House is a new development that Obama could easily, as well as painlessly, have reversed (and many would have cheered him for it). So consider it a signal.

Barack Obama -- thank goodness -- isn't George Bush. He doesn't arrive in office with a crew wedded to a "unitary executive theory" of the presidency, or an urge to loose the executive from the supposed "chains" of the Watergate-era Congress, or to "take off the gloves" globally. He doesn't have strange, twisted, oppressive ideas about how the Constitution should work, nor assumedly do visions of a "commander-in-chief presidency" (or vice presidency) dance in his head like so many sugar plums.

But don't ignore the architecture, the deep structure of the American political system. Make no mistake, Obama is moving full-speed ahead into an executive mansion rebuilt and endlessly expanded by the national security state over the last half-century-plus, and then built up in major ways by George W.'s "team." Despite the prospect of a new dog and a mother-in-law in the White House, the president-elect and his transition team show no signs of wanting to change the basic furniture, no less close up a few wings of the imperial mansion (other, perhaps, than the elaborate prison complex at Guantanamo).

With so many catastrophes impending and so many pundits and journalists merrily applauding the most efficient transition in American history, no one, it seems, is even thinking about the architecture.

The GM of Governments

The New York Times's David Sanger recently reported on what happened when Obama's mini-transition teams of ex-Clintonistas ventured into the heart of our post-9/11 imperial bureaucracy. Many of the team members had worked in the very same departments in the 1990s. On returning, however, they found themselves to be so many Alices in a labyrinthine new Wonderland of national security. Sanger writes:

"[S]everal say they feel more like political archaeologists. 'The buildings look the same,' one said over coffee, 'but everything inside is unrecognizable.' And as they dig, they have tripped across a few surprises… [F]ew can contain their amazement, chiefly at the sheer increase in the size of the defense and national-security apparatus.
"'For a bunch of small-government Republicans,' [said] one former denizen of the White House who has now stepped back inside for the first time in eight years, 'these guys built a hell of an empire.' Eight years ago, there were two deputy national security advisers; today there are a half-dozen, each with staff."

And don't think for a second that most or all of those half-dozen posts aren't likely to be filled by the new administration, or that, four or eight years later, we'll be back to two deputy national security advisers; nor should you imagine that the Homeland Security Department that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano is to run, a vast, lumpy, inefficient, ineffective post-9/11 creation of the Bush administration (which now has its own embedded mini-homeland-industrial complex) will be gone in those same years, anymore than that most un-American of words "homeland" is likely to leave our lexicon; nor will Barack Obama not appoint a Director of National Intelligence, another of those post-9/11 creations that added yet one more layer of bureaucracy to the 18 departments, agencies, and offices which make up the official U.S. Intelligence Community.

Don't hold your breath for that labyrinthine mess to be reduced to a more logical two or three intelligence agencies; nor will that 2002 creation of the Bush administration, the U.S. Northern Command, another militarization of "the homeland" now in the process of bulking up, be significantly downsized or abolished in the coming years.

On all of this, the Bush administration has gone out of its way to lend a hand to Obama's transition team and, in the process, help institutionalize the imperial transition itself. Like the new money arrangements pioneered in the 2008 elections, it surely will remain part of the political landscape for the foreseeable future. From such developments in our world, it seems, there's never any turning back.

There's nothing strange about all this, of course, if you're already inside this system. It seems, in fact, too obvious to mention. After all, what president wouldn't move into the political/governmental house he's inheriting as efficiently and fully as possible?

The unprecedented size of this imperial pre-presidency, however, signals something else: that what is to come -- quite aside from the specific policies adopted by a future Obama administration – will be yet another imperial presidency. (And, by the way, those who expect Congress to suddenly become the player it hasn't been, wielding power long ceded, are as likely to be disappointed as those who expect a Hillary Clinton State Department renaissance under the budgetary shadow of the Pentagon.)

On January 20th, Barack Obama will be more prepared than any president in recent history to move in and, as everyone now likes to write, "hit the ground running." But that ground -- the bloated executive and the vast national security apparatus that goes with it (as well as the U.S. military garrisons that dot the planet), all further engorged by George W., Dick, and pals -- is anything but fertile when it comes to "change."

Maybe if the imperial presidency and the national security state worked, none of this would matter. But how can they, given the superlatives that apply to them? They're oversized, over-muscled, overweight, overly expensive, overly powerful, and overly intrusive.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Oklahoma Declares Sovereignty

Moriji — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 10:44:58 GMT

This fucking kills me. It just keeps getting better. Now that the far right has pretty much given up on overturning the election results, they are turning towards secession. lol Which like Seal has said before, is not such a bad thing. Whatever new country emerges from the red states in the heartland would instantly turn into a third world country. Ah, one can only hope...

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Oklahoma Declares Sovereignty.
STATE OF OKLAHOMA
2nd Session of the 51st Legislature (2008)
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 1089

A Joint Resolution claiming sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States over certain powers; serving notice to
The federal government to cease and desist certain mandates; and
Directing distribution.

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Reads as follows:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
Prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively,
Or to the people."; and

WHEREAS, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as
Being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States
And no more; and

WHEREAS, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that
The federal government was created by the states specifically to be an
Agent of the states; and

WHEREAS, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents
Of the federal government; and

WHEREAS, many federal mandates are directly in violation of the Tenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, the United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United
States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that Congress may not simply commandeer
The legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS, a number of proposals from previous administrations and some
Now pending from the present administration and from Congress may
Further violate the Constitution of the United States.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND THE
SENATE OF THE 2ND SESSION OF THE 51ST OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE:

THAT the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not
Otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the
Constitution of the United States.

THAT this serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our
Agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are
Beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

THAT a copy of this resolution be distributed to the President of the
United States, the President of the United States Senate, the Speaker of
The United States House of Representatives, the Speaker of the House and
The President of the Senate of each state's legislature of the United
States of America, and each member of the Oklahoma Congressional Delegation.

-----

Comment by GIT-R-DONE! 13 hours ago
Thanks. I know I saw this last night - thought I had saved it ... not. Have been scouring the site I was on last night looking for it, finally did. You must have had a copy all along. I could have saved my time. :-) Way to go! Thanks for posting it.

Are anyother States doing this other than AZ & OK?

Comment by Stand4America 11 hours ago
I've heard Tennessee is working on it and there's been interest from other states but I haven't heard anything definative.

Comment by Kurtis 9 hours ago
Becuase I am from a Democrate state, and not familiar enough with constitutional law, can some one explain this in a little more plain english? Also just what this would mean for the State of OK?

thanks

Comment by TheEarthisNotFlat 9 hours ago
so are they seceding in essence?

Comment by GIT-R-DONE! 6 hours ago
I don't think they are seceding (yet). They are just drawing the line to prevent the feds from imposing federal laws on them (I think). Like the Marriage laws, maybe even abortion laws or whatever. That's my take on it anyway.

Comment by Clay Thomas 5 hours ago
This news gives me hope for the future of this country,, ALL states should follow Oklahoma's lead here and put the feds in their place. I am strongly FOR states rights, as the founders intended. This may be the only way now to stop the tide of socialism that is about to engulf our country.

Comment by Carol 38 minutes ago
This is incredible. I never knew this could be done. Socialism must be stopped and this may be the perfect tool.

http://www.gop-revolution.com/profiles/blogs/oklahoma-declares-sovereignty

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

From hybrids to SUVs, unsold cars pile up

Moriji — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 21:52:20 GMT

My city, Long Beach, is the largest port in the United States. All the stuff from China and Japan comes through here, including the foreign cars. From here, it gets delivered all across the nation on trucks.

But because of the economic downturn, all these goodies are just collecting dust at the port. The good news is the price of these cars should go down soon, so hopefully I'll be able to afford a Prius. That is, after I'm able to find a job first...

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LONG BEACH, California (Reuters) – From pricey luxury sedans to popular hybrid cars, automobiles made overseas are stacking up at ports and parking lots around the United States as supplies far outstrip demand amid the nation's worst auto market in more than 25 years.

At the Long Beach port near Los Angeles, Toyota Motor Corp vehicles including Prius hybrids, FJ Cruiser sport utility vehicles and Lexus IS 250 luxury sedans are being stored on a vast construction site that will one day be a new container terminal.

The site became a gigantic parking lot when Toyota and Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz asked the port for space to store thousands of vehicles that dealerships have not been able to take on due to sluggish sales.

"It's unusual that they would be here longer than a few days, but that's the situation now," said Art Wong, a spokesman for the Port of Long Beach. "They can't move it through their pipeline fast enough so they are asking for additional space while they keep their vehicles here more than a few days, and in some cases more than a few weeks."

The port has not counted how many additional cars were being stored, but Wong said Toyota has leased an additional 23 acres of space while Mercedes-Benz has leased about 20 more acres.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd, which brings its cars in through the neighboring Los Angeles port, had been talking to Long Beach about leasing space, Wong said, though that arrangement fell through.

A Port of Los Angeles spokeswoman, Theresa Adams-Lopez, said Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics (WWL), which operates the terminal that brings in Nissan's vehicles, had shifted vehicle storage to another state.

Nissan spokeswoman Katherine Zachary said the company last increased its space at the Port of Los Angeles in February.

"As a normal course of business, we've got cars moving out of there all the time to various points across the country," Zachary said in an e-mail.

WWL, which is based in Norway, would not comment on specific customers, but said auto inventories were building up across the United States.

"We are seeing cargo buildup at ports of entry on both coasts as well as at other inventory points such as factories and rail yards and dealerships," Christopher Connor, the head of WWL's business in the Americas, said in a statement.

Other ports are also seeing a buildup of cars, though not all of them are leasing large tracts of land to automakers. The San Diego port, which brings in Honda Motor Co, Volkswagen AG and Mitsubishi Corp vehicles, has about 14,000 cars on its property. That's about 2,000 more vehicles than usual, according to spokesman John Gilmore, who said the additional cars belong to a range of manufacturers.

COLLAPSING DEMAND

Global automakers have been sideswiped by the collapsing demand for new cars and trucks. A market slowdown that began in the United States has spread to Europe and Asia.

Detroit's embattled automakers have been pushed to the brink of failure by the downturn and are asking the U.S. Congress for a $34 billion rescue package.

But the sharp decline in sales in October and November blindsided even the industry's better-performing manufacturers like Toyota and Honda.

Toyota said on Friday that it was cutting North American output by idling factories that produce vehicles such as the Camry and Corolla, the Japanese automakers' top-selling cars.

Toyota spokesman Mike Goss said inventory had been pushed to "unacceptably high" levels that would take 80 to 90 days of sales to clear.

That is still less than the 115-day supply of inventory on average for General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co and Chrysler LLC, but it is double Toyota's inventory levels of just a year earlier.

The surge in inventories has been a small blessing to some in the industry. Automobile processors, who wash, repair and accessorize imported cars before they head to dealerships, said revenue from storing cars is helping offset the market's overall sluggishness.

MidTexas International Center Inc, whose Midlothian, Texas, facility processes vehicles for Kia Motors Corp, Mazda Motor Corp and Toyota's Lexus, expects to break even this year despite the dismal auto market because automakers are paying for cars to sit on its lots for longer.

"The inflow of vehicles is a lot greater than the outflow," MidTexas President Randy Denton said. "That helps to offset the loss of income from the vehicles that we're not processing."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081207/us_nm/us_autos_ports

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Huckabee and Palin top early 2012 list

Moriji — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 20:47:29 GMT

Barack Obama is still more than six weeks from White House, and the next Iowa caucuses are more than three years away — so naturally, it’s time to start talking 2012, as a new national poll suggests that Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee top the list of potential 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey out Friday that serves as an early measure of potential support for the next GOP presidential nomination, Huckabee tops the list. Thirty-four percent of Republicans and independent voters who lean towards the GOP say they are very likely to support the former Arkansas governor if he were to become their party’s nominee in 2012. Huckabee surprised many by winning this year's Republican caucuses in Iowa and seven other contests before ending his run in March.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's running mate in this year's election, draws nearly as much support: 32 percent of those polled said they would get behind a Palin nomination. And with the survey's sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 points, Palin and Huckabee are statistically tied.

The survey is an early measure of possible support, not a horse race snapshot.

“It might come as a surprise to some that Palin does better than Huckabee among GOP men but that Huckabee beats Palin among Republican women,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Palin's strength is also concentrated among older Republicans, but Huckabee may have a slight edge among conservative Republicans."

Among voters who consider themselves born again or evangelical, Huckabee draws more support than Palin, with a 9 point edge. Meanwhile, Palin holds a 7-point advantage among non-born again or evangelical voters.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is in third place in the poll, with 28 percent of those questioned saying they are very likely to suport him as the GOP nominee in 2012.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich draws roughly the same level of support as Romney, at 27 percent. In 2007, Gingrich flirted with making a run for the Republican presidential nomination, but decided against jumping into the race.

Twenty-three percent of those polled say they would be very likely to support Rudy Giuliani if he decides to run again. The former New York City mayor was the national frontrunner in many polls in late 2007, before performing poorly in the early primaries and caucuses. He dropped out of the race for the White House in late January.

Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who's considered a rising star in the GOP, draws support from 19 percent of those surveyed, and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist 7 percent.

“Jindal and Crist are relative unknowns. The fact that they get much less support than the others is likely a function of name recognition rather than a true measure of their potential base of support," says Holland.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll was conducted Monday and Tuesday, with 460 Republicans and independent voters who lean Republican questioned by telephone.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/12/05/huckabee-and-palin-top-early-2012-list/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Seattle Teen Girl Cheerleaders Nude Photos, Parents Sue?!

Moriji — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 18:45:18 GMT

I first came across this story on CNN, but they all seem to come at it from the same angle. And I must admit, I don't get it.

First off, what does naked pictures have to do with being a cheerleader? There is still this old-fashion idea where they are supposed to be looked at and not touched, fantasized about with their clothes on but not naked, occasionally you may see their panties, but never full frontal nudity. Sorry guys, but that idea is so out of date. Kids begin to have sex in high school, and it's only natural that they start playing around with sexuality.

On the CNN segment, the anchorman started freaking out, saying if teen girls are doing this, what else are they capable of? What the hell? Then a caller calls in and talks about how kids are murdering kids. Since when is nude pictures a crime?

I'm telling you, this fucking country has always had a problem with sexual mores and I don't get it. It's just sex, okay? Get over it.

Most likely the girls didn't want their photos being sent to everyone, but that's a separate issue. They should get better boyfriends. I'm not going to send naked pictures of my girlfriend to my friends. No fucking way. It's for my eyes only.

But there is nothing morally wrong with taking naked pictures of yourself and sending it to your boyfriend. Or is it because they are young? Well hell, I would like to know when those who are complaining about this lost their virginity. Something tells me it was in high school. "Oh, but we weren't as promiscuous as the kids today." Yeah, right. It's the same thing. Pussy, tits, penis, butts...

Argh, this always get me. I'm all pissed off now...

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Cheerleaders Booted after Naked Pix - The parents of two teenage girls are suing the Northshore School District after nude photos of their daughters sparked their suspension.

The two minor cheerleaders were suspended from the high school's cheerleading squad after school officials discovered nude photos of the girls were circulating via text messages.

According to a report, the parents of the two un-identified minors are not happy with the school's decision to suspend their daughters, claiming the district is violating the girls' right to "due process".

The families also allege that officials at the school had no legitimate reason for sharing the nude photos of their daughters with other staff members and that they were negligent in filing a report with police.

The parents' attorney Matthew King says that if the girls are going to be punished for the text messages, any other student who forwarded and/or viewed the nude photos should also face suspension.

King explains: "We're not technically challenging the sanctions as being too strict, we're saying they weren't evenly enforced across the school."

"There should have been some punishment meted out to those who were in possession of the photos. It seems like the girls are getting the brunt of it."

http://www.postchronicle.com/news/original/article_212191093.shtml

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

They killed their neighbors: genocide's foot soldiers

Moriji — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:13:16 GMT

Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Slobodan Milosevic. They are household names, infamous for masterminding genocide. But who were the foot soldiers who did the dirty work?

In many cases they were equally notorious in their communities because they were the friends, neighbors and co-workers of those they raped, slaughtered and buried alive.

Nusreta Sivac watched ordinary people become killers while imprisoned in a concentration camp in Bosnia.

She saw prisoners beaten beyond recognition and watched camp guards force a Muslim prisoner to rape a Muslim woman in front of everyone.

She was shocked to see people she knew running the camp. "They acted as if they had never seen me before," she said. "It was difficult for me to understand how people could turn into beasts overnight." Video Watch as Nusreta tells her story »

While some perpetrators participate unwillingly -- they are forced to kill or face death themselves -- many ordinary people are manipulated into participating in the killing machine voluntarily.

Researchers say most perpetrators of genocide were not destined for murder and had never killed before.

"You don't have to be mentally ill or even innately evil or criminal. You can be ordinary, no better or worse than you or me, and commit killing or genocide," said Harvard psychiatrist Robert Lifton, who has studied Nazi doctors.

"The truth is that we all have the possibility for genocidal behavior."

Experts have reached a troubling conclusion: It was actually very easy for the architects of genocide to find more than enough ordinary people to do the killing.

Genocide is often the result of a "perfect storm." A country reeling from political and economic turmoil, a fanatical leader promising to make things better and a vulnerable population targeted for blame -- all combine in a blueprint for mass murder.

Architects of genocide use the same tools to execute their plan.

Group identity

Millions have been killed for being religious, ethnic or simply educated. Group identity is one of the foundations of genocide. This allegiance makes it easier for extremist leaders to stoke age-old animosities between groups.

"We all divide the world into 'us' and 'them,' " said psychologist Ervin Staub, author of "The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence."

"Some people are like 'us' because of nationality, religion, race, etc. Those that are not like 'us' are 'them.' "

"Group identity intensifies during difficult times," Staub said.

Jean-Bosco Bizimana, a Rwandan Hutu, slaughtered his Tutsi neighbors 14 years ago. Leaders of the genocide exploited the history of hatred between the Hutus and Tutsis to pit them against each other. But before the genocide, the two groups had overcome their hostility to live peacefully together.

"We were manipulated," Bizimana said. "The government pushed us to kill. Before that, we intermarried, we helped each other in daily life and we shared everything. We ourselves can't even believe what happened."

Bizimana's wife said her husband, "would go around with the mob, and to show them he was part of it, he would kill."

Perpetrators don't want to be seen as weak, and in a mob mentality, individual guilt seems to disappear.

"People will do almost anything in a group and will do anything not to be rejected," said psychologist Philip Zimbardo, a professor emeritus at Stanford and famous for his 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which divided student volunteers into "prisoners" and "guards" and showed how easily people could be induced to commit sadistic acts.

"They give up a sense of personal accountability and diffuse responsibility to the leader."

Propaganda and dehumanization

Genocidal regimes use propaganda to incite hatred. During the genocide in Bosnia, for example, a fictitious news report said Muslims were feeding Serb children to animals at the Sarajevo zoo.

When people feel threatened and endangered, they can be led to kill. "Most genocides are shaped on [a perceived need for] self-defense," said Christopher Browning, a University of North Carolina history professor who studied a Nazi police battalion.

Bizimana said Rwandan government radio broadcasts led him to kill. "When instructions come from the government, we believed it was the right thing to do," he said.

"People tend to believe the world is a just place," psychologist Staub said. So the targeted group "is seen as though they did something to deserve the suffering."

The propaganda machine portrays the victim group as less than human. In Rwanda, the Hutus called their Tutsi neighbors 'cockroaches.' In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge said their victims were "worms." To the Nazis, Jews were "vermin."

Dehumanization is the most powerful psychological tool used in all mass murder and genocides, Zimbardo said. "Dehumanization blurs your vision. You look at these people and you do not see them as human."

Instead, the enemy is treated as a germ -- as something to eradicate, or else face the threat of infection.

"Purification is at the heart of genocide," said Harvard's Lifton. "In that purification ... [the killers] are healing."

Recently discovered photos show Nazi officers at a retreat near Auschwitz relaxing as though they are taking a break from a routine job, not an extermination factory. "In order to carry out the function of killing, one must instill in that environment a sense of ordinariness," said Lifton.

In the end, the masterminds of genocide see their visions play out: Foot soldiers carry out the mission and entire populations are displaced or killed.

Perpetrators and victims don't realize what they're involved in until it's too late, said Ben Kiernan, director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University.

"It's a conspiracy, a silent secret plan to set up a situation whereby the victims, who are unsuspecting, are brought into a conflict with a large number of people, many of whom are also unsuspecting," Kiernan said.

Looking back at their crimes, some perpetrators are now sorry for their actions, including Bizimana. "What we did to them in the past was very bad," he said. "Deep in my heart, I regret it."

Bizimana has since reconciled with his surviving Tutsi neighbors, and is trying to build unity in his country.

"What happened," he vows, "will never happen again."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/11/25/sbm.perpetrators/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Man jailed for having sex with a horse

Moriji — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 22:33:16 GMT

Just when I thought I had heard it all...

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A man has been jailed for three years after being caught having sex with a horse.

Leeroy Le Gallais, 46, broke into the animal's stable on two separate occasions to perform sex acts on the terrified animal.

During his first attack he used a bucket to stand behind the horse, called Calico, but was caught after leaving his underwear at the scene.

He was given a three-year probation order, but just months later returned to have sex with the same horse at the Castel Stable in Guernsey.

On the night of the second attack, on April 25 this year, Calico's owner Michael Wortley checked on the animal in his stable at 6.30pm.

The 20-year-old bay gelding was covered with a blanket but when Mr Wortley returned in the morning the blanket was on the floor.

A mounting stool that was left outside the stable had been taken inside and police immediately suspected Le Gallais was responsible.

After the second attack Calico was seen 'box walking', or moving sideways, a common sign of stress.

Le Gallais, of St Peter Port, Guernsey, was jailed for three years at Guernsey's Royal Court after admitting having sex with the animal.

He told the court: "I had a few beers, I went to the stable and interfered with the horse."

Le Gallais said his second attack came after he ate in a restaurant and drank a few glasses of red wine before visiting a bar.

He had intended to go home but ended up at the stable where he 'played around' with the horse.

Le Gallais initially denied any knowledge of the matter but when told by police that forensic samples had been taken he admitted going to the stable.

He told the court: "Maybe I had a little bit of an urge or something. I mean, like a sexual, a sexual thing, I suppose you could call it that."

Defending, advocate Sara Mallett said he had co-operated with police and he had pleaded guilty to the offence at the first opportunity.

She said Le Gallais had learning difficulties and his IQ was 'very low' and his sexual desires could have stemmed from incidents in his childhood.

His first attack came in October 2007 when he sneaked into the stable and used an up-turned water bucket as a stool.

Calico's owner found him in a "stressed" state with his back rug disturbed and a discarded pair of underpants nearby.

Because it was unclear if he had sex with the animal during the first incident, Le Gallais was found guilty of two charges of attempting a sexual act with a horse.

At his first trial, assistant-magistrate Phillip Robey said: "The offence will be a repugnant one to all right-thinking people."

The court heard Le Gallais had a history of sexual offending including indecent exposure to girls and inciting an 11-year-old to commit an act of gross indecency.

Sentencing him to three years, Judge Russell Finch, said Le Gallais was not of previous good character and the probation order breach was an aggravating factor.

A five-year probation period was also imposed from the time of his release.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3543414/Man-jailed-for-having-sex-with-a-horse.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Barack and Michelle: A more perfect union?

Moriji — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 04:38:45 GMT

First Couple-to-be could be relationship role models for nation, experts say

It started with the fist bump seen ’round the world. Soon there were stories of rousing family Scrabble battles and date nights, in spite of election mayhem. Then President-elect Barack Obama referred to his wife Michelle as “the love of my life” during his election night victory speech, embracing her tightly and kissing her afterwards, while millions of people worldwide watched.

“They took a moment to face each other, to kiss and hold one another, regardless of the magnitude and spectacle of the night,” said Camille Washington, a Bay Area blogger on Soulbounce.com, a music and culture site. “That says a lot.”

The Obamas represent a welcome change as an openly affectionate and romantic couple for many Americans. Some experts say that the soon-to-be first couple embody the ideal healthy relationship, and that they can stir up love around the country. The New York Daily News even predicted a baby boom attributed to election night friskiness inspired by the Obamas.

“Michelle and Barack are so obviously in love it's actually helping me to believe in love again,” Washington, 25, wrote on her blog.

Icons of love

For African-Americans, the image of a powerful black couple in love is particularly meaningful. In the 2005 census, 51 percent of American women reported they were living without a spouse. Among African-Americans, this number rose to 70 percent.

“With such a high percentage of black people unmarried, everyone is looking for images of black love,” said Michael Perry, 47, a librarian at Harlem’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. “[The Obamas] personify that. It makes people say, ‘Wow, we want to be like them.’”

Washington, who is black, told TODAYshow.com that she and her friends look up to the couple, saying “they want a love like that someday,” and added that she thinks the Obamas might inspire songwriters to pen soulful, emotional lyrics.

But some say the Obamas, who have been married for 16 years, aren’t the exception, and it’s the media that has created a one-dimensional caricature of African-American relationships.

“There are many types of families of African descent, and many families that are like the Obamas – two professional parents with children,” said M. Belinda Tucker, a social psychologist and professor at the University of Los Angeles who has done significant research on black families and relationships. “But the predominant image we see is of the single-mother household. The [president-elect] and his wife represent a counter-image.”

But the effect of the couple’s love for each other transcends the black community, and according to relationship expert Kathlyn Hendricks, author of several books including “Conscious Loving” and “Lasting Love,” Americans should see the couple as a role model for a healthy relationship.

“Not only does [Barack Obama] love his wife, he respects her,” said Hendricks. “The model of harmony, shared humor and easy communication that the Obamas reveal really is a new model — if ordinary citizens practiced this each day, our world would transform very quickly in positive directions.”

Presidential PDA

In general, the relationship between the American president and his wife has always been an important one, and does have an impact on the public, said NBC News presidential historian Michael Beschloss.

“We know that a person’s partner [choice] is one of the biggest clues to what that person is all about,” he said.

Beschloss said that in the past, how a political figure interacted with his or her spouse didn’t matter as much, and as with the Kennedys, the media often looked the other way when it came to philandering.

“Presidents are so intensely covered, we know so much about their personal lives that it’s inevitable that the public is going to know a lot about, and make judgments on, what happens between political wives and husbands,” he said. “John and Jackie Kennedy almost never held hands or showed affection in public — nowadays, people would think something was wrong.”

Former president Richard Nixon and his wife Patricia almost never showed affection to each other in public, either. Beschloss pointed out that Nixon was criticized for not thanking her enough in his speeches, marking a turning point in how presidential relationships were seen by the American public. Such a misstep today, he said, would be a major faux pas.

The Clintons were the first presidential couple to present a more egalitarian working relationship, but public perception of them quickly eroded due to scandal after scandal involving former President Bill Clinton's infidelity. In contrast, the Bushes have represented a more "traditional" relationship model — with first lady Laura Bush standing behind her husband, but maintaining a seemingly loving relationship.

The Obamas have the best of both worlds, said Gil Troy, professor of history at McGill University and author of “Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the Clintons.”

“The Obama marriage is a modern partnership between equals; they are a working couple just like the Clintons," he said. "But, unlike the Clintons — and more like the Bushes — the Obamas appear to be a solid couple, devoted to each other, with no fidelity questions hovering overhead.”

For love or politics?

But could the affection and appreciation between the Obamas be scripted for political gain? Maybe, but those close to the couple say the feelings are real.

“Their friends have observed that they have a very positive relationship,” said Liza Mundy, author of “Michelle: A Biography.” “One of Barack’s friends pointed out how effusive he is in his praise of Michelle — he knows how much his career has demanded of her, and he’s very appreciative of that.”

Based on their body language, relationship expert Hendricks also says that the Obamas’ interaction is genuine.

“The Obamas’ body language, expressions and gestures all match. That's an indication of harmony rather than conflict,” she said. “When Michelle came out on election evening, she and Barack spoke and touched as if they were alone. Then they turned to the audience. If they can communicate that way in public in front of hundreds of thousands of people, their bond is very solid and real.”

Essence magazine editor Mikki Taylor saw this genuine quality in the couple as well when she interviewed the Obamas in their Chicago home for the September issue. “They talk to one another – they sit at the table and discuss what happened at school, what happened with the campaign,” she observed. “They were warm, loving and engaging.”

Looking forward

The couple, who have weathered Barack Obama’s ascent from the state legislature to the Senate and the long presidential campaign, now face life in the White House, with kids and possible puppy in tow. In order to keep their relationship strong, Hendricks said, Barack Obama may have to take breaks from leading the world to make time for his leading lady.

“Michelle and Barack [should] continue to schedule time to enjoy their private relationship,” she advised. “Times of listening to each other's feelings, dreams, daily experiences, will continue to keep them balanced and refreshed as Barack, with Michelle's counsel, faces the enormous challenges he's inherited.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27683815/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Let the shopping begin

Moriji — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 19:10:44 GMT

Okay folks, time to get off your asses and head to town. It's shopping time! Lots of specials! Gotta do your part to get our country out of the recession! We also got two wars going on...

And that means you too, Seal. So stop chopping all that wood and get off that mountain of yours and go to the nearest mall...

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

Ann Coulter's Jaw Wired Shut

Moriji — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:09:40 GMT

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!! My poor Ann!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-----

Ann Coulter may be completely silenced, at least for a while.

If the New York Post's Page Six report is true, Coulter broke her jaw and her mouth is wired shut:

WE HEAR...THAT although we didn't think it would be possible to silence Ann Coulter, the leggy reaction- ary broke her jaw and the mouth that roared has been wired shut...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/25/ann-coulters-jaw-wired-sh_n_146248.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 21 replies

Who is Sarah Josepha Hale?

Moriji — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 20:46:49 GMT

Sarah Josepha Hale is credited for pushing to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. She was the Martha Stewart of her day, writing for various women magazines. She was a Unionist and advocated making Thanksgiving a national holiday in order to unite the country during the Civil War. Interestingly, the South refused to recognize it for a long time because it was looked on as a Yankee holiday.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Jobless claims higher than expected

Moriji — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:35:45 GMT

One of them is me...

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Number of Americans filing for unemployment insurance reaches 481,000, those continuing to receive benefits at 25-year high.

The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment insurance last week was higher than economists expected, and the number continuing to collect benefits shot to a 25-year high.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday that initial filings for state jobless benefits reached 481,000 for the week ended Nov. 1.

While that was down 4,000 from the revised 485,000 reported the week before, it was above the 476,000 claims expected by economists surveyed by Briefing.com. The prior week was revised up by 1,000 to 479,000.

The report shows the number of Americans continuing to collect unemployment benefits surged to 3,843,000, the highest level since 1983. The number increased by 122,000 for the week ended Oct .18, the most current data available. A year ago, the number stood at 2.59 million.

The 25-year high level of continuing claims outweighs the slight drop in initial jobless claims, according to Bob Brusca, economist at FAO Economics.

"It's a problem," he said. "The labor market is not looking good at all. The small back off, that's not great...initial claims have fulfilled any expectation you have of them for a normal or severe recession."

The four-week moving average of unemployment claims, used to smooth fluctuations in the data, remained unchanged at 477,000 from the previous week. A reading above 400,000 has been present during the past two recessions. A year ago, the four-week moving average was 324,000.

Last month, nearly 7,500 jobless claims were attributed to the effects of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav, but no such claims were reported this week.

The number of jobless claims spiked in late September to 499,000, the highest level recorded since the 517,000 claims filed in wake of Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Job cuts

On Wednesday, a private outplacement firm reported that last month had the highest number of pink slips handed out since January 2004. The job cut announcements soared to 112,884, up 19% from September's 95,094 cuts, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

Separately, payroll manager ADP said the private sector lost a seasonally adjusted 157,000 jobs last month - more than six times September's decrease and the largest drop since December 2001.

The Department of Labor's monthly unemployment report due Friday is expected to show that 200,000 jobs were lost in October and that the unemployment rate grew to 6.3% from 6.1% a month earlier.

President-elect Barack Obama has put forth a few economic stimulus proposals, which may gain bipartisan support.

Some of his ideas include temporarily exempting the unemployed from having to pay income tax on their unemployment benefits, extending unemployment benefits, spending more on infrastructure to create jobs, and temporary tax credits for businesses that create jobs in the United States.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/06/news/economy/jobless_claims/index.htm?cnn=yes

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Democracy now November 17 broadcast

Ted — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 01:11:57 GMT

was very revieling, basicly you should check it out, basicly it said that all that bail out money went to those bank CEOs who created the colapse to begin with and that these are Bushes buddies and that we have to give them what they want ( line there pockets), because this is the finishing lotting spree that bush and allies are capable of before he leaves the the white house, the same broadcast then goes on to talk about who Obama is using to advise him on Inteligence(CIA), basicly the worst of the worst that orchestrated lies, speaches that Bush and Colon Powel delivered to propel us into war, a CIA analisis delivers this information on the program, he seems like some you could trust on this matter and is in the know, works for the center for international policy, a former CIA man himself and wrote a book called"Bush League Diplomacy: how neocons are putting the world at risk". Funny to think there are or were actual CIA employees who thought they were getting a job with moral parameters, but even if there were some, there is even less now , this adviser to Obama is pro- internet serrvalence and a host of other fascist shit, so atleast in the field of INTELIGENCE, it doesn't seem like Obama knows what in the hell he is doing, anyone else seen any othere comferming information in regaurds to INTELEGENCE, crasy to think this bail out what only a scam to throw us into deeper financial hell with no accountablity to those who receaved the money to fallow through with the task that were suppose to preform with the money and then not be libale to any retribution.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

U.S. power, influence will decline in future, report says

Moriji — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:48:02 GMT

Surprise, surprise...

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A government report released Thursday paints an alarming picture of an unstable future for international relations defined by waning American influence, a fragmentation of political power and intensifying struggles for increasingly scarce natural resources.

The report, "Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World," was drafted by the National Intelligence Council to better inform U.S. policymakers -- starting with the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama -- about the factors most likely to shape major international trends and conflicts through the year 2025.

"Although the United States is likely to remain the single most powerful actor, the United States' relative strength -- even in the military realm -- will decline and U.S. leverage will become more constrained," says the report, which is the fourth in a series from the Intelligence Council.

The report argues that the "international system -- as constructed following the second World War -- will be almost unrecognizable by 2025 owing to the rise of emerging powers, a globalizing economy, an historic transfer of relative wealth and economic power from West to East, and the growing influence of nonstate actors."

It argues that the world is in the midst of an unprecedented "transfer of global wealth and power" -- from West to East -- that is being fueled by long-term "increases in oil and commodity prices" along with a gradual shift of manufacturing and certain service industries to Asia.

And yet, while American power and influence are projected to decline, America's burdens are not.

"Despite the recent rise in anti-Americanism, the U.S. probably will continue to be seen as a much-needed regional balancer in the Middle East and Asia," the report notes.

The American military will continue to be expected to play a leading role in the war against global terrorism, though the United States as a whole will be less able to "call the shots without the support of strong partnerships."

America's biggest rival by 2025, the reports says, will be China.

"China is poised to have more impact on the world over the next 20 years than any other country," it notes.

The report projects that China will have the world's second largest economy by 2025 and will be a leading military power.

Equally problematic for U.S. policymakers is the fact that China is expected to become the world's biggest polluter and largest importer of natural resources.

China will not be alone, however, in terms of its desire to provide a consumption-oriented American lifestyle to a rapidly growing population. Countries such as India and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia, Iran and Turkey, will also likely see their power -- and desire for natural resources -- increase.

The report predicts that, the recent economic downturn aside, "unprecedented global economic growth" will mean that the demand for basic resources such as food, water and oil "will outstrip easily available supplies" over the next decade.

As an estimated 1.2 billion people are added to the world population over the next 20 years, the demand for food will rise by 50 percent, the report projects.

The lack of access to stable water supplies will also worsen due to rapid global urbanization, it says.

Further complicating matters is the fact that while demand for energy is projected to rise, oil and gas production will continue to be "concentrated in unstable areas," it says. The world in 2025 is therefore likely to find itself in the midst of a "fundamental energy transition away from oil toward natural gas, coal and other alternatives."

Such a transformation, however, may not stave off armed conflict driven largely by the struggle for scarce resources, the report says.

While conflicts are still most likely to "revolve around trade, investments, and technological innovation and acquisition," the report states that "we cannot rule out a 19th century-like scenario of arms races, territorial expansion, and military rivalries."

Terrorism is also expected to remain a major issue through 2025, though its appeal could be significantly reduced if economic and political liberalization accelerates in the Middle East.

"In the absence of employment opportunities and legal means for political expression, conditions will be ripe for disaffection, growing radicalism and possible recruitment of youths into terrorist groups," the report argues.

Adding to complications in the always-volatile Middle East will be Iran's possible acquisition of nuclear weapons, which could trigger a regional nuclear arms race, the report says. Continuing tensions between India and Pakistan also add to concerns regarding nuclear proliferation, it says.

The report highlights the need for new technological innovation to provide "viable alternatives to fossil fuels" and overcome future food and water constraints. At the moment, "all current technologies are inadequate for replacing" traditional energy sources "on the scale needed," it says.

The bottom line, the report says, is that "the next 20 years of transition to a new system are fraught with risks."

"This is a story," it says, "with no clear outcome."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/20/global.trends.report/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Bailout Detroit, voices from corporate jets

seal — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:22:50 GMT

The CEOs of the big three automakers flew to the nation's capital yesterday in private luxurious jets to make their case to Washington that the auto industry is running out of cash and needs $25 billion in taxpayer money to avoid bankruptcy.

The CEOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler may have told Congress that they will likely go out of business without a bailout yet that has not stopped them from traveling in style, not even First Class is good enough.

All three CEOs - Rick Wagoner of GM, Alan Mulally of Ford, and Robert Nardelli of Chrysler - exercised their perks Tuesday by flying in corporate jets to DC. Wagoner flew in GM's $36 million luxury aircraft to tell members of Congress that the company is burning through cash, asking for $10-12 billion for GM alone.

"We want to continue the vital role we've played for Americans for the past 100 years, but we can't do it alone," Wagoner told the Senate Banking Committee.

While Wagoner testified, his G4 private jet was parked at Dulles airport. It is just one of a fleet of luxury jets owned by GM that continues to ferry executives around the world despite the company's dire financial straits.

"This is a slap in the face of taxpayers," said Tom Schatz, President of Citizens Against Government Waste. "To come to Washington on a corporate jet, and asking for a hand out is outrageous."

Wagoner's private jet trip to Washington cost his ailing company an estimated $20,000 roundtrip. In comparison, seats on Northwest Airlines flight 2364 from Detroit to Washington were going online for $288 coach and $837 first class.

After the hearing, Wagoner declined to answer questions about his travel.

Ford CEO Mulally's corporate jet is a perk included for both he and his wife as part of his employment contract along with a $28 million salary last year. Mulally actually lives in Seattle, not Detroit. The company jet takes him home and back on weekends.

Plants Closed, Company Jets Stay

Mulally made his case Tuesday before the committee saying he's cut expenses, laid-off workers and closed 17 plants.

"We have also reduced our work force by 51,000 employees in the past three years," Mulally said.

Yet Ford continues to operate a fleet of eight private jets for its executives. Just Tuesday, one jet was taking Ford brass to Los Angeles, another on a trip to Nebraska, and of course Mulally needed to fly to Washington to testify. He did not address questions following the hearing.

"Now's not the time to do that sort of thing," said John McElroy of the television program "Autoline Detroit."

"Now's the time to be humble and show that you're sharing equally in the sacrifice," McElroy said.

GM and Ford say that it is a corporate decision to have their CEOs fly on private jets and that is non-negotiable, even as the companies say they are running out of cash.

Private jet travel is perhaps the greatest perk of all for CEOs, who say it allows them to travel more efficiently and safely, even in a recession.

AIG, despite the $150 billion bailout, still operates a fleet of corporate jets. The company says it has put two out of its seven jets up for sale and is reviewing the use of others. Though there are no such plans by GM or Ford.

"It appears that the senior management of the automakers simply don't get it," said Schatz.

abcnews.go.com

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Senate GOP in big funk

Moriji — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:11:41 GMT

This makes me so sad... *sniff* *sniff*

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A day after losing Ted Stevens’ seat, along with their best hope for getting Joe Lieberman to cross over, Senate GOP leaders preached party unity as the key to surviving the Obama years.

If that doesn’t work, there’s always psychotherapy.

Down to 42 seats with two still at risk, Senate Republicans are in a deep funk. Some are in denial. Some want a return to conservative principles. Some want to cut deals. Some want more filibusters.

Others want to jump out a window — but they’re afraid they’d screw that up, too.

“We probably wouldn’t die,” a Republican Senate aide joked Wednesday. “We’d just lie there, hurt and suffering, which is not too much different from where we are now.”

Two years ago, the Republicans held a 55-45 majority. They’re down 13 seats since then, with a too-close-to-call race in Minnesota and a runoff in Georgia still to come.

“The feeling I get is that we’re not ready yet to discuss with ourselves what happened,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, one of the few Republicans to win an easy reelection this year. “I think people are kind of still a bit stunned and are not prepared to have thought it through sufficiently.”

“We think the whole problem is George Bush and not us, and we’re part of the problem,” added Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

Although Republicans aren’t exactly anxious to align themselves with the outgoing president, they’re feeling so nostalgic for the power they once had that they’ve scheduled their committee organizing meetings for mid-December — an excuse to be back in town for Bush’s final White House holiday party.

John McCain — the Republican senator who had hoped to be hosting those parties for the next four years — returned to the Senate this week. He said Tuesday that he had nothing to say to the press. When reporters asked him for a comment on Wednesday, he said “No, no, no!” and kept walking.

The Republicans’ only glimmer of good news: When Stevens — the longest-serving Republican in Senate history — conceded his Alaska race to Democrat Mark Begich on Wednesday, he spared them the unpleasant task of having to expel him from their caucus.

That there is no simple solution for what ails the party is clear from the number of solutions offered to fix it. Ask a room of Senate Republicans what’s next for their diminished and deflated minority, and you’ll get a different answer from each of them.

During a closed-door Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday, DeMint offered proposals to impose term limits on the Republican leader and to restrict how long members can serve on the Appropriations Committee. The resolutions were soundly defeated, but not without bitter exchanges among the Republicans present for the meeting.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida said the meeting was “terrible” and “caused consternation” among his colleagues because of the dispute over DeMint’s proposals.

GOP senators met behind closed doors again on Wednesday and did a quick review of their races, with the leadership and defeated incumbents blaming Republican losses on the economic downturn and the president’s call for a $700 billion economic rescue plan.

But even this session brought a clash between GOP lawmakers, as Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana and Kit Bond of Missouri fought over whether Republicans should support a bailout of the auto industry, with Bond supporting it and Vitter opposed.

“Sometimes people don’t like change, but after two disastrous elections, we need it,” DeMint said. “We need to be who we say we are. The most important thing for the party is to mean something again.”

Retiring Sen. John Warner of Virginia — who will be succeeded next year by a Democrat, former Gov. Mark Warner — tried to lighten the mood Wednesday with some gallows humor.

Warner told of how he had gone to a straw poll in Virginia with McCain. Warner made a strong pitch for McCain at the event and figured he’d seal the deal by offering to pay for lunch for the whole crowd. When the voting was over, Texas Rep. Ron Paul had won.

“It was a really funny moment, but still kind of sad because it was true,” noted one senator.

So far, GOP leaders have remained upbeat. They point out that after the 2004 elections, Republicans held the White House and picked up seats in the House and Senate.

The leadership points to this as proof it can be done, and done quickly.

“You play the hand you’re dealt,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, who is now vice chairman of the Republican Conference. “We’re not happy to be where we are, but we are where we are. Now you have to determine how you get back on top.”

Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, the outgoing NRSC chairman, said victories in the Georgia runoff and Minnesota recount, which Sen. Norm Coleman leads by 215 votes over Democratic challenger Al Franken, could help ease the pain by keeping Democrats from reaching a 60-vote, filibuster-resistant majority.

“Obviously, we were very disappointed by [the] Election Night results. Believe me, we put our heart and soul into this last two years,” Ensign said. Georgia and Minnesota “are absolutely the two that we feel like we have to hold onto to basically take away a good feeling from this cycle.”

But first, the Republicans will have to say goodbye to their own. On Wednesday night, just off the Senate floor, Republicans planned to gather in tribute to their retiring and defeated colleagues.

It’s a longer-than-usual list this year, and it includes Stevens, Warner, Pete V. Domenici, Elizabeth Dole, Wayne Allard, Gordon Smith, John Sununu, Larry Craig and Chuck Hagel.

“This causes a lot of pain,” said Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson. “There are a lot of good people there. We’re going to miss them all.”

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15812.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Dow below 8,000 - 1st time since '03

Moriji — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:40:01 GMT

And it keeps falling. So what do you guys think, should we save the auto industry?

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Stocks fell hard on Wednesday as a selloff gained momentum near the close and the major indexes tumbled to 5-1/2 year lows.

The Dow closed below 8,000 for the first time since March 2003 as investor confidence dried up amid ongoing worries about the economy and the future of the auto industry.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) shed more than 400 points to close down about 5%, according to early tallies. All 30 Dow components ended lower.

The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index slid 6% to its lowest level since March of 2003. And the Nasdaq composite (COMP) lost 6.5% to settle at its lowest point since April 2003.

The market is focused on the implications of a possible bankruptcy in the automotive industry, said Todd Morgan, senior managing director of Bel Air Investment Advisors, a Los Angeles-based firm with nearly $6 billion in assets under management.

"The crisis of confidence is back on the front page," said Morgan. "You need some positive catalyst, something, to change the attitude of investors [and] the auto debate is hurting confidence."

Shares of General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) fell 10% while Ford's (F, Fortune 500) stock tumbled 25% as a second day of hearings by the chief executives of Detroit's Big Three wound up.

Meanwhile, weak readings on the nation's housing market and a sharp decline in consumer prices reflected the challenges facing the economy and drove down shares of financial services firms.

Shares of banking giant Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) were down 23% after hitting a session low below $7. Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) fell 14% and JP Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) was down about 12%.

Banks often bear the brunt of downbeat economic data as investors fear they will be forced to take more losses on the illiquid assets besmirching their balance sheets.

Also on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve released minuets from it's most recent meeting that showed the central bank has significantly lowered its outlook for economic activity this year and next. It also signaled that more interest rate cuts may be needed to prevent further damage to the battered economy.

Wall Street managed to hold gains Tuesday, ending in positive territory for only the second time in 10 trading days, after dropping within a few points of 2003 levels during the session.

Big Three: Top executives from General Motors, Ford and Chrysler returned Wednesday to Capitol Hill for a second day of hearings before the Senate Banking Committee.

The executives say they urgently need "bridge loans" from the government to keep their companies afloat. Automakers have reported huge quarterly losses as they burn through cash amid dwindling sales and tight credit.

An auto industry bankruptcy would be a "huge negative for the economy," said Abigail Doolittle, a portfolio manager at Johnson Illington Advisors in New York. It would add to already rising unemployment, making it harder for the economy to recover, she said.

Congressional Democrats have supported using some of the $700 billion bailout fund to rescue the automakers. But Republicans have expressed doubts that such an approach will work.

Critics of government intervention in the auto industry say it would only postpone the inevitable demise of companies that have failed to remain competitive.

Grim readings: Economic data cast a pall over the market, highlighting anemic consumer spending trends and ongoing weakness in the housing market.

The Labor Department's Consumer Price Index, a key inflation reading, fell 1% in October, outpacing the 0.8% decline a consensus of economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast.

The closely watched core CPI, which removes volatile food and energy prices, fell 0.1%. Economists had expected a 0.1% rise after a 0.1% jump in September.

"This report clearly reflects the crunch in discretionary consumers' spending, which is likely to persist for the foreseeable future," said Ian Shepherdson, economist at High Frequency Economics, in a research note.

Separately, the Commerce Department reported record declines in both housing starts and building permits, darkening the outlook for new home construction.

Housing starts reached an annual rate of 791,000 in October, the lowest level on record. The rate was down 4.5% from the revised reading of 828,000 in September.

Building permits fell 12% to an annual rate of 708,000 in the month, breaking the previous low of 709,000 in March 1975. The annual rate for September was a revised 805,000.

Building permits were expected to fall to an annual rate of 772,000 in October, according to a consensus of economist opinions from Briefing.com. The housing starts figure was in line with expectations.

Other markets: In global trading, Asian markets slid and European shares were lower in early trading.

The dollar regained ground against the euro but fell against the pound and the yen.

COMEX gold for December delivery fell $3.30 to settle at $736 an ounce.

U.S. light crude oil for December delivery fell 77 cents to settle at a 21-month low of $53.26 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It was the lowest closing price since January 22, 2007 when oil settled at $51.13 a barrel.

Gasoline prices dipped another 2.1 cents overnight to a national average of $2.047 a gallon, according to a survey of credit-card activity released Tuesday by motorist group AAA. The decline marks the 63nd consecutive day that prices have decreased. Prices have now dropped by more than half since the record high was set in July.

Bonds: Treasury prices gained, lowering the yield on the benchmark 10-year note to 3.44% from 3.52% late Tuesday. Treasury prices and yields move in opposite directions.

The yield on the 3-month Treasury bill, seen as the safest place to put money in the short term, rose to 0.11% from 0.13% Tuesday, with investors preferring to take a piddling return on their money than risk the stock market. In September, the 3-month yield reached a 68-year low around 0% as investor panic peaked.

Borrowing rates were little changed from the previous day, with the credit market continuing to stall after a month long improvement. The 3-month Libor rate fell to 2.17% from 2.22% Tuesday, while overnight Libor rose to 0.44% from 0.4%, according to Bloomberg.com. Libor is a key bank lending rate.

http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/19/markets/markets_newyork/index.htm?postversion=2008111916

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Walking in Your Footsteps

Moriji — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 01:19:57 GMT

I was just listening to this great song by The Police and I think the lyrics are just as relevant today. Maybe even more so...

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Fifty million years ago
You walked upon the planet so
Lord of all that you could see
Just a little bit like me

Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

Hey, Mr. Dinosaur
You really couldn't ask for more
You were God's favorite creature
But you didn't have a future

Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

Hey, mighty Brontosaurus
Don't you have a lesson for us
Thought your rule would always last
There were no lessons in your past

You were built three stories high
They say you would not hurt a fly
If we explode the atom bomb
Would they say that we were dumb

Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

Fifty million years ago
They walked upon the planet so
They live in a museum
It's the only place you'll see 'em

Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

They say the meek shall inherit the earth
They say the meek shall inherit the earth

Walking in your footsteps, footsteps, footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

Walking in your footsteps, footsteps, footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps
Walking in your footsteps

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State?

Moriji — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 04:26:16 GMT

Here is something Deva will like and Seal will find absolutely appalling. Personally, I'm okay with it and even suggested it earlier on. She does know world leaders on a first name basis anyway. Still, it fits in with Seal's point that this administration may be tilting too much towards Clintonism...

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There are numerous reports tonight that Hillary Clinton may be under consideration for Secretary of State in the Obama administration.

From the Washington Post:

There's increasing chatter in political circles that the Obama camp is not overly happy with the usual suspects for secretary of state these days and that the field might be expanding somewhat beyond Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.), Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and maybe former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia.

There's talk, indeed, that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) may now be under consideration for the post. Her office referred any questions to the Obama transition; Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to comment.

And NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports:

Two Obama advisers have told NBC News that Hillary Clinton is under consideration to be secretary of state. Would she be interested? Those who know Clinton say possibly. But her office says that any decisions about the transition are up to the president-elect and his team.

Clinton was seen taking a flight to Chicago today, but an adviser says it was on personal business. It is unknown whether she had any meeting or conversation with Obama while there.

According to CNN:

One source close to Hillary Clinton tells CNN that as of early yesterday, Senator Clinton had not been contacted by the transition team about a possible cabinet appointment. This same source tells CNN that Senator Clinton would not necessarily dismiss such an offer.

A spokesman for Hillary Clinton, Philippe Reines, tells CNN "Any speculation about cabinet or other administration appointments is really for President-Elect Obama's transition team to address."

On Monday night, while walking into an awards ceremony in New York, Senator Clinton was asked if she would consider taking a post in the Obama administration. She replied, "I am happy being a Senator from New York, I love this state and this city. I am looking at the long list of things I have to catch up on and do. But I want to be a good partner and I want to do everything I can to make sure his agenda is going to be successful."

And sources tell ABC News that discussions about Clinton being asked to accept the post are "very serious."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/13/hillary-clinton-secretary_n_143735.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Depression 2009: What would it look like?

Moriji — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:04:30 GMT

Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one.

OVER THE PAST few months, Americans have been hearing the word "depression" with unfamiliar and alarming regularity. The financial crisis tearing through Wall Street is routinely described as the worst since the Great Depression, and the recession into which we are sinking looks deep enough, financial commentators warn, that a few poor policy decisions could put us in a depression of our own.

It's a frightening possibility, but also in many ways an abstraction. The country has gone so long without a depression that it's hard to know what it would be like to live through one.

Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like. Open a history book and the images will be familiar: mobs at banks and lines at soup kitchens, stockbrokers in suits selling apples on the street, families piled with all their belongings into jalopies. Families scrimp on coffee and flour and sugar, rinsing off tinfoil to reuse it and re-mending their pants and dresses. A desperate government mobilizes legions of the unemployed to build bridges and airports, to blaze trails in national forests, to put on traveling plays and paint social-realist murals.

Today, however, whatever a depression would look like, that's not it. We are separated from the 1930s by decades of profound economic, technological, and political change, and a modern landscape of scarcity would reflect that.

What, then, would we see instead? And how would we even know a depression had started? It's not a topic that professional observers of the economy study much. And there's no single answer, because there's no one way a depression might unfold. But it's nonetheless an important question to consider - there's no way to make informed decisions about the present without understanding, in some detail, the worst-case scenario about the future.

By looking at what we know about how society and commerce would slow down, and how people respond, it's possible to envision what we might face. Unlike the 1930s, when food and clothing were far more expensive, today we spend much of our money on healthcare, child care, and education, and we'd see uncomfortable changes in those parts of our lives. The lines wouldn't be outside soup kitchens but at emergency rooms, and rather than itinerant farmers we could see waves of laid-off office workers leaving homes to foreclosure and heading for areas of the country where there's more work - or just a relative with a free room over the garage. Already hollowed-out manufacturing cities could be all but deserted, and suburban neighborhoods left checkerboarded, with abandoned houses next to overcrowded ones.

And above all, a depression circa 2009 might be a less visible and more isolating experience. With the diminishing price of televisions and the proliferation of channels, it's getting easier and easier to kill time alone, and free time is one thing a 21st-century depression would create in abundance. Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation's unemployed sit at home filling their days with the cheapest form of distraction available.

The odds are, most economists say, we will yet avoid a full-blown depression - the world's policy makers, they argue, have learned enough not to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s. Still, in a country that has known little but economic growth for 50 years, it matters to think about what life would look like without it.

. . .

There is, in fact, no agreed-upon definition of what a depression is. Economists are unanimous that the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn the industrial world has ever seen, and that we haven't had a depression since, but beyond that there is not a consensus. Recessions have an official definition from the National Bureau of Economic Research, but the bureau pointedly declines to define a depression.

What sets a depression apart, most economists would agree, are duration and the scale of joblessness. To be worthy of the name, a depression needs to be more than a few years long - far longer than the eight-month average of our recent recessions - and it needs to put a lot of people out of work. The Great Depression lasted a decade by some measures, and at its worst, one in four American workers was out of a job. (By comparison, unemployment now is at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent.)

In a modern depression, the swelling ranks of the unemployed would likely change the landscape of the country, uprooting people who would rather stay where they are and trapping people who want to move. In the 1930s, this took the visible form of waves of displaced tenant farmers washing into California, but it also had another, subtler effect: it froze the movement of the middle class. The suburbanization that was to define the post-World-War-II years had in fact started in the 1920s, only to be brought sharply to a halt when the economy collapsed.

Today, a depression could reverse that process altogether. In a deep and sustained downturn, home prices would likely sink further and not rise, dimming the appeal of homeownership, a large part of suburbia's draw. Renting an apartment - perhaps in a city, where commuting costs are lower - might be more tempting. And although city crime might increase, the sense of safety that attracted city-dwellers to the suburbs might suffer, too, in a downturn. Many suburban areas have already seen upticks in crime in recent years, which would only get worse as tax-poor towns spent less money on policing and public services.

"You could have a sort of desurburbanization phenomenon," suggests Michael Bernstein, a historian of the Depression and the provost of Tulane University.

The migrations kicked off by a depression wouldn't be in one direction, but a tangle of demographic crosscurrents: young families moving back to their hometowns to live with the grandparents when they can no longer afford to live on their own, parents moving in with their adult children when their postretirement fixed incomes can no longer support them. Some parts of the country, especially the Rust Belt, could see a wholesale depopulation as the last remnants of the American heavy-manufacturing base die out.

"There will be some cities like Detroit that in a real depression could just become ghost towns," says Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that declares recessions. (Frankel does not, he emphasizes, think we are headed for a depression.)

. . .

At the household level, the look of want is different today than during the last prolonged downturn. The government helps the unemployed and the poor with programs that didn't exist when the Great Depression hit - unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security for seniors. Beyond that, two of the basics of existence - food and clothing - are a lot cheaper today, thanks to industrial agriculture and overseas labor. The average middle-class man in the late 1920s, according to the writer and cultural critic Virginia Postrel, could afford just six outfits, and his wife nine - by comparison, the average woman today has seven pairs of jeans alone. So we're less likely to see one of the iconic images of the Great Depression: Formerly middle-class workers in threadbare clothes lining up for free food.

If we look closely, however, we might see more former lawyers wearing knockoffs, doing their back-to-school shopping at Target or Wal-Mart rather than Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch. Lean times might kill off much of the taboo around buying hand-me-downs, and with modern distribution networks - and a push from the reduce-reuse-recycle mind-set of environmentalism - we might see the development of nationwide used-clothing chains.

In general, novelty would lose some of its luster. It's not simply that we'd buy less, we'd look for different qualities in what we buy. New technology would grow less seductive, basic reliability more important. We'd see more products like Nextel phones and the Panasonic Toughbook laptop, which trade on their sturdiness, and fewer like the iPhone - beautiful, cleverly designed, but not known for durability. The neighborhood appliance shop could reappear in a new form - unlicensed, with hacked cellphones and rebuilt computers.

And while very few would starve, a depression would change how we eat. Food costs remain far below what they were for a family in the 1920s and 1930s, but they have been rising in recent years, and many people already on the edge of poverty would be unable to feed themselves on their own in a harsh economic climate - soup kitchens are already seeing an uptick in attendance. At the high end of the market, specialty and organic foods - which drove the success of chains like Whole Foods - would seem pointlessly expensive; the booming organic food movement could suffer as people start to see specially grown produce as more of a luxury than a moral choice. New England's surviving farmers would be particularly hard-hit, as demand for their seasonal, relatively high-cost products dried up.

According to Marion Nestle, a food and public health professor at New York University, people low on cash and with more time on their hands will cook more rather than go out. They may also, Nestle suggests, try their hands at growing and even raising more of their own food, if they have any way of doing so. Among the green lawns of suburbia, kitchen gardens would spring up. And it might go well beyond just growing your own tomatoes: early last month, the English bookstore chain Waterstone's reported a 200 percent increase in the sales of books on keeping chickens.

At the same time, the cheapest option for many is decidedly less rustic: meals like packaged macaroni and cheese and drive-through fast food. And we're likely to see a move in that direction, as well, toward cheaper, easier calories. If so, lean times could have the odd effect of making the population fatter, as more Americans eat like today's poor.

. . .

To understand where a depression would hit hardest, however, look at the biggest-ticket items on people's budgets.

Housing, health insurance, transportation, and child care are the top expenses for American families, according to Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy law specialist at Harvard Law School; along with taxes, these take up two-thirds of income, on average. And when those are squeezed, that could mean everything from more crowded subways to a proliferation of cheap, unlicensed day-care centers.

Health insurance premiums have risen to onerous levels in recent years, and in a long period of unemployment - or underemployment - they would quickly become unmanageable for many people. Dropping health insurance would be an immediate way for families to save hundreds of dollars per month. People without health insurance tend to skip routine dental and medical checkups, and instead deal with health problems only when they become acute - meaning they get their healthcare through hospital emergency rooms.

That means even longer waits at ERs, which are even now overtaxed in many places, and a growing financial drain on hospitals that already struggle to pay for the care they give uninsured people. And if, as is likely, this coincided with cuts in money for hospitals coming from cash-strapped state and local governments, there's a very real possibility that many hospitals would have to close, only further increasing the burden on those that remain open. In their place people could rely more on federally-funded health centers, or the growing number of drugstore clinics, like the MinuteClinics in CVS branches, for vaccines, physicals, strep throat tests, and other basic medical care. And as the costs of traditional medicine climbed out reach for families, the appeal of alternative medicine would in all likelihood grow.

Higher education, another big expense, would probably take a hit as well. Students unable to afford private universities would opt for public universities, students unable to afford four-year colleges would opt for community colleges, and students unable to afford community college wouldn't go at all. With fewer applicants, admissions standards would drop, with spots that once would have been filled by more qualified, poorer students going instead to wealthier applicants who before would not have made the cut. Some universities would simply shrink. In Boston, a city almost uniquely dependent on higher education, the results - fewer students renting apartments, going to restaurants and bars, opening bank accounts, buying books, taking taxis - would be particularly acute.

A depression would last too long for unemployed college graduates to ride out the downturn in business or law school, so people would have to change career plans entirely. One place that could see an uptick in applications and interest is government work: Its relative stability, combined with a suspicion of free-market ideology that would accompany a truly disastrous downturn, could attract more people and even help the public sector shake off its image as a redoubt for the mediocre and the unambitious.

. . .

In many ways, though, today's depression would not look like the last one because it would not look like much at all. As Warren wrote in an e-mail, "The New Depression would be largely invisible because people would experience loss privately, not publicly."

In the public imagination, the Depression was a galvanizing time, the crucible in which the Greatest Generation came of age and came together. That is, at best, only partly true. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has found that, for many, the Depression was isolating: Kiwanis clubs, PTAs, and other social groups lost around half their members from 1930 to 1935. And other studies on economic hardship suggest that it tends to sap people's civic engagement, often permanently.

"When people become unemployed in the Great Depression, they hunker down, they pull in from everybody." Putnam says.

That effect, Putnam believes, would only be more pronounced today. The Depression was, famously, a boom time for movies - people flocked to cheap double features to escape the dreariness of their everyday poverty. Today, however, movies are no longer cheap. Nor is a day at the ballpark.

Much of a modern depression would unfold in the domestic sphere: people driving less, shopping less, and eating in their houses more. They would watch television at home; unemployed parents would watch over their own kids instead of taking them to day care. With online banking, it would even be possible to have a bank run in which no one leaves the comfort of their home.

There would be darker effects, as well. Depression, unsurprisingly, is higher in economically distressed households; so is domestic violence. Suicide rates go up in tough times, marriage rates and birthrates go down. And while divorce rates usually rise in recessions, they dropped during the Great Depression, in part because unhappy couples found they simply couldn't afford separation.

In precarious times, hunkering down can become not simply a defense mechanism, but a worldview. Grant McCracken, an anthropologist affiliated with MIT who studies consumer behavior, calls this distinction "surging" vs. "dwelling" - the difference, as he wrote recently on his blog, between believing that the world "teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement" and thinking that life's pleasures come from counting one's blessings and appreciating and holding onto what one already has. Economic uncertainty, he argues, drives us toward the latter.

As a nation, we have grown very accustomed to the momentum that surging imparts. And while a depression remains far from inevitable, it's as close as it has been in a lifetime. We might want to get a sense for what dwelling feels like.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/11/16/depression_2009_what_would_it_look_like/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

KKK and Obama

Moriji — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:50:00 GMT

Curious to hear what the KKK thinks of Obama's win?

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The Disgrace of it All

It has happened! Yes, it is just as we expected and have suggested for months. Is the election of Obama shocking to us? Not at all! We have been telling our people that unless white people begin sticking together this is exactly what would happen. Still 39% of white women and 41% of white men voted for him. They believe they live in a color blind society. But he received a land slide majority vote from non-whites. Apparently they voted according to race.

The ones who will be shocked and blind sided are those who will one day be awakened to what they have done!

But those of you who are are now awakened - this is your opportunity to begin the process of sticking together.

The president elect now stands as a symbol to our people throughout this nation that change is indeed coming. What will it mean for those who are being disenfranchised from the very nation purchased by the blood of their forefathers? It could mean an awakening of our spirit and blood. Every time the television shows an image of Obama it will be a reminder that our people have lost power in this country. We actually lost that power 40 years ago, but with a white president people would go to sleep thinking at least white people were still running things. Now there is no reason to believe this. The betrayal will stare them in the face each time they watch the news and see little black children playing in the rose garden.

Are we angry that 97% of blacks voted for Obama? Not at all! They voted what they felt would serve their best interest. They voted for Obama because he is one of them. But white people who foolishly rejected the future security of their children only heard the sound of the piper.

So we have to admit that this may be the best thing that has happened to us. It perhaps comes as a wake-up call to the sleeping giant deep in the heart of our people.

So don’t despair! Don’t be discouraged! We have been saying this would happen. We have said that there is a growing subtle hatred for our people. This has not been a battle between Republicans or Democrats. This was not a battle between liberals and conservatives. This is a race war - a culture war - being waged against white people. As more and more non-whites come into this country the hatred for the founding people will grow.

The Bible says, "When my judgments are in the land the inhabitants of the earth will learn righteousness."

If you think it is time for white people to start sticking together. If you want to do something to help provide a future for you children then you need to become part of a movement working for our people. We are not asking you to hate anyone! We are not asking you to commit an illegal act. We are not asking you to hurt anyone. We just want you to love your people and do that which your forefathers did - give your children a bright future.

White young people who are celebrating Obama's victory, stop and consider you may not agree with us but you have to admit we were right about one thing. We have said that there is the calculated design to get into the minds of young people and turn them away from loving our people. Every time you reject your white heritage you prove once again we were right.

I ask you, What is so bad about loving your people? Black people are proud to love their people, why aren't you?

http://www.kkk.bz

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 6 replies

World leaders dine in style as they discuss financial crisis

Moriji — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:52:57 GMT

Seal's gonna love this...

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The global economy may be undergoing a significant downturn, but the White House's dinner budget still appears flush with cash.

After all, world leaders who are in town to discuss the economic crisis are set to dine in style Friday night while sipping wine listed at nearly $500 a bottle.

According to the White House, tonight's dinner to kick off the G-20 summit includes such dishes as "Fruitwood-smoked Quail," "Thyme-roasted Rack of Lamb," and "Tomato, Fennel and Eggplant Fondue Chanterelle Jus."

To wash it all down, world leaders will be served Shafer Cabernet “Hillside Select” 2003, a wine that sells at $499 on Wine.com.

The exceedingly pricey wine may seem a bit peculiar given leaders are in Washington to discuss a possible world financial meltdown, but Sally McDonough, a spokeswoman for Laura Bush, said it "was the most appropriate wine that we had in the White House wine cellar for such a gathering.

McDonough also said the White House purchased the wine at a "significantly lower price" than what it is listed at.

"Of course the White House gets its wine at wholesale prices," she said. "Given the intimate size of the group, it was an appropriate time for The White House to use this stock."

The leaders of the U.K., France, Russia, China, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey and 11 developing economies have all come to Washington at the behest of President Bush in an effort to express confidence in the fundamental underpinnings of the world's economy.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/11/14/world-leaders-dine-in-style-as-they-discuss-financial-crisis/

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Rahm Emanuel= rightwing hawk

seal — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:07:42 GMT

Sorry DevaJ but I'm starting to really dislike everything I'm reading about this conservative dickhead. What it is looking like is another conservative corporate/militarist Clintonista administration since Obama seems to be filling slots with these assholes. Remember that what is considered "centrist" in 2008 was totally republican in 1980. So Obama pushes republican-lite policies and continues to drop this country into the honey bucket with military spending and war and bailouts to the filthyrich.

So much for "CHANGE," eh?

Published on Tuesday, November 11, 2008 by CommonDreams.org
Opening Move: Charge the Center?
by Sean Gonsalves

In upstate New York many summers ago, my father introduced me to the game of chess. Our first game went something like this: I moved my white pawn to f3. Dad moved his black pawn to e5. My next move was a "careful" one: pawn to g4. Now if you're familiar with chess openings, like my Dad was, you can guess his next move. With my king exposed, he moved his queen on a diagonal track to the square next to my powerless pawn (Qh4# 0-1).

"Checkmate!"

My first chess lesson: Opening moves are paramount. A bad start can lead to a quick and sudden endgame.

President-elect Obama comes to the chess board with great expectations. And already the honeymoon is over. As the New York Times noted two days after his election, "No incoming president in modern times has been so pressured to begin governing, in effect, before he is sworn into office."

In a general 10-move chess opening, there are 169 octillion possibilities. That's 169 with 27 zeros attached to it – way too many moves to memorize or even think about. That's why an approach to the game is necessary – if you‘re playing to win.

Chess master William Aramil teaches the "five-element" approach – material (value of pieces), time (speed of play), space (how many squares you control), pawn structure, and king safety.

Obama is under pressure to start making moves. But with President Bush still on the clock, it's a race against time. Aramil says you can gain time by moving minor pieces (a knight or bishop) toward the center of the board.

Who is Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel? Reuters quoted Republican strategist John Feehery saying Emanuel "is going to spend most of his time cracking Democratic heads, getting them to move from the left to the middle."

Feehery's assessment seems reasonable given Emanuel's former position in a centrist Clinton administration and his more recent record as chairman of the 2006 Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, where he recruited and gave campaign funds to pro-Iraq war Dems running against anti-war candidates like Christine Cegelis.

The grandmasters of the game say you move to the center because it gives you the advantage in fighting for space. If your pieces are in the center of the board, they are more mobile and have more options.

"The most common way to achieve more space is through the center..." Aramil said. "Essentially, the center and space go hand in hand."

Space for what? The New York Times reports Obama's advisers are compiling a list of Bush policies that "could be reversed by the executive powers of the new president."

Over the weekend, one of Barack's minor pieces, transition team co-chair John Podesta (another centrist Clinton hand) said: "There's a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for Congressional action... . He feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set."

Emanuel said: "Rule No. 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are opportunities to do big things."

And thanks to Bush, Cheney and a compliant Congress, Obama has inherited the office of the imperial presidency, complete with unprecedented national security powers; not to mention control over the banking industry. Jack Balkin, a constitutional law professor at Yale, says "the next president will enter office as the most powerful president who has ever sat in the White House."

So Obama is angling to do "big things" – hoping to control as many squares as possible. With Bush playing the first move, a countermove to the center is known in chess as the classical Sicilian defense. It's a "charge" chess master Aramil says "is a highly popular and excellent choice for those wishing to dive into early struggles or complexities."

Touché Obama.

Now it's our turn. If you're a pawn like me, take heart. "Pawns are the soul of chess." There's more of us than any other piece on the board, so we are crucial in determining how the game is played.

Aramil says: "Pawns establish the style, pace, and structure of the opening. Pawns can have lasting effects for the rest of the game."

Now is the time to mobilize so we can establish the style, pace and structure of Obama's presidency. The opening has begun.

And while you think about your next move – whether you want to be a sacrificial pawn or "the soul of the game" – pardon me. I gotta go introduce my little Barack to chess.

Sean Gonsalves is a Cape Cod Times news editor and columnist.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 13 replies

Soros says deep recession inevitable, depression possible

Moriji — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 16:41:29 GMT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management, testified at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Thursday. Highlights:

* Said "a deep recession is now inevitable and the possibility of a depression cannot be ruled out."

* Said hedge funds were an integral part of the financial market bubble which now has burst.

* Said hedge funds will be "decimated" by the current financial crisis and forced to shrink their portfolios by 50-75 percent.

* Said Fed, Treasury Department and the SEC must accept responsibility to prevent market bubbles from growing too big in future.

Said impossible to prevent market bubbles from forming, but they can be kept within "tolerable bounds."

* Said financial engineering should be regulated and new products approved by regulators, and that such regulation should be a high priority of the new Obama administration.

* Said a recent IMF credit facility not large enough to stabilize markets.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSTRE4AC5IN20081113

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

And history was made...

Moriji — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:30:28 GMT

More about this stunning defeat for Republicans, as well reaction from the GOP tomorrow. For now, read this hilarious piece:

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Failure to Blow Election Stuns Democrats

Just minutes after their party's longstanding losing tradition lay in tatters on the ground, millions of shell-shocked Democrats stared at their television screens in disbelief, asking themselves what went right.

For Democrats, who have become accustomed to their party blowing an election even when it seemed like a sure thing, Tuesday night's results were a bitter pill to swallow.

The head-shaking and finger-pointing over the demise of the Democrats' losing streak, which many of the party faithful had worn like a badge of honor, reached all the way to the upper echelons of the Democratic National Committee.

"Believe me, I'm as shocked by these results as anybody," said DNC chief Howard Dean, who indicated he has received hundreds of calls from incredulous party members. "We did everything in our power to screw this thing up."

Dean pointed to several key elements the Democrats put in place to ensure defeat, ranging from "a rancorous primary campaign" to "the appointment of me."

"Somehow, despite our best efforts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, we won," he said. "I came in here with a mandate to blow this thing and I didn't get it done."

Carol Foyler, a lifelong Democrat who owns a loom supply store in Portland, Maine, said she has been "nearly catatonic" since the election results were announced.

"For the past eight years, I've fixed myself some herbal tea, turned on NPR, and ranted about the Republicans," she said. "All that has been taken from me."

Elsewhere, Sen. John McCain offered this comment on Sen. Barack Obama's victory: "My friends, I've got him just where I want him."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/failure-to-blow-election_b_141221.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 27 replies

Camille Paglia: Obama surfs through

DevastatorJr — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:44:45 GMT

Camille Paglia is mostly crazy, but she's a great writer. Watch her squirm around a defense of everybody's favorite beauty queen, Sarah Palin...

The Obamas are a warm vision for the White House -- but he should strive toward full transparency. Plus: Yes, I still like Sarah Palin!

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/11/12/palin/print.html

By Camille Paglia

Nov. 12, 2008 |

Dazed and confused. A week after the election of Barack Obama, millions of American news junkies are in serious cold turkey, the big bump of withdrawal from two years of addiction to the dizzying ups and downs of a campaign that threatened never to end.

Eat dirt, you sour Clintons, who said Obama was "unelectable." Obama's 8 million vote margin over his Republican opponent -- miraculously sparing us endless litigation and chad counting -- was an exhilarating testimony to his personal gifts and power of persuasion. And the formidable Michelle Obama, with her electric combo of brains and style, is already rewriting first ladyhood. The warm partnership of the Obamas (wonderfully caught by the camera as they disappeared offstage after his victory) has set an inspiring standard for modern marriage.

Yes, it's true we know relatively little about Barack Obama, and his triumph is a roll of the dice. But John McCain (like Bob Dole) was a major Republican misfire -- a candidate of personal honor and heroic sacrifice who was woefully inadequate for the times. McCain's lurching grandstanding during the Wall Street crisis made him look like a ham actor on a bender. In debate, McCain was always pugnacious but too often bland or rambling, and he often missed glaring opportunities to score off Obama's vagueness or contradictions.

McCain's brusque treatment of his long-suffering wife, Cindy, was also off-putting -- nowhere more so than after his concession speech, when he barely remembered to give her a perfunctory hug. Probably no one is more relieved by McCain's defeat than Cindy, who seemed too frail and tightly wound for the demanding role of first lady. Now she can slip away once more into blessed privacy.

No one knows whether Obama will move to the center or veer hard left. Perhaps even he doesn't know. But I have great optimism about his political instincts and deftness. He wants to be president of all the people -- if that is possible in so divided a nation. His natural impulse seems to be toward reconciliation and concord. The big question will be how patient the Democratic left wing is in demanding drastic changes in social policy, particularly dicey with a teetering economy.

As I've watched Obama gracefully step up to podiums or move through crowds, I've been reminded not of basketball, with its feints and pivots, but of surfing, that art form of his native Hawaii. A photograph of Obama body surfing on vacation was widely publicized in August. But I'm talking about big-time competitive surfing, as in this stunning video tribute to the death-defying Laird Hamilton (who, like Obama, was raised fatherless in Hawaii). Obama's ability to stay on his feet and outrun the most menacing waves that threaten to engulf him seems to embody the breezy, sunny spirit of the American surfer.

In the closing weeks of the election, however, I became increasingly disturbed by the mainstream media's avoidance of forthright dealing with several controversies that had been dogging Obama -- even as every flimsy rumor about Sarah Palin was being trumpeted as if it were engraved in stone on Mount Sinai. For example, I had thought for many months that the flap over Obama's birth certificate was a tempest in a teapot. But simple questions about the certificate were never resolved to my satisfaction. Thanks to their own blathering, fanatical overkill, of course, the right-wing challenges to the birth certificate never gained traction.

But Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it. (The campaign did make the "short-form" certificate available to Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.) And why has Obama not made his university records or thesis work widely available? The passivity of the press toward Bush administration propaganda about weapons of mass destruction led the nation into the costly blunder of the Iraq war. We don't need another presidency that finds it all too easy to rely on evasion or stonewalling. I deeply admire Obama, but as a voter I don't like feeling gamed or played.

Another issue that I initially dismissed was the flap over William Ayers, the Chicago-based former member of the violent Weather Underground. Conservative radio host Sean Hannity began the drumbeat about Ayers' association with Obama a year ago -- a theme that most of the mainstream media refused to investigate or even report until this summer. I had never heard of Ayers and couldn't have cared less. I was irritated by Hillary Clinton's aggressive flagging of Ayers in a debate, and I accepted Obama's curt dismissal of the issue.

Hence my concern about Ayers has been very slow in developing. The mainstream media should have fully explored the subject early this year and not allowed it to simmer and boil until it flared up ferociously in the last month of the campaign. Obama may not in recent years have been "pallin' around" with Ayers, in Sarah Palin's memorable line, but his past connections with Ayers do seem to have been more frequent and substantive than he has claimed. Blame for the failure of this issue to take hold must also accrue to the conservative talk shows, which use the scare term "radical" with simplistic sensationalism, blanketing everyone under the sun from scraggly ex-hippies to lipstick-chic Nancy Pelosi.

Pursuing the truth about Ayers, I recently rented the 2002 documentary "The Weather Underground," from Netflix. It was riveting. Although the film seems to waver between ominous exposé and blatant whitewash, the full extent of the group's bombing campaign is dramatically demonstrated. It's not for everyone: The film uses gratuitous cutaways of horrifying carnage, from the Vietnam War to the Manson murders (such as Sharon Tate's smiling corpse, bathed in blood). But the news footage of the Greenwich Village townhouse destroyed in 1970 by bomb-making gone wrong in the basement still has enormous impact. Standing in the chaotic street, actor Dustin Hoffman, who lived next door, seems like Everyman at the apocalypse.

Ayers comes off in the film as a vapid, slightly dopey, chronic juvenile with stunted powers of ethical reasoning. The real revelation is his wife, Bernardine Dohrn (who evidently worked at the same large Chicago law firm as Michelle Obama in the mid-1990s). Of course I had heard of Dohrn -- hers was one of the most notorious names of our baby-boom generation -- and I knew her black-and-white police mug shot. But I had never seen footage of her speaking or interacting with others. Well, it's pretty obvious who wears the pants in that family!

The mystery of Bernardine Dohrn: How could such a personable, attractive, well-educated young woman end up saying such things at a 1969 political rally as this (omitted in the film) about the Manson murders: "Dig it. First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into a victim's stomach. Wild!" And how could Dohrn have so ruthlessly pursued a decade-long crusade of hatred and terrorism against innocent American citizens and both private and public property?

"The Weather Underground" never searches for answers, but it does show Dohrn, then and now, as a poised, articulate woman of extremely high intelligence and surprising inwardness. The audio extra of her reading the collective's first public communiqué ("Revolutionary violence is the only way") is chilling. But the tumultuous footage of her 1980 surrender to federal authorities is a knockout. Mesmerized, I ran the clip six or seven times of her seated at a lawyer's table while reading her still defiant statement. The sober scene -- with Dohrn hyper-alert in a handsome turtleneck and tweedy jacket -- was tailor-made for Jane Fonda in her "Klute" period, androgynous shag. Only illegalities by federal investigators prevented Dohrn from being put away on ice for a long, long time.

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology -- contradicting Democratic core principles of compassion, tolerance and independent thought. One would have to look back to the Eisenhower 1950s for parallels to this grotesque lock-step parade of bourgeois provincialism, shallow groupthink and blind prejudice.

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones, wrapped in the fuzzy mummy-gauze of their own worn-out partisan dogma. So she doesn't speak the King's English -- big whoop! There is a powerful clarity of consciousness in her eyes. She uses language with the jumps, breaks and rippling momentum of a be-bop saxophonist. I stand on what I said (as a staunch pro-choice advocate) in my last two columns -- that Palin as a pro-life wife, mother and ambitious professional represents the next big shift in feminism. Pro-life women will save feminism by expanding it, particularly into the more traditional Third World.

As for the Democrats who sneered and howled that Palin was unprepared to be a vice-presidential nominee -- what navel-gazing hypocrisy! What protests were raised in the party or mainstream media when John Edwards, with vastly less political experience than Palin, got John Kerry's nod for veep four years ago? And Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, for whom I lobbied to be Obama's pick and who was on everyone's short list for months, has a record indistinguishable from Palin's. Whatever knowledge deficit Palin has about the federal bureaucracy or international affairs (outside the normal purview of governors) will hopefully be remedied during the next eight years of the Obama presidencies.

The U.S. Senate as a career option? What a claustrophobic, nitpicking comedown for an energetic Alaskan -- nothing but droning committees and incestuous back-scratching. No, Sarah Palin should stick to her governorship and just hit the rubber-chicken circuit, as Richard Nixon did in his long haul back from political limbo following his California gubernatorial defeat in 1962. Step by step, the mainstream media will come around, wipe its own mud out of its eyes, and see Palin for the populist phenomenon that she is.

On the culture front, I was startled to read of the death last week of Yma Sumac, the virtuoso five-octave Peruvian singer who seems like a legendary figure of the misty past. Sumac's 1950 debut album, "Voice of the Xtabay," made a tremendous impact on me as a child. My family attended her performance (with her company of 20 artists) at the Binghamton Theatre in what was probably 1951. I still have the yellowed clippings and program, which lists songs eerily mimicking the sound of the Andean winds and earthquakes. The cover image of "Voice of the Xtabay" with a glamorous Sumac in the pose of a prophesying priestess against a background of fierce sculptures and an erupting volcano, contains the entire pagan worldview and nature cult of what would become my first book, "Sexual Personae," published 40 years later. Thank you, Yma!

News items: My article "Final Cut: The Selection Process for 'Break, Blow, Burn'" has just been published in the Fall 2008 issue of Arion at Boston University. It is available online at Arion or via that invaluable international site, Arts & Letters Daily. No more Mr. Nice Guy: I've taken the gloves off against John Ashbery, Jorie Graham and the rest of that insufferably pretentious crowd. For real English used in a vital, vigorous contemporary way, see the new book of poems by my colleague Jack DeWitt, "Almost Grown," which deals with cars, gals and brawls -- American culture at its finest!

My keynote lecture for the Theodore Roethke Centenary Conference, held at the University of Michigan last month, has gone to press for the forthcoming issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review. The lecture is called "Dance of the Senses: Natural Vision and Psychotic Mysticism in Theodore Roethke." One of my main points: I'm sick of the insipid bourgeois neuroticism in current, careerist American poetry. Bring back the psychotics!

Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.

-- By Camille Paglia

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Obama Team Weighs What to Take On First

Moriji — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:08:21 GMT

I think he should go for the big bang approach. They are related anyway, and he was voted into office because of his campaign promises.

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WASHINGTON — With the economy in disarray and the nation’s treasury draining, President-elect Barack Obama and his advisers are trying to figure out which of his expansive campaign promises to push in the opening months of his tenure and which to put on a slower track.

Mr. Obama repeated on Saturday that his first priority would be an economic recovery program to get the nation’s business system back on track and people back to work. But advisers said the question was whether they could tackle health care, climate change and energy independence at once or needed to stagger these initiatives over time.

The debate between a big-bang strategy of pressing aggressively on multiple fronts versus a more pragmatic, step-by-step approach has flavored the discussion among Mr. Obama’s transition advisers for months, even before his election. The tension between these strategies has been a recurring theme in the memorandums prepared for him on various issues, advisers said.

“Every president is tempted to take on too much,” said one Obama adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “On the other hand, there’s the Roosevelt example and the L.B.J. example, which suggest an extraordinary president can do an awful lot. So that’s the question: Is it too risky for the president to be ambitious?”

Much of the issue may be out of Mr. Obama’s hands. The $700 billion financial bailout threatens to push the deficit into the stratosphere. “The poor man has his hands tied by the economic and financial mess we have right now,” said John Tuck, a former aide to President Ronald Reagan. “I don’t know what his options are. They’re very, very limited.”

At a news conference Friday and again in a radio address on Saturday, Mr. Obama signaled that he intended to move quickly to address the nation’s financial problems, despite any obstacles. “I want to ensure that we hit the ground running on Jan. 20,” he said on Saturday, “because we don’t have a moment to lose.”

The argument for an aggressive approach in the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt or Lyndon B. Johnson is that health care, energy and education are all part of systemic economic problems and should be addressed comprehensively. But Democrats are discussing a hybrid strategy that would push for a bold economic program and also encompass other elements of Mr. Obama’s campaign platform, even if larger goals are put off.

Congressional leaders want to move swiftly in January to pass a major expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — a plan vetoed by President Bush — as a step toward the broader coverage Mr. Obama promised. Likewise, Democrats plan to incorporate his proposed middle-class tax cuts in the economic legislation or pass them in tandem. And Mr. Obama could increase investment in alternative energy as a down payment on a far-reaching climate plan.

“I believe it would be important to show fairly early on that change is here,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, a member of the House Democratic leadership. “One of the very visible ways to show that would be to pass some of the bills George Bush vetoed.”

In that same vein, the Obama transition team has identified executive orders he can sign in the first hours and days of his presidency to demonstrate action, even as the more ambitious promises take more time. Among other things, he can reverse a variety of Bush policies, like restrictions on abortion counseling and stem-cell research.

Mr. Obama has acknowledged that the economy will force him to recalibrate his program but insists that he has not backed off his commitments. “We can’t afford to wait on moving forward on the key priorities that I identified during the campaign, including clean energy, health care, education and tax relief for middle class families,” he said Saturday.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama identified many other priorities, like withdrawing from Iraq; talking with Iran; tackling immigration; closing the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and renegotiating trade rules with the country’s neighbors.

Mr. Obama’s transition advisers studied how past presidents used their first months and concluded that even if various agencies moved forward in many directions, a new chief executive must husband his time, energy and political capital for three dominant priorities at most. Several Obama advisers cited Reagan, who concentrated his early efforts on tax cuts and military spending.

But advisers also worry that putting off sweeping initiatives makes them harder to pass later, when a president’s mandate and momentum have faded. They pointed to Mr. Clinton, who delayed his ultimately doomed health care plan while he passed a deficit reduction package and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

And the pent-up demand from Democrats who waited out the Bush administration will be enormous. “In the next three months before they take over, the list of demands on the table is going to be staggering,” said former Representative Jim Leach of Iowa, a Republican who endorsed Mr. Obama during the campaign.

Mr. Obama recognizes that. In an interview on CNN days before the election, he explicitly ranked his priorities, starting with an economic recovery package that would include middle-class tax relief. His second priority, he said, would be energy; third, health care; fourth, tax restructuring; and fifth, education.

But then he hedged, foreseeing the unforeseen. “We don’t know yet what’s going to happen in January,” he said. “And none of this can be accomplished if we continue to see a potential meltdown in the banking system or the financial system.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/us/politics/09promises.html?_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

As a road to a better economy, an old idea gains ground

Moriji — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 01:10:31 GMT

Thank goodness...

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Often dismissed in favor of the quick-jolt stimulus, spending on bridges, streets and sewers is on the table again. Obama backs the public works idea, an echo of the FDR era.

As recently as a few months ago, the idea of trying to bolster the troubled economy by pumping money into public works projects such as roads and bridges was dismissed as too slow -- not the quick pick-me-up that was needed.

But today, economists and policymakers are beginning to change their minds.

Most experts still think infrastructure spending is a slower way to put money in consumers' hands than simply mailing out government checks the way President Bush did over the summer. What's changed is that the economic crisis now looks to be so deep and likely to last so long that a stimulus plan that pumps out benefits for months and years seems to fit the situation -- with the added bonus of providing long-term benefits to the country.

"Now we're in a situation where it looks like we're going to be in a prolonged downturn, so speed is still relevant, but it's not the be-all end-all," said Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former economist for the Federal Reserve Board, the Treasury Department and the Clinton White House.

Elmendorf, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, co-wrote a paper in January arguing against infrastructure spending because it was not fast-acting enough. "The concern at the time was that it would be a very sharp, short drop in economic activity, and we wanted to try to prevent that," he said recently.

Since then, the situation has changed, Elmendorf said -- becoming more dire.

Infrastructure spending, which is supported by President-elect Barack Obama, is expected to be a centerpiece of a $60-billion to $100-billion stimulus package Democrats may bring before Congress in a postelection session later this month.

Lawmakers are looking at a wide range of projects, such as building new roads and repairing old ones, improving airports, and constructing schools and sewage treatment plants. They also are considering making funding available to help transit agencies buy buses and rail cars.

The focus will be on job-producing projects that can get underway quickly.

In a new twist, Obama and congressional leaders have talked about ensuring that a good chunk of the infrastructure spending goes to "green jobs," providing funds for energy-efficiency projects, for example, promoting growth while reducing oil imports and greenhouse gas emissions.

Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, traces the history of infrastructure spending as economic stimulus to the massive public works programs launched by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to the Depression.

"From the Works Progress Administration of the Great Depression to the Accelerated Public Works Act of 1962 and the Local Public Works Capital Development and Investment Act of 1976, investment in public infrastructure has created and sustained jobs in difficult economic times," Oberstar said recently, "and it can do so again today."

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who is a possible Treasury secretary in an Obama administration, told a congressional committee that "properly designed infrastructure projects have the virtue of being helpful as short-run stimulus, especially for the employment of the workers most hard hit by the housing decline, while at the same time augmenting the economy's productive potential in the long run."

The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that $75 billion in infrastructure spending would create 1 million jobs.

Infrastructure spending creates "economic ripple effects across the entire economy -- for example, by providing more business for construction equipment manufacturers and the steelmakers that supply them -- and this money will quickly circulate back into the economy as workers spend their salaries, increasing overall demand for goods and services," the institute said in a recent paper.

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com, estimates that every dollar of infrastructure spending boosts the gross domestic product by $1.59.

Government and industry officials insist there are plenty of projects they can start quickly.

Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, cited $100 billion in deferred maintenance and repairs at 16,000 public schools, involving such things as antiquated wiring and leaky plumbing. He said that most of the projects could be completed in 60 to 90 days.

In California, Department of Transportation Director Will Kempton said that the state has as much as $1 billion worth of transportation projects that could be undertaken within 180 days. Many of those could be launched within 90 days, he said.

"These projects are ready to go, and we don't have the money. So they're sitting in a queue, waiting for these dollars to become available," he said.

Doug Black, chief executive of Atlanta-based Oldcastle Materials Inc., a supplier of asphalt and concrete, told a House committee that most highway maintenance and repair projects can be undertaken quickly.

Skepticism still abounds.

"Changes in infrastructure spending are not an effective method of creating jobs or providing short-run fiscal stimulus to the economy," Alan D. Viard of the American Enterprise Institute told a congressional committee last month, arguing that they are a slower and less efficient form of stimulus.

"Practically speaking," the Congressional Budget Office said in a report earlier this year, "large-scale construction projects of any type require years of planning and preparation. Even those that are 'on the shelf' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy."

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said he's concerned that such projects could lead to wasteful pork-barrel spending.

The Bush administration is similarly unenthusiastic about spending more on public works projects. "They take a long time for the money to get out into the system. And a lot of the claims that are made about how much transportation could actually help build the economy are overblown," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.

But some skeptics have changed their minds as evidence has accumulated that the government may have to deal with a more severe economic challenge than most of today's leaders have ever seen.

Rep. John Tanner (D-Tenn.), a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs, said he is more receptive to infrastructure spending than to sending out more tax rebate checks.

"Infrastructure spending, one, is good for the country, and two, it creates jobs immediately," he said in an interview. "And every state has a stack of infrastructure projects that they prioritize, that could get fairly quickly into the commerce stream. Infrastructure is much more appealing to me if we're going to deficit spend."

"You always worry about pork-barrel spending, but with the economy in the shape that it's in right now, that's less of a concern than it was earlier this year," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group.

"If they sent out a bunch of rebates now, they'd find people just wouldn't spend them," Bixby said. "That makes a stronger case for the government actually making direct expenditures. One of the best ways to do that is through infrastructure projects, provided -- and this is the tough part -- that they really are ready to go."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-infrastructure9-2008nov09,0,7223067.story

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Unemployed skyrockets

seal — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:06:16 GMT

Here we go boys & girls. Got your gardens ready for next year's planting?

What is really scary is that this doesn't include the millions that aren't eligible for unemployment. Bet it's more like 20 million at this point...

Jobless ranks hit 10.1 million
6.5% unemployment marks 14-year high
By JEANNINE AVERSA
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/387003_meltdown08.html

WASHINGTON -- A quarter of a million pink slips, just before the holidays.

Assembly line workers, construction crews, sales clerks, hotel employees, mortgage brokers and temps. All hard hit last month, the government said Friday.

"Main Street knew well before the Beltway people that there are problems out there," said Brian Bethune, economist at IHS Global Insight.

The nation's ranks of unemployed zoomed past 10 million, the most in a quarter-century, and new job losses totaled 240,000. Politicians and economists agreed on a painful bottom line: It's only going to get worse.

The jobless rate soared to a 14-year high of 6.5 percent, the government said Friday, up from 6.1 percent just a month earlier. There was more grim news from U.S. automakers: Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp., American giants struggling to survive, each reported big losses and announced more job cuts.

Barack Obama, in his first news conference as president-elect, said the nation was facing the economic challenge of a lifetime but expressed confidence he could deal with it.

"Immediately after I become president, I'm going to confront this economic crisis head on by taking all necessary steps to ease the credit crisis, help hardworking families and restore growth and prosperity," he said after meeting with economic advisers in Chicago. "I'm confident a new president can have an enormous impact."

Wall Street revived somewhat after two days of big losses. The Dow Jones industrials rose 248 points.

Still, the Labor Department's unemployment report provided stark evidence that the economy's health was deteriorating at an alarmingly rapid pace. The jobless rate was 4.8 percent just one year ago.

About 10.1 million people were unemployed in October, the most since the fall of 1983. More people have jobs 25 years later, since the population has grown, but it's still a staggering jobless figure. With employers slashing jobs every month so far this year, some 1.2 million positions have disappeared, more than half in the past three months alone. That portends a sad holiday buying season for retailers, not to mention troubled Americans without jobs.

Like Obama, President Bush expressed confidence that things would get better: "Our economy has overcome great challenges before, and we can be confident that it will do so again."

But economists were much less upbeat than politicians.

"There is no light at the end of the tunnel, and the outlook is pitch black," said Richard Yamarone, economist at Argus Research.

And Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, said the report "depicts an economy still in free fall and without a safety net anywhere in sight."

All the economy's woes -- a housing collapse, mounting foreclosures, hard-to-get credit and financial market upheaval -- will confront Obama when he assumes office in January. Unemployment is expected to keep rising during his first year in office, while record budget deficits will crimp his domestic agenda.

October's jobless rate was the highest since March 1994 and now has surpassed the 6.3 percent 2003 high after the most recent recession. The government also said job losses were worse than first reported for the preceding two months: 284,000 rather than 159,000 in September and 127,000 rather than 73,000 in August.

Many economists believe the unemployment rate will climb to 8 percent or 8.5 percent by the end of next year before slowly drifting downward. Some think unemployment could even hit 10 percent or 11 percent -- if an auto company should fail.

In any case, the rate is likely to move higher even if the economy is on somewhat stronger footing by the middle of next year as some hope. That's because companies won't be inclined to ramp up hiring until they feel certain that a recovery has staying power.

Joshua Shapiro, chief economist at consulting firm MFR Inc., said another reason the unemployment rate can keep climbing -- even after a recession is over -- is because people tend to flock back to the labor market when they sense their job prospects might be better.

"It takes (people) awhile to figure out, 'Hey, there's jobs out there,' " Shapiro said.

In the 1980-1982 recession, considered the worst since the Great Depression in terms of unemployment, the jobless rate rose as high as 10.8 percent in late 1982, just as the recession ended, before inching down.

Friday's report was worse than analysts had expected. They had been forecasting a jobless rate of 6.3 percent with payrolls falling about 200,000.

Factories, including automakers; construction companies, especially home builders; retailers; mortgage bankers; securities firms; hotels and motels; and educational services all cut jobs, as did temporary help firms -- a barometer of future hiring. All those losses more than swamped the few gains elsewhere, including in the government, health care and in accounting and bookkeeping.

Private companies cut 263,000 jobs, the most since the country was beginning to emerge from the 2001 recession.

It marked the 11th straight month of such reductions.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Obama in Action

DevastatorJr — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:10:05 GMT

Okay, I'm taking a cue from another tribe and starting this thread to sort of document the Obama administration in action as it goes along.

First up, Obama's choice for Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel

I like Rahm Emanuel, he's similar to Obama in that he has a clear, precise manner of speech. This is refreshing. Regardless of the intentions of a lot of older school polliticians, their vague, overly metaphoric way of talking can be so frustrating. Let's hope that's going to go to the way of the dodo. He's also a no nonsense type of guy, and I think Obama needs that, as he might seem a little soft. Republicans are already criticizing the pick, as he's seen as a sort of "pit bull," someone who's very aggressive and used to getting his way.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 6 replies

Censored: 1 million dead Iraqis (and other stories)

seal — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:19:15 GMT

Published on Wednesday, November 5, 2008 by Inter Press Service
Massive Iraqi Death Toll Ignored by Tabloid Culture
by Marie-Helene Rousseau

NEW YORK - The year is 1994. Pictures of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley cover the pages of prominent U.S. newspapers and magazines. Yet hidden from national view is the attempted elimination of the Tutsi ethnic group in Rwanda.

Residents carry a flag-draped coffin containing the remains of a person found buried in a mass grave, during a funeral in Kerbala, 80 km (50 miles) southwest of Baghdad October 23, 2008. REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammed (IRAQ)When news of pop stars and their marriages and divorces takes precedence over stories about the Iraq War or privacy concerns in an age of increasing security measures, U.S. citizens are faced, as described by the director of Project Censored, 'with a truth emergency'.

To address this emergency, Project Censored, a non-profit media project within the Sonoma State University Foundation, each year compiles 25 stories which they say have been neglected by the mainstream media. Since 1976, when Carl Jensen founded the research facility, these stories have comprised a yearbook of controversial stories that have gone largely unread and underreported.

The organisation, now headed by Peter Phillips, a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, works with students and faculty of SSU to review and select which of the 700-1,000 annually submitted stories make the final cut. A panel of judges that includes noted writers Noam Chomsky and Susan Faludi then ranks the 25 stories in order of importance.

How do they determine what constitutes 'censorship'? An explanation on ProjectCensored.org states, 'We define Modern Censorship as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets.'

The organisation outlines a set of criteria by which individuals can determine if a story is suitable for the 'censored' list. The first of these criteria reads, 'A Censored news story is one which contains information that the general United States population has a right and need to know, but to which it has had limited access.'

Indeed, none of the selected stories have appeared in the mainstream press, a category encompassing widely read publications such as The New York Times and the network news channels. Rather, the stories have been covered by a select number of independent media that are free from the constraints of corporate ownership.

The number one story this year gave a staggering answer to a question that has been glossed over in the mainstream press -- just how many Iraqi lives have been lost because of the U.S. occupation? The answer is one million, and it exceeds the death toll of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, points out the Censored entry.

But that figure, calculated by British the polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB), was reported in just three independent media outlets -- AlterNet, Inter Press Service (IPS), and After Downing Street.

Michael Schwartz, of the nonpartisan coalition After Downing Street, also refuted in Censored the idea that most violence occurs only between Iraqis, placing the percentage of U.S.-inflicted Iraqi deaths at about 80 percent.

Censored also points to what may be the most ominous consequence of media censorship -- a public lack of awareness.

Schwartz, in Censored, refers to a February 2007 Associated Press poll in which U.S. citizens were asked how many Iraqis died because of the U.S. occupation. The most common answers placed casualties at below 10,000.

'This remarkable mass ignorance, like so many other elements of the Iraq War story, received no coverage in the mass media, not even by the Associated Press, which commissioned the study,' he writes.

Many of the stories included in this year's compilation dealt with the aftermath of the Iraq War as well as privacy concerns in an age of increasing security measures.

At number three on the list, 'InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business' reveals that members of the business community may be part of an anti-terrorism line of defence, but are also the first ones reaping the benefits of it. This programme is called InfraGard, and goes as far back as 1996, when it started in Cleveland with 350 members from the Fortune 500.

By transmitting information about private individuals to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, 23,000 members of private industry guarantee that they will receive warnings of a terrorist attack before private individuals -- even before certain elected officials, reported The Progressive in an article by Matt Rothschild.

Rothschild's article also asserts that an InfraGard member can even shoot to kill in the case of martial law 'without fear of prosecution'.

Although in February, the FBI released a statement denouncing the piece, Rothschild is sticking by his story.

The Winter Soldier hearings, which took place in Silver Springs, Maryland in March of 2008 organised by Veterans against War, also found a place on the list at number nine. The testimonies of more than 300 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans revealed atrocities they not only saw, but also participated in, such as desecrating corpses and targeting civilians.

These revelatory hearings were covered in just three print media outlets -- The Nation, One World, and Inter Press Service -- as well as one radio station, Pacifica Radio.

If the U.S. government deems that a person, directly or indirectly, poses the risk of threatening U.S. operations in the Middle East, the U.S. treasury department can seize their property and freeze their assets -- a story on this is number five on the list.

Two executive orders were established giving the treasury department this power, one in July of 2007 and more recently in August of 2007. The first executive order is limited to Iraq, and threatens seizure of property in the event someone committing, or posing a risk of committing violent acts in opposition to U.S. operations there.

The second order, targeted to operations in Lebanon, goes a little further, broadening the scope to actions, non-violent or otherwise, that undermine U.S. involvement in Lebanon. Under this order, dependents of the individuals (spouse, children) would also have their assets frozen, and would not be allowed to receive humanitarian aid, Censored states.

The two executive orders were covered in The Progressive, and Global Research.

While mass media closely followed such stories as Angelina Jolie's pregnancy and Alec Baldwin's marital problems, reports regarding the aftermath of the Iraq War and privacy concerns were hidden.

News of abuse and death in juvenile detention centres, unprecedented rates of arrests for marijuana possession in the U.S., corporate profiteering from No Child Left Behind, and the American Psychiatric Association's sanctioning and aiding in torture methods lay buried underneath images of Paris Hilton's new escapades. And those are just the top 25.

© 2008 Inter Press Service

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Are you ready for victory?

Moriji — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:25:30 GMT

Want some proof that this is gonna be a blowout for Obama? Check out these articles...

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Dixville Notch has spoken: It's Obama in a landslide

DIXVILLE NOTCH, New Hampshire (CNN) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama emerged victorious in the first election returns of the 2008 presidential race, winning 15 of 21 votes cast in Dixville Notch, New Hampshire.

People in the isolated village in New Hampshire's northeast corner voted just after midnight Tuesday.

It was the first time since 1968 that the village leaned Democratic in an election.

Obama's rival, Republican John McCain, won 6 votes.

A full 100 percent of registered voters in the village cast ballots. And the votes didn't take long to tally.

The town, home to around 75 residents, has opened its polls shortly after midnight each election day since 1960, drawing national media attention for being the first place in the country to make its presidential preferences known.

However, since 1996, another small New Hampshire town -- Hart's Location -- reinstated its practice from the 1940s and also began opening its polls at midnight.

The result in Dixville Notch is hardly a reliable bellwether for the eventual winner of the White House or even the result statewide.

Though New Hampshire is a perennial swing state, Dixville Notch -- until now -- had consistently leaned Republican. The last Democrat it picked was Hubert Humphrey over Richard Nixon in 1968.

President Bush won the town in a landslide in the last two elections: He captured 73 percent of the vote in 2004 (19 residents picked Bush while six preferred Sen. John Kerry), and secured 80 percent of the vote in 2000 (21 votes for Bush, five votes for Al Gore.)

But villagers expected the results to be close this year given Democrats now outnumber Republicans there.

The town picked both John McCain and Barack Obama for the New Hampshire Democratic and Republican primaries in January. McCain ultimately won the state of New Hampshire, while Sen. Hillary Clinton upset Obama there.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/03/dixville.notch/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 8 replies

The Trillion Dollar Meltdown

Moriji — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 21:48:45 GMT

I'm reading a book called The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by former lawyer and banker Charles R. Morris, which is about the current crisis. It's interesting that this was published in March 2008, but he already saw the whole thing coming down.

Anyway, in the book, I came across a section that kinda bothered me. He talks about the inequality in incomes that started in the 1960s and greatly accelerated in the 1980s (surprise, surprise). He writes:

"Explanations of the 'why' of the growing disparity include, variously, the declining real value of the minimum wage, the globalization of work and the decline of unionism, the widening dispersion of education and other skill differentiations within the labor force, and the effect of cheap computer power in enhancing the productivity of highly skilled people. That last point is worth emphasizing, for it suggests a compounding of effects--not only did the spread of postcollege training increase skill disparities in the workforce, but the Internet and desktop computing power allowed the most skilled to accomplish more."

As you can imagine, the part about computers really grabbed my attention. I hate to think that I had something to do with it, but if you think about it, you know it has to be true. Whenever some invention comes along that makes people's lives easier and automates some manual task, those who did the work before now have to look for new kinds of employment.

It also makes sense why we are so highly paid. Yes, we cost a lot, but we are relatively cheap compared to hiring people to do all these manual tasks. All you need is to hire a few software developers to write software in their place, and it can churn out accurate information and in a lot shorter time period.

So what do you guys think of this? How do we offset the negative aspects of computing power? Make everyone computer literate?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Soup kitchen opens for dogs

Moriji — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 17:11:12 GMT

BERLIN (Reuters) - A soup kitchen exclusively for dogs has opened its doors in Berlin providing pets of the homeless and unemployed with a free meal, the director of the establishment said on Friday.

Despite the looming financial crisis, director Claudia Hollm dismissed criticism that it may be more sensible to collect money for humans than for dogs.

"Nowadays people underestimate dogs. They are incredibly important for those who lack social contact with other humans," Hollm told Reuters.

"Making sure dogs don't go hungry is just as important as making sure that people don't starve," she added.

Hollm, and her company "Animal Board," gets sponsorship from companies, including animal food manufacturers.

One woman who uses the free service said she had two dogs, four cats, a rabbit and some guinea pigs.

"Without this animal bread line, I'd probably starve to death," the 20-year old told German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The opening of the soup kitchen follows last month's launch of a new bus service in Berlin for dogs, which shuttles their furry friends to a luxury dog day-care center.

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE49U6JZ20081031?feedType=RSS&feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Clubs are hopping up in Hollywood

Moriji — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:44:52 GMT

Seal, wanna come down for a weekend and party? I don't have a car anymore, but we can take the Metro into Hollywood...

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It was past midnight on an unseasonably balmy Tuesday in Hollywood and the queue to enter the Avalon nightclub stretched nearly half a block down Vine Street, with would-be revelers clamoring to get into a charity benefit in honor of celebrity disc jockey DJ AM.

Nearby, a cluster of fashionistas in skintight get-ups thronged the velvet rope of the Vice Hollywood "ultra lounge." Similar scenes unfolded down the block at the swanky watering hole S Bar and the perpetually paparazzo-surrounded restaurant Katsuya. Available parking spaces were virtually nonexistent, and the streets pulsed with the hustle and flow of youthful carousing.

"It's getting insane," said Matt Colon, a night-life promoter who has been making the rounds here for the last decade. "It's gotten so packed."

Added electro-rapper Red Foo: "Hollywood is one of the hottest scenes in the world right now."

A generation ago, Hollywood was a no man's land after dark -- a wasteland of liquor stores, tattoo parlors and shuttered storefronts that offered few entertainment options.

Though that began to change in the early part of the decade, in the last nine months the neighborhood has seen a sharp rise in both its fortunes and its local reputation, galvanized by an influx of supersized nightclubs (like the Kress on Hollywood Boulevard), celebrity-filled restaurant-club hybrids and glitzy cocktail lounges.

Tinseltown, it seems, is riding high on night life, with developers coming in from New York, Las Vegas and San Diego to grab a stake in the new Hollywood. And the construction of flashy new venues doesn't look as if it's going to stop any time soon.

"People are bullish on Hollywood," said Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who, when he took office in 2001, got behind plans to transform Hollywood into a thriving entertainment district, pushing to encourage street life, reduce crime and foster new businesses.

"It's a feather in everyone's cap to have a place in Hollywood: people in the entertainment industry investing in nightspots, people who run clubs," said Garcetti, whose district covers much of Hollywood.

Especially on weekends, thousands of people under 30 pour into Hollywood from as far away as the Inland Empire, Orange County and the Central Coast. Many come in search of the glamorous lifestyles they see depicted on such TV shows as HBO's "Entourage" and the popular MTV reality series "The Hills," or the inebriated celebrity infamy that plays out on TMZ.com and the pages of Us Weekly.

"There are so many clubs in the Hollywood area. The landscape has changed dramatically," said veteran nightclub operator Ivan Kane, whose early ventures, such as Kane and Deep, began injecting life into the scene in the late '90s.

The current array of after-dark activities traces back to earlier urban renewal efforts in the area, notably the Highlands Hollywood nightclub. Launched in 2001 on the top level of the Hollywood & Highland retail complex, the 30,000-square-foot multilevel venue helped usher in an era of Las Vegas-esque "destination nightspots," clubs built with high-end amenities and overwhelming scale.

The Highlands never quite caught on with clubland's movers and shakers, but it certainly set the stage for Hollywood's upstart super-club the Kress. Since opening this summer, the 38,000-square-foot restaurant and nightclub has been the site of such VIP events as TV Guide's Emmy Awards after-party and a gala held by rap mogul Jermaine Dupri to honor the Black Entertainment Television Awards. Spread out over five floors, the Kress occupies a historic building formerly home to Frederick's of Hollywood.

Kress owner Mike Viscuso spent two years and more than $25 million refitting the building with an octagonal bar, refurbished marble walls, six $100,000 chandeliers, an ornate champagne lounge and a sushi bar. "There's nothing like it in L.A.," Viscuso said, gesturing at the club's panoramic view.

Viscuso, who is credited with helping transform San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter into a night-life mecca, is hardly the only club major-domo under the assumption that size matters. This winter, a glammed-out 13,000-square-foot mega-club called Playhouse is set to open at the site currently occupied by the Fox Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. It's the latest venture from night-life impresario Robert Vinokur, who operated similarly scaled venues in Miami and New York.

"We're going to blend the fun of Miami clubs with the sophistication of New York," Vinokur said. "But we're still working off the Hollywood theme in that we're ushering in a new era of Hollywood glam."

The Kress and Playhouse face stiff competition from established mega-clubs in the neighborhood.

The recently revamped Vanguard is 20,000 square feet, and the Avalon boasts 33,000 square feet of party acreage, including its just-opened lounge, Bardot.

Then there's the threat of recession, which has the potential to hurt larger clubs that depend on "bottle service" -- an expensive trapping of many upscale nightspots in which patrons can buy bottles of liquor instead of ordering individual drinks -- to offset operating expenses. (Entrance fees range from no cover to $25, depending on the venue and event being promoted.) But to hear it from civic leaders and club owners, even in an era when the Dow plunges below 9,000, people in Hollywood still seem to want to party like it's 1999.

The number of "47" licenses, classified as restaurant liquor licenses, issued in three Hollywood ZIP Codes by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control has nearly doubled to 23 this year from 12 in 2007. And that's on top of the approximately 135 bars and restaurants already in the core area bordered by La Brea Avenue to the west, Vine Street to the east, Franklin Avenue to the north and Melrose Avenue to the south.

"Good economy or bad economy, I'm still buying in Hollywood," said the Kress' Viscuso. "Real estate is still selling for $800 to $1,000 a square foot. Downtown, it's less than half of that. And all the synergy from these major developments -- the W [hotel and residences], Cirque du Soleil coming to the Kodak Theatre, the lofts, the other hotels coming in -- it will keep Hollywood alive."

The next large-scale venue in Hollywood? A poolside rooftop club at the W Hollywood managed by one of Las Vegas' best-known night-life fixtures, according to a representative of Gatehouse Capital, a private real estate equity group involved with the W Hollywood project (set to open late next year or in 2010).

According to Garcetti, president of the City Council, the main challenge facing the neighborhood is having too much of a good thing after dark. "I announced a year and a half ago that we didn't want any more new clubs," he said. "You can only have so many, because they poach one another's clientele and all of them begin to suffer."

The city is now trying to encourage growth in non-night-life businesses -- retail, art galleries and more restaurants like Katsuya and the celebrity-owned Beso at Hollywood Boulevard and Ivar Avenue.

In other words, the kind of manicured establishments more typical in West Hollywood or on La Cienega Boulevard between Melrose Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard than the seedy Hollywood of a few years ago.

"To sustain a successful neighborhood, you can't be shuttered by day and have an explosion by night," Garcetti pointed out.

Such concerns weren't high on the priority list for Valerie Stead, a 25-year-old dressed in black spandex pants, a white shirt and a leopard-print bra. On a recent Tuesday, she hit the nightclub Les Deux with three friends.

"The music is always good here, and I like the open space," Stead said on the club's patio. "There are people from all over the place in Hollywood -- that's what makes it cool. We like the glamour."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-et-hollywood2-2008nov02,0,219682.story

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

When Pumpkins Drink

seal — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:58:36 GMT

http://people.tribe.net/8049d455-97d9-424d-bc86-4ac08f106513/photos/db147655-d96b-408c-b54b-3cebdc8893d1

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Sea turtles explore new, urban frontier

Moriji — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:29:22 GMT

Check out what they found in my neighborhood!

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In the foamy chop of the warm-water discharge flowing into the San Gabriel River from a Long Beach power plant, a green sea turtle, wide as a manhole cover, materialized Friday just a few yards from shore.

A few minutes later, an even larger sea turtle surfaced in the murky water near the plant's thicket of steel scaffolding, steam vents and transmission lines.

Green sea turtles usually have tropical haunts -- teeming coral reefs or white sandy beaches where they lay eggs -- but these chunky titans live more than a mile upstream in one of Southern California's most ecologically degraded rivers.

Little is known about the colony of at least six urban sea turtles. But a joint study by the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Aquarium of the Pacific aims to determine, among other things, what they're doing in there.

"Right now, it's a small group of what might be considered oddball turtles," said Peter Dutton, a senior researcher with the fisheries service. "But we have a lot to learn about them. Are they part of a more complex sea-turtle migration dynamic than we ever imagined, or just lost wanderers?"

Scientists also want to know how the federally endangered animals are adapting to the unique challenges they face in the 100-yard-wide river channel at the Los Angeles County-Orange County line, next to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power's Haynes Generating Station. Those challenges include speedboats, water skiers, baited hooks, urban runoff, tons of garbage and harassment.

On Friday, a green sea turtle that had been trapped for weeks in the whirlpools of an intake channel near the power plant a few yards east of the river was rescued by a team of divers hired by the DWP. The 45-pound turtle was taken to the Aquarium of the Pacific, where veterinarians discovered a hook in its rear left flipper and a hook and a 3-inch gash in its front left flipper.

This week, witnesses told federal wildlife authorities that several fishermen had repeatedly tried to snag the animal. One man, they said, hooked onto one of its rear flippers and struggled for about an hour and half trying to bring the animal to shore. Eventually, the fishing line snapped and the turtle swam free.

Aquarium officials said they planned to release the turtle into the river in the vicinity of the power plant.

For years, wildlife authorities have received occasional reports of possible sea turtles in the river from people who fish its brackish stretches north of Alamitos Bay for halibut, sand bass and perch. One of the first scientists to make positive identification was fisheries service biologist Joseph Cordaro.

"I got a telephone call in 1988 from a jogger claiming to have witnessed a startling phenomenon," Cordaro recalled. "He said, 'Do you guys know there is a green sea turtle in the San Gabriel River?' "

Cordaro was skeptical. "I asked him if the turtle had claws on its feet," he said. "If the answer is yes, which it almost always is, it's a freshwater turtle. It saves me a trip."

But the caller insisted it was a sea turtle. "So I went out to see for myself," he said. "The turtle surfaced. I muttered, 'I don't believe what I'm seeing.' "

Nonetheless, subsequent reports of sea turtles cruising the river were dismissed as anecdotal evidence of individual turtles, most likely strays from a colony of sea turtles discovered in the late 1970s near the warm-water discharge of a San Diego Gas & Electric Co. power plant in San Diego Bay.

That colony was initially studied by Margie Stinson, a professor at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. Its matriarch is a 570-pounder whom Stinson named Wrinklebutt.

Stinson initially concluded that six or seven turtles -- including Wrinklebutt -- were attracted to the warm-water effluent of the power plant but spent most of their time elsewhere.

Later studies, however, revealed that the San Diego Bay colony actually includes at least 100 turtles, all of them permanent residents.

"We used to think the San Diego Bay group was the northernmost foraging colony of green sea turtles," Stinson said. "But it looks like the San Gabriel River colony has us beat for that title."

Scientists finally confirmed the existence of the San Gabriel River colony in May.

Green sea turtles, which can grow to 5 feet long and weigh more than 500 pounds, are an ancient species dating back as far as 30 million years.

Biologists suspect that the turtles nest on beaches more than 1,000 miles to the south, on islands off the Pacific coast of Mexico. But that's just a guess at the moment.

In years to come, genetic analysis, satellite telemetry, flipper tagging, vital statistics and daily monitoring could help answer myriad questions:

Do they travel here together or individually? To what genetic stock do they belong? Exactly how many are in the river? What are they eating?

Juvenile turtles are omnivorous. Adults tend to eat vegetation such as eel grass. But local fishermen say that, in the San Gabriel River, green sea turtles of all sizes have been known to attack baited hooks.

Biologists also want to know why turtles that hang around the warm discharge of urban power plants seem to mature at a much faster rate than those residing in their primordial grounds off Hawaii and Australia.

"Instead of taking the usual 30 years to mature in nature," Dutton said, "we believe sea turtles by these year-round sources of warm water are maturing in eight or nine years."

Such mysteries have made a narrow, heavily industrialized strip of the San Gabriel River an improbable epicenter of cutting-edge herpetological research.

On a recent weekday, biologists from the fisheries service and Aquarium of the Pacific gathered at a guardrail overlooking the power plant's effluent stream, which typically runs about 10 degrees warmer than normal river water, and scanned the area.

"Eventually, we'll be recruiting volunteers from the community to help us get a clearer picture of what the animals might be doing here," said Lance Adams, chief veterinarian at the aquarium and leader of a new San Gabriel River sea turtle monitoring project.

As he spoke, stingrays patrolled the shallows near shore. Brown pelicans glided overhead. A spotted sandpiper explored the muddy bank. A large silver fish known as a mullet splashed on the far side of the channel. Trucks rumbled over a nearby bridge.

"There's one!" someone yelled as a sea turtle popped its head above the surface, about 100 feet downstream.

Seconds later, it plunged back into the depths of the dark, slow-moving water.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-turtles30-2008aug30,0,6184508.story

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Nightmare Scenario

Moriji — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 22:29:27 GMT

Now that it's almost certain that Obama will win the presidency, here's what could still happen. Obama wins on November 4. Then on November 5, Bush assumes emergency powers, suspending the constitution. Obama sues Bush, but in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court sides with Bush and annuls the election. They further state that as long as we are at war, the president can rule indefinitely. But as a token of goodwill, Bush suggests a compromise, where he will remain president, but Cheney will be replaced by the true candidate of change, Sarah Palin, and he will agree to step down once she can find her way around the Oval Office and can point out which countries are the good guys and bad guys. The Democrats complain, but being the wimps that they are, they back down once again and agree to cooperate with the president in the spirit of bipartisanship. But as soon as Sarah Palin is sworn in as president in January, she installs Michele Bachmann as head of the Department of Homeland Security, who then promptly begins an investigation into the terrorist ties of various members of Congress. It is then quickly determined that almost every Democrat, including Obama, works for al-Qaeda and they are hauled off to Haliburton's detention center. Joe Lieberman is one of the few Democrats who are cleared and even assists Bachmann root out all the anti-Israeli terrorists in Congress. Hillary Clinton is given a warning, after which she apologizes for supporting Obama and admits that she knew all along that he was a terrorist. The remaining Democrats then promises to keep a vigilant eye on the enemy within and then change their party affiliation to Republican. Etc, etc, you know the rest...

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 3 replies

Christian right intensifies attacks on Obama

Moriji — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 03:22:39 GMT

Seal, you're gonna love this...

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Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts. All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president, according to a new addition to the campaign conversation called "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," produced by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family Action.

The imagined look into the future is part of an escalation in rhetoric from Christian right activists who are trying to paint Obama in the worst possible terms as the campaign heads into the final stretch and polls show the Democrat ahead.

Although hard-edge attacks are common late in campaigns, the tenor of the strikes against Obama illustrate just how worried conservative Christian activists are about what should happen to their causes and influence if Democrats seize control of both Congress and the White House.

"It looks like, walks like, talks like and smells like desperation to me," said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell of Houston, an Obama supporter who backed President Bush in the past two elections. The Methodist pastor called the 2012 letter "false and ridiculous." He said it showed that some Christian conservative leaders fear that Obama's faith-based appeals to voters are working.

Like other political advocacy groups, Christian right groups often raise worries about an election's consequences to mobilize voters. In the early 1980s, for example, direct mail from the Moral Majority warned that Congress would turn a blind eye to "smut peddlers" dangling pornography to children.

"Everyone uses fear in the last part of a campaign, but evangelicals are especially theologically prone to those sorts of arguments," said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University political scientist. "There's a long tradition of predicting doom and gloom."

But the tone this election year is sharper than usual and the volume has turned up as Nov. 4 nears.

Steve Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine, a Pentecostal publication, titled one of his recent weekly e-mails to readers, "Life As We Know It Will End If Obama is Elected."

Strang said gay rights and abortion rights would be strengthened in an Obama administration, taxes would rise and "people who hate Christianity will be emboldened to attack our freedoms."

Separately, a group called the Christian Anti-Defamation Commission has posted a series of videos on its site and on YouTube called "7 Reasons Barack Obama is not a Christian."

The commission accuses Obama of "subtle diabolical deceit" in saying he is Christian, while he believes that people can be saved through other faiths.

But among the strongest pieces this year is Focus on the Family Action's letter which has been posted on the group's Web site and making the e-mail rounds. Signed by "A Christian from 2012," it claims a series of events could logically happen based on the group's interpretation of Obama's record, Democratic Party positions, recent court rulings and other trends.

Among the claims:

• A 6-3 liberal majority Supreme Court that results in rulings like one making gay marriage the law of the land and another forcing the Boy Scouts to "hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys." (In the imagined scenario, The Boy Scouts choose to disband rather than obey).

• A series of domestic and international disasters based on Obama's "reluctance to send troops overseas." That includes terrorist attacks on U.S. soil that kill hundreds, Russia occupying the Baltic states and Eastern European countries including Poland and the Czech Republic, and al-Qaida overwhelming Iraq.

• Nationalized health care with long lines for surgery and no access to hospitals for people over 80.

The goal was to "articulate the big picture," said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior director of public policy for Focus on the Family Action. "If it is a doomsday picture, then it's a realistic picture," she said.

One of the clear targets is younger evangelicals who might be considering Obama. The letter posits that young evangelicals provide the margin that let Obama defeat John McCain. But Margaret Feinberg, a Denver-area evangelical author, predicted failure.

"Young evangelicals are tired — like most people at this point in the election — and rhetoric which is fear-based, strong-arms the listener, and states opinion as fact will only polarize rather than further the informed, balanced discussion that younger voters are hungry for," she said.

In an interview, Strang said there are fewer state ballot measures to motivate conservative voters this election year and that the financial meltdown is distracting some voters from the abortion issue. But he said a last-minute push by conservative Christians in 2004 was key to Bush's re-election and predicted they could play the same role in 2008.

Kim Conger, a political scientist at Iowa State University, said a late push for evangelical voters did help Bush in 2004, "but it is a very different thing than getting people excited about John McCain," even with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick.

Phil Burress, head of the Ohio-based Citizens for Community Values, said the dynamics were quite different in 2004, when conservative Christians spent some energy calling Democrat John Kerry a flip-flopper but were mostly motivated by enthusiasm for George W. Bush.

Now, there is less excitement about McCain than fear of an Obama presidency, Burress said.

"This reminds me of when I was a school kid, when I had to go out in the hall and bury my head in my hands because of the atom bomb," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081025/ap_on_el_pr/christian_right_attacks

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Ecological credit crunch

DevastatorJr — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:06:59 GMT

Ecological credit crunch potentially more damaging than financial crisis, says WWF
By Paul Eccleston
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 29/10/2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/29/eawwf129.xml

The world is in the grip of an ecological credit crunch potentially far more damaging than the financial crisis, conservationists have warned.

Alistair McGowan on the world's ecological overdraught
Environment damage of rich countries on poor
Credit crisis is time to act on climate change, says Lord Stern
The Earth's natural resources are being used up to 30 per cent faster than they can be replaced in a reckless environmental spending spree, according to a WWF report.

As a result half the countries in the world are in ecological debt and unless the trend is reversed by 2030 it will take the equivalent of two planets to keep pace with demand.

The WWF Living Planet report, produced every two years, provides a stock take of natural resources and an update on the health of the planet's living systems.

It warns world leaders that they need to tackle the problems of depleted eco systems in the same way as they have co-ordinated efforts to revive financial institutions.

WWF international director general James Leape said people - whether they live in the forest or in big cities - depend on the services provided free by natural systems but the resources are being used up faster than they can be replenished.

"The recent downturn in the global economy is a stark reminder of the consequences of living beyond our means. But the possibility of financial recession pales in comparison to the looming ecological credit crunch," he said.

"Just as reckless spending is causing recession so reckless consumption is depleting the world's natural capital to a point where we are endangering our future prosperity."

The Living Planet report claims that species and wildlife are being pushed to extinction and that since 1970 there has been a 30 per cent decline in the wildlife populations of measured species mostly because of damage caused decades ago in temperate northern regions.

But now tropical zones are suffering and wildlife numbers have been cut by 50 per cent in 35 years mainly because of deforestation and loss of habitat.

Three-quarters of the world's population are living in countries that are ecological debtors and consuming more than their land can produce and 50 countries are slipping into a state of permanent or seasonal water loss.

"Most of us are propping up our current lifestyles and our economic growth by drawing -and increasingly overdrawing - on the ecological capital of other countries," Mr Leape added.

The report said fossil fuels and the need for land are responsible for most of humanity's footprint which underlined the threat of climate change.

The people of the US and the United Arab Emirates have the biggest ecological footprint while Malawi and Afghanistan the smallest.

The UK's national ecological footprint is the 15th biggest in the world, and is the same size as that of 33 African countries put together, WWF said.

A Chinese person has an ecological footprint equivalent to 2.1 hectares per person while an American needs 9.4 hectares and a Briton 5.3 hectares to support their lifestyle.

On average each person needs 1.24m litres of water annually but in the US the average use is 2.48m litres and in the Yemen 619,000 litres.

But the report, produced with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and the Global Footprint Netwrok (GFN), claims that it is not too late to reverse the ecological credit crunch by more efficient energy use, cutting greenhouse gases and by investing and preserving the Earth's ecosystems.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 10 replies

Are young voters flaking out again?

DevastatorJr — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:51:36 GMT

Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 14:20 EDT

Are young voters flaking out again?
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/?last_story=/politics/war_room/2008/10/30/young_voters/

Reports of massive early voter turnout have been so rosy for the Democrats that the election has started to feel over before November even arrives. But there’s a fly in the ointment: Reports from several swing states indicate that, despite the surge in African American turnout, there's been no similar phenomenon among young voters, who could be key to Barack Obama's chances.

In Florida, the Orlando Sentinel analyzed records of early voters and determined that, while the under-35 set constitutes 25 percent of the state’s electorate, it only accounts for 15 percent of early voters thus far. Likewise, Nevada’s overall early turnout through Sunday was 25 percent, but stood at only 14 percent for those under 30.

George Mason University professor Michael McDonald, who’s been watching early voting closely all over the country, talked to Salon about the data he's seen from North Carolina. "From the very beginning of when I was tracking this last week, the numbers [in North Carolina] have moved in the direction of more young people voting, but it’s still lower than the number of young people voting in 2004," McDonald said. "I don’t know where these young people are. Is their absentee ballot off in the mail? Are they waiting to show up on Election Day?"

There are two possibilities. The first is that the seemingly across-the-board increase in turnout simply doesn’t apply to the youth vote, and this most Obama-philic of age groups will, as always, be underrepresented in the electorate. The second is that young voters are indeed planning to turn out, but will do it on Election Day.

Nobody knows for sure which of these is happening, but the second seems more plausible, in large part because early voting is really directed at older people. Plus, the Obama organization managed to turn out young voters in the primaries -- it’s not clear why they wouldn’t be able to do so now.

― Gabriel Winant

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Exxon Mobil: Biggest profit in U.S. history

Moriji — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:54:27 GMT

And I keep seeing their commercials everywhere, about how they are doing this and that for the environment... why don't they put all this money into research instead? Fucking bastards...

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Largest U.S. oil company surges past analyst estimates to post net income of $14.83 billion.

Exxon Mobil Corp. set a quarterly profit record for a U.S. company Thursday, surging past analyst estimates.

Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500), the leading U.S. oil company, said its third-quarter net profit was $14.83 billion, or $2.86 per share, up from $9.41 billion, or $1.70, a year earlier. That profit included $1.45 billion in special items.

The company's prior record was $11.68 billion in the second quarter of 2008.

The latest quarter's net income equaled $1,865.69 per second, nearly $400 a second more than the prior mark.

The company said its revenue totaled $137.7 billion in the third quarter.

Analysts had expected Exxon to report a 40% jump in earnings to $2.38 per share, or net income of $12.2 billion, and a 28% surge in revenue to $131.13 billion, according to a consensus of estimates compiled by Thomson Reuters.

Exxon's stock price slipped by nearly 2% in morning trading.

The company's earnings were buoyed by oil prices, which reached record highs in the quarter before declining. Oil prices were trading at $140.97 a barrel at the beginning of the third quarter, and had fallen to $100.64 at the end.

Compare that to 2007, when prices traded at $71.09 a barrel at the beginning of the third quarter, and rose to $81.66 by the end.

Exxon's special charges include the gain of $1.62 billion from the sale of a German natural gas company. It also includes the $170 million charge in interest related to punitive damages from the Valdez oil spill off the Alaskan coast in 1989.

The Irving, Texas-based company said it lost $50 million, before taxes, in oil revenue because of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike. The company expects damages related to these hurricanes to reduce fourth-quarter earnings by $500 million.

Despite the surge in profit, Exxon said oil production was down 8% in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.

The company also said it is spending more money to locate new sources of oil. Exxon said it spent $6.9 billion on oil exploration in the third quarter, a jump of 26% from the same period last year.

Phil Weiss, analyst for Argus Research, said he doesn't expect Exxon to break any more profit records in future quarters.

"I don't expect the fourth quarter to be nearly as good as the third because of lower oil prices," said Weiss.

He also said that demand for gasoline is falling, which could impact Exxon and other oil companies.

Earlier Thursday, Europe's leading oil company, Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSA), reported a 22% gain in net profit for the third quarter, to $8.45 billion. The company said sales rose 45% to $132 billion.

Exxon is the second-largest company in the Fortune 500 in terms of annual sales, behind Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, Fortune 500).

Exxon's stock price has fallen about 20% so far this year, The S&P 500, of which it is a member, has fallen about 36%. To top of page
First Published: October 30, 2008: 8:17 AM ET

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/30/news/companies/exxon_earnings/index.htm?cnn=yes

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply

Acute economic crisis may cure the nation's chronic materialism

Moriji — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:23:04 GMT

It's a stat we hear time and again: Consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy. It was the reason President Bush famously (or infamously) urged Americans shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to keep shopping and "get down to Disney World in Florida."

Take that, Osama!

"Our whole economy is designed to convince people that they want more," said David Colander, an economics professor at Middlebury College in Vermont. "Nobody is asking the big question: How much of a consumer society do we really want to be?"

Since the end of World War II, consumer spending has consistently represented more than 60% of U.S. gross domestic product, according to the Commerce Department. The percentage reached 70% in 2002 and is now almost 71%.

U.S. retail sales fell in September for the third straight month -- the first time this has happened since the government started tracking such data in 1992. The holiday shopping season is expected to be the worst in years. But some forecasters are predicting that spending will pick up by the middle of next year as consumers shake off the recession blues.

Colander said Americans' buy-buy-buy mentality wouldn't be troubling if it were accompanied by a higher savings rate and lower borrowing. But that's not the case.

We set aside precious little -- the savings rate is now almost 3% after sticking close to 1% for the last three years -- and we're carrying nearly $2.6 trillion in nonmortgage consumer debt.

Meanwhile, much of what we buy comes from other countries, while those nations tend not to buy as much of our stuff. The U.S. trade deficit topped $700 billion last year.

This means the U.S. economy relies more heavily on domestic consumption than do export-oriented economies. So when American consumers tighten their belts, the home front gets slammed.

In Europe, consumer spending accounts for about 60% of economic activity, according to the United Nations. In Japan, it's closer to 55%. And in mega-exporter China, it's around 35%.

A greater proportion of economic activity in those parts of the world comes from investment in factories and other big-ticket splurges, as well as government expenditures. That doesn't make these economies fireproof. But it can give them an increased measure of flexibility when times are tough, at least for the short haul. Longer term, their reliance on U.S. consumers' love of shopping makes them vulnerable to our spending reductions.

Lee Ohanian, an economics professor at UCLA, said there was nothing inherently wrong with consumer spending accounting for almost three-quarters of the economy.

"Every economy is the same," he said. "Whether you have a little economic activity or a lot, ultimately it all comes down to consumers. The U.S. is by far the most stable economy in the world, and a big reason for that is consumer spending."

If you believe that such high levels of consumption will continue -- thus creating wealth for companies and shareholders, and fueling economic expansion -- then you're probably not losing any sleep about the nation's financial health.

On the other hand, if you believe that such high levels of consumption are unsustainable, and that sooner or later the American people won't want more stuff, or won't be able to afford it, where does that leave us?

"That's the big question," said Meghan O'Brien, an economist at Iowa State University who focuses on consumer behavior. "It's in our culture to spend a lot, and it has been for a long time. It would be a significant change if Americans suddenly decided all that spending was bad."

Such a cultural shift would entail a wholesale reinvention of how we do business, and would almost certainly result in numerous companies either cutting back or folding. Millions of people could be thrown out of work.

"It would be like a perfect storm for the retail industry," O'Brien said.

A more likely scenario, she said, is a gradual shift of values, with Americans putting greater emphasis on "green" products and businesses, and on no longer spending what we don't have. This transition would favor companies that make things people genuinely need as opposed to what people want. It would entail a newfound emphasis on long-term satisfaction rather than instant gratification.

"Can a green economy be America's next driving force?" O'Brien asked. "The potential is there, but it requires a complete change in how we look at money."

The greening of the U.S. economy won't happen any time soon, and not ever if the private sector has anything to say about it. Businesses have a lot invested in our chronic materialism.

Maybe they should embrace the current slump as an opportunity for strengthening the country's long-term health rather than a short-term hit to their bottom lines.

"We need to get the percentage lower," said Colander of Middlebury College. "Consumer spending shouldn't be this much of the economy. But it won't be easy. It will be like an addict going through withdrawal."

Many addicts embarking on recovery programs begin with the Serenity Prayer: "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

Next time you're at the mall, maybe you could give it a try.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus26-2008oct26,0,1269281.column

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 6 replies

Plan on increasingly hot summers in LA

seal — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:28:51 GMT

Cool Summer, Warm Future: Extreme Heat Days Increase For Southern California
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080929094945.htm

ScienceDaily (Sep. 29, 2008) — Summer 2008 in Southern California goes down in the books as cooler than normal. The thermometer in downtown Los Angeles topped 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32.2 degrees Celsius) just once in July, August and the first two-thirds of September. But don't expect this summer's respite from the usual blistering heat to continue in the years to come, cautions a group of NASA and university scientists: The long-term forecast calls for increased numbers of scorching days and longer, more frequent heat waves.

One hundred years of daily temperature data in Los Angeles were analyzed by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.; the University of California, Berkeley; and California State University, Los Angeles. They found that the number of extreme heat days (above 90 degrees Fahrenheit or 32.2 degrees Celsius in downtown Los Angeles) has increased sharply over the past century. A century ago, the region averaged about two such days a year; today the average is more than 25. In addition, the duration of heat waves (two or more extreme heat days in a row) has also soared, from two-day events a century ago to one- to two-week events today.

"We found an astonishing trend – a dramatic increase in the number of heat waves per year," says Arbi Tamrazian, lead author of the study, and a senior at the University of California, Berkeley.

Tamrazian and his colleagues analyzed data from Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Calif., and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in downtown Los Angeles. They tracked the number of extreme heat days and heat waves from 1906 to 2006. The team found that the average annual maximum daytime temperature in Los Angeles has risen by 5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) over the past century, and the minimum nighttime temperature has increased nearly as much. They also found that heat waves lasting six or more days have been occurring regularly since the 1970s. More recently, two-week heat waves have become more common.

The team forecasts that in coming decades, we can expect 10- to 14-day heat waves to become the norm. And because these will be hotter heat waves, they will be more threatening to public health.

"The bottom line is that we're definitely going to be living in a warmer Southern California," says study co-author Bill Patzert, a JPL climatologist and oceanographer. "Summers as we now know them are likely to begin in May and continue into the fall. What we call 'scorcher' days today will be normal tomorrow. Our snow pack will be less, our fire seasons will be longer, and unhealthy air alerts will be a summer staple.

"We'll still get the occasional cool year like this year," Patzert continued, "but the trend is still towards more extreme heat days and longer heat waves."

So what's behind this long-term warming trend? Patzert says global warming due to increasing greenhouse gases is responsible for some of the overall heating observed in Los Angeles and the rest of California. Most of the increase in heat days and length of heat waves, however, is due to a phenomenon called the "urban heat island effect."

Heat island-induced heat waves are a growing concern for urban and suburban dwellers worldwide. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, studies around the world have shown that this effect makes urban areas from 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (1 to 6 degrees Celsius) warmer than their surrounding rural areas. Patzert says this effect is steadily warming Southern California, though more modestly than some larger urban areas around the world.

"Dramatic urbanization has resulted in an extreme makeover for Southern California, with more homes, lawns, shopping centers, traffic, freeways and agriculture, all absorbing and retaining solar radiation, making our megalopolis warmer,” Patzert said.

These trends may capture the attention of utility companies and public health officials. "We'll be using more power and water to stay cool," says study co-author Steve LaDochy of California State University, Los Angeles. "Extreme heat, both day and night, will become more and more dangerous, even deadly."

The findings are published in the July 2008 issue of the Yearbook of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers. JPL oceanographer and climate scientist Josh Willis was also a co-author on the research.

To learn more about NASA's Earth science missions, visit the Global Climate Change website at http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

It's over

Moriji — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:20:26 GMT

Guys, the race is over. McCain is toast. McCain can't close the gap and he's running out of attacks to use. I don't usually come and say something like this unless it's almost a certainty, but I've looked at the numbers and the trend and the chances of McCain winning is so small now it's time to just come out and say it. McCain is playing defense in all the red states that Bush won. Not only that, but Virginia, North Carolina and even North Dakota are battleground states now. Not even Bill Clinton had such a favorable looking map. I also looked close at some of the other red states that are "safe" for McCain, and even there it's bad news for McCain. McCain is only ahead of Obama by 5 points in Obama. That's not a helluvalot. Louisiana it's only 7 points. Georgia, Arkansas and Kentucky it's 8 points. With such a poor showing, and the fact that Obama has more money and Dems are doing a better job of registering voters, it will take a great miracle for John McCain to overcome the odds and win. And he knows this. There's been mutterings from him recently that if he doesn't win, he'll just go back to Arizona. I think he's come to the realization that his chances of winning the White House are slim. Not to mention, the perception out there (including from Republicans) is that Obama is going to win. And the truth is that often perception is reality.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 21 replies

GOP Group Head Calls Obama A "Muslim Socialist"

Moriji — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 08:35:30 GMT

County and state GOP officials criticized the head of a New Mexico Republican women's group for calling Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama a "Muslim socialist" and stating that "Muslims are our enemies."

Marcia Stirman, the head of the Republican Women of Otero County, will be asked to step down, Sassy Tinling, the chairwoman of the Otero County Republican Party, said Wednesday.

In a letter published Tuesday in the Alamogordo Daily News, Stirman wrote that she believes "Muslims are our enemies." Stirman told The Associated Press in an interview: "I don't trust them at all. They've sworn across the world that they are our enemies. Why we're trying to elect one is beside me."

Obama, an American-born Christian, has fought false rumors that he is a Muslim throughout the presidential campaign.

Tinling told KOAT-TV that Stirman's opinions do not reflect those of the county GOP or the Republican Women of Otero County. The executive director of the Republican Party of New Mexico, Matthew Kennicott, has said Stirman does not speak for the GOP and that her comments do not reflect its values and beliefs.

Stirman, 56, an interior decorator, wrote in the letter titled "Why I'm a Republican" the 16 reasons for her party affiliation.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/23/gop-group-head-calls-obam_n_137282.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Afghan student gets 20 years instead of death for blasphemy

Moriji — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:42:57 GMT

An Afghanistan appeals court overturns the death sentence for Parwiz Kambakhsh, who circulated an article about the rights of women under Islam.

Reported from Kabul, Afghanistan -- In a case that has illustrated this country's drift toward a more radically conservative brand of Islam as well as the fragility of its legal system, an appeals court today overturned a death sentence for a student convicted of blasphemy but sentenced him instead to 20 years in prison.

The 24-year-old student, Parwiz Kambakhsh, ran afoul of Afghan authorities last year when he circulated an article about the rights of women under Islam after downloading it from the Internet. He was studying at the time in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif, where he also worked as a part-time journalist for local papers.

Arrested by security police and initially held without charges, he was eventually tried on blasphemy charges, convicted and sentenced to death. Tuesday's ruling by a three-judge appeals-court panel was a blow to human-rights groups and advocates of press freedom who have championed Kambakhsh's cause.

International organizations, including the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said the case pointed to a troubling lack of respect for freedom of speech and individual liberties in Afghanistan, nearly seven years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban movement, which espouses a harsh interpretation of Islam.

Religious conservatives had welcomed the earlier sentence against Kambakhsh. After the death penalty was decreed in his January trial, public demonstrations were held in support of the verdict, and some prominent clerics publicly declared he deserved to be executed for violating the teachings of Islam.

Kambakhsh can still appeal to the Supreme Court, but that will be his final recourse. The student has insisted on his innocence.

"I don't accept the court's decision," he told the Associated Press as he left the courtroom after Tuesday's ruling. "It is an unfair decision."

Kambakhsh's supporters have said the case should be thrown out because the previous trial was held in secret and he was denied legal representation -- an occurrence that is not uncommon in Afghan courts. Reformers say the case exemplifies the continuing failure of the Afghan government to establish a free and independent judiciary. Family members have said the student was beaten and threatened with death until he signed a confession and that local journalists who expressed support for him were warned they would be arrested if they persisted.

Kambakhsh's journalist brother, Yaqoub Ibrahimi, has said he believes the blasphemy charges were a pretext and that he himself was the authorities' real target because of articles he wrote about abuses by local warlords and militias.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghanistan22-2008oct22,0,7466691.story

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 4 replies

Reasons to vote republican

seal — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:08:10 GMT

With all the slime being tossed by the Rabid Dog from Alaska, I thought I'd pass this on... Not that there isn't a similar one for the Democrats I'm sure!!!

Reasons to Vote Republican

If you believe that the US, and Israel for that matter, can violate international treaties while holding other nations to abide strictly by the provisions of such pacts, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the US can continue to sustain and increase its nuclear weapons storehouse after agreeing to reduce it, and at the same time keep other sovereign nations from developing their own similar capabilities, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe we should continue to stack the Supreme Court and lower level federal courts with activist judges who decide cases based upon ideology rather than law and the constitution, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe this nation can and should continue to amass skyrocketing debt, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that what consenting adults do sexually and in private, should be the subject of government intervention, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that two adults, no matter their gender, who choose to make a long-term commitment to each other, do not deserve government consideration of that commitment if they are of the same sex, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the tenets of a particular religion should be imposed on US citizens who do not share that particular religious belief or those tenets, other wise known as theocracy, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that corporations should be considered as individuals under the law, with the same rights and privileges as individual citizens, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that federal tax regulations should provide preferential treatment to those of great wealth, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the public education system should provide only a very basic education and largely only to those who cannot afford private education, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the US should abandon its long and successful tradition of filling its defense needs by using citizen-soldiers and instead should hire paid mercenaries, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the US should occupy and maintain long-term military bases in many foreign countries while not allowing other countries to do the same in our country, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe in free trade agreements that ignore or have unenforceable human rights provisions and that threaten US jobs, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that hard-working and moral individual immigrants should be held responsible for the technical illegality of their presence here, rather than those who encourage them to immigrate and employ them, or their home countries that do nothing to prevent them from coming, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe the government has no role in managing the country’s economic system and that corporations should control federal policy in their areas of interest, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that federal employees should be hired chiefly on their ideological biases rather then their professional competence, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that federal regulation of industry is an intrusion on corporate rights rather than a necessary and proper role for government in a complex society, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that federal elections and politicking should go on uncontrollably and be dependent exclusively on available funds to sustain them, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the federal budget should allocate about 45 times as much to its defense (offense?) department than to its diplomatic efforts, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the US should not pay its agreed share of the UN budget, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that credible science should be subverted when it conflicts with political interests, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that federal responsibilities for infrastructure investment should be ignored, such as those for in highways and bridges, water safety, food and drug safety, etc., then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that health care should be strictly the responsibility of the individual and largely remain privatized, unlike any other developed nation, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that reducing the national debt is unimportant and that our annual commitment to doing so should be continuously disregarded as that debt levels grows exponentially, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the news media should be controlled entirely by a few corporate interests, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that access to news and facts relative to government operations should be kept secret and media representatives, and thus we citizens, denied access to such data based upon political loyalties, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that Eisenhower was wrong in warning the nation about the dangers of the military-industrial complex, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe government deregulation of industry has been a good thing, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that “swift-boating” has contributed positively to our political system and should go on uncontrolled, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the number of minorities and poor who end up in our prisons is a reflection mostly of those individuals rather than of the inadequacies in our economic and judicial system, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that where, or if, a person goes to church, or professes certain religious beliefs, should be a prerequisite for holding public office, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that capital punishment is necessary, moral, and administered fairly and humanely (as if it could be), then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that taxpayers should bail out private corporations that have been irresponsibly and/or incompetently run, all the while allowing executives of those same companies to escape or go on in their positions while receiving exorbitant salaries and benefits, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that, for the most part, unions have been bad for this country, and that the good will of company management is sufficient to protect worker rights, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that privatizing most government services, from education to the military and intelligence activities, will do anything beneficial without continuing to sacrifice professionalism, increase costs, and destroy accountability, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that such things as reproductive rights and abortion should be determined based upon certain religious convictions rather than upon a constitutional and legal basis, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that oil companies should reap millions of profits while foregoing responsibility for investment in bio-friendly energy, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the ecology will take care of itself, that nature is here for our exploitation, and that global warming and the accompanying severe climate implications are simply natural and are uncomplicated by human behaviors, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that peace and justice are simply “feel-good” terms and that maintaining “the world’s strongest military,” thus creating extreme “terror” amongst potential global competitors and enemies, is our most important national obligation and the primary way to contain and eliminate international “terrorists,” then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that not supporting an illegal, immoral, unjustified war is the same thing as not supporting our troops, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe whether the troop surge had a positive impact in Iraq is more important than whether the invasion and occupation of that sovereign country was legal, justified, or moral in the first place, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that the United States is responsible for militarily challenging all threats in the world, regardless of whether in doing so it violates treaties or international law, and with or without allies, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe the United States has an entitlement, including military action, to gain access to oil anywhere in the world and irrespective of the sovereignty of the nation where that oil lies, then you should vote Republican.

If you believe that national military service should staffed primarily by the poor and desperate in our society, or handled by paid and largely unprincipled mercenaries [and who are legally immune from prosecution], and that the rest of us should make little or no sacrifice in times of national challenge, then you should vote Republican.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Arctic ice 'is at tipping point'

Moriji — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 09:13:21 GMT

Now go back to sleep...

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Arctic sea ice has shrunk to the second smallest extent since satellite records began, US scientists have revealed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) says that the ice-covered area has fallen below its 2005 level, which was the second lowest on record.

Melting has occurred earlier in the year than usual, meaning that the iced area could become even smaller than last September, the lowest recorded.

Researchers say the Arctic is now at a climatic "tipping point".

"We could very well be in that quick slide downwards in terms of passing a tipping point," said Mark Serreze, a senior scientist at the Colorado-based NSIDC.

"It's tipping now. We're seeing it happen now," he told the Associated Press news agency.

Under covered

The area covered by ice on 26 August measured 5.26 million sq km (2.03 million sq miles), just below the 2005 low of 5.32 million sq km (2.05 million sq).

But the 2005 low came in late September; and with the 2008 graph pointing downwards, the NSIDC team believes last year's record could still be broken even though air temperatures, both in the Arctic and globally, have been lower than last year.

Last September, the ice covered just 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles), the smallest extent seen since satellite imaging began 30 years ago. The 1980 figure was 7.8 million sq km (3 million sq miles).

Most of the cover consists of relatively thin ice that formed within a single winter and melts more easily than ice that accumulated over many years.

Irrespective of whether the 2007 record falls in the next few weeks, the long-term trend is obvious, scientists said; the ice is declining more sharply than even a decade ago, and the Arctic region will progressively turn to open water in summers.

A few years ago, scientists were predicting ice-free Arctic summers by about 2080.

Then computer models started projecting earlier dates, around 2030 to 2050; and some researchers now believe it could happen within five years.

That will bring economic opportunities, including the chance to drill for oil and gas. Burning that oil and gas would increase levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere still further.

The absence of summer ice would have impacts locally and globally.

The iconography of polar bears unable to find ice is by now familiar; but other species, including seals, would also face drastic changes to their habitat, as would many Arctic peoples.

Globally, the Arctic melt will reinforce warming because open water absorbs more of the Sun's energy than ice does.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7585645.stm

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 25 replies

Buffett: Bailout may not be big enough

Moriji — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:15:12 GMT

Investment guru says $700 billion bailout is crucial, but that it may not be large enough to solve the credit crisis.

Warren Buffett said Thursday that it is crucial to the global economy that the controversial $700 billion Wall Street bailout passes, but warned that the pricetag may have to rise.

Buffett also proposed that the U.S. Treasury Department and private investors team up to buy the troubled mortgage assets behind the crisis gripping markets worldwide.

"If we don't get [this] solved next week, I may go back to delivering papers," said Buffett during an appearance at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in Aviara, Calif.

Buffett, the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A), likened the recent turmoil in the markets to an "economic Pearl Harbor" and said that a quick response is needed.

"We've never seen anything like this where perfectly credit-worthy companies can't get funds," he said.

He didn't estimate how much more money would be needed to buy enough toxic mortgage investments in order to create a more stable market and get credit flowing. On Wednesday, the Senate passed a $700 billion bailout package. The House is expected to vote on the revised bill on Friday, four days after rejecting an earlier version.

Buffett suggested that a partnership between Treasury and private investors to buy the assets.

"One easy way to do part of the program is to say to anybody - hedge fund operators, Wall Street firms, or anybody else - that the Treasury will lend you 80% of the purchase cost of a bunch of distressed assets," he said, explaining the concept of his proposal. The investors benefit from borrowing at lower rates, but Treasury gets first claims any returns from the sale of those assets before investors would get a penny.

"Now you have someone with 20% skin in the game," he explained. "Believe me I won't be overpaying if I'm buying with that kind of leverage. And you have someone [the investors] to manage the assets to the extent they need to be managed."

Buffett said that the bill that passed the Senate Wednesday evening isn't perfect, but that it's crucial to prevent the global economy from grinding to a halt. He then warned it will take a while to work and that the economy is going to struggle even with its passage.

"Anyone who thinks this bill is a panacea is [making] a mistake," he said. "Without it, it's a disaster."

http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/02/news/newsmakers/buffett.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008100212

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 13 replies

My Karma Sucks

Moriji — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 05:20:55 GMT

So I was involved in this major freeway accident today. My car is totaled. I am so fucked. You think I'm gonna be able to get a new car loan in this economy?

Why do you think this happened to me? Like Seal warned me a while ago, something could happen and you end up fucked. Well, it happened today. What freakin' timing.

Details to come later...

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 13 replies

Palin vs. Biden

DevastatorJr — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 13:36:09 GMT

What'd you think? More importantly, what do you think of the media coverage?

It just amazes me that Palin can spout off these obviously rotely memorized cliches and empty vagueries and the media calls it "folksiness".

And does anybody like being referred to as "Joe Six Pack", or being reduced to a stereotypical "Hockey Mom", even if you do drink six packs and your kids play hockey? Are there people out there who consider that kind of pigeon-holing a compliment?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 15 replies

Jewish "Modesty Patrols" Sow Fear In Israel

Moriji — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:42:46 GMT

So we've all heard of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism... but now we are seeing a rise of Jewish fundamentalism... these monotheistic religions just keeping getting better and better...

-----

JERUSALEM — In Israel's ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, where the rule of law sometimes takes a back seat to the rule of God, zealots are on a campaign to stamp out behavior they consider unchaste. They hurl stones at women for such "sins" as wearing a red blouse, and attack stores selling devices that can access the Internet.

In recent weeks, self-styled "modesty patrols" have been accused of breaking into the apartment of a Jerusalem woman and beating her for allegedly consorting with men. They have torched a store that sells MP4 players, fearing devout Jews would use them to download pornography.

"These breaches of purity and modesty endanger our community," said 38-year-old Elchanan Blau, defending the bearded, black-robed zealots. "If it takes fire to get them to stop, then so be it."

Many ultra-Orthodox Jews are dismayed by the violence, but the enforcers often enjoy quiet approval from rabbis eager to protect their own reputations as guardians of the faith, community members say. And while some welcome anything that keeps secular culture out of their cloistered world, others feel terrorized, knowing that the mere perception of impropriety could ruin their lives.

"There are eyes and ears all over the place, very similar to what you hear about in countries like Iran," says Israeli-American novelist Naomi Ragen, an observant Jew who has chronicled the troubles that confront some women living in the ultra-Orthodox world.

The violence has already deepened the antagonism between the 600,000 haredim, or God-fearing, and the secular majority, which resents having religious rules dictated to them.

Religious vigilantes operate in a society that has granted their community influence well beyond its numbers _ partly out of a commitment to revive the great centers of Jewish scholarship destroyed in the Holocaust, but also because the Orthodox are perennial king-makers in Israeli coalition politics.

Thus public transport is grounded for the Jewish Sabbath each Saturday, and the rabbis control all Jewish marriage and divorce in Israel.

In recent years, however, the haredim have eased up on their long campaign to impose their rules on secular areas, and nowadays many restaurants and suburban shopping centers are open on the Sabbath.

These days, most vigilante attacks take place in the zealots' own neighborhoods.

Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the modesty police are not an organized phenomenon, just rogue enforcers carrying out isolated attacks. But Israel's Justice Ministry used the term "modesty patrols" in an indictment against a man accused of assaulting the Jerusalem woman.

The unidentified, 31-year-old woman had left the ultra-Orthodox fold after getting divorced, according to the indictment filed by the Jerusalem district attorney's office. The indictment said her assailant tried to get her to leave her apartment in a haredi neighborhood in Jerusalem by gagging, beating and threatening to kill her. He was paid $2,000 for the attack, it said.

A 17-year-old who moved to Israel from New York five years ago said she was hospitalized after being attacked with pepper spray by a crowd of men outraged that she was walking down a Jerusalem street with boys.

"They can burn in hell," said the girl, who would identify herself only as Rivka.

She lives in Beit Shemesh, a town outside Jerusalem where the vigilantism has been particularly violent. Zealots there have thrown rocks and spat at women, and set fire to trash bins to protest impiety. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly _ spelled out as closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts.

The state, catering to religious sensitivities, subsidizes gender-segregated bus routes that service religious neighborhoods. Ragen and several other women challenged the practice in Israel's Supreme Court after an Orthodox Canadian woman in her 50s told police she was kicked, slapped, pushed to the floor and spat upon by men for refusing to move to the back of the bus.

Another Beit Shemesh girl, who asked to be identified only as Esther, said zealots threw rocks, cursed and spat at a friend for wearing a red blouse _ taboo because the color attracts attention.

Yitzhak Polack, a 50-year-old Jerusalem teacher, is one of those who deplore such behavior.

"They are stupid troublemakers who are bringing shame and disgrace on this holy community," he said.

But the rabbis are afraid to condemn them, says Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, another community member.

"They can't come out against zealots who champion modesty. Here and there they write against violence, but the militants ultimately set the tone," he said.

Stores are targeted too.

In August, a Jerusalem man was placed under house arrest on suspicion he set fire to a store in a haredi district of the city that sold MP4 players.

"It started about six months ago. They would come into the store, about 15 of them at a time, screaming, 'This store burns souls!' and they would throw merchandise on the floor and threaten customers," said 31-year-old Aaron Gold, a haredi worker at the Space electronic store.

One Friday night, just before the Sabbath was about to begin, "they smashed a window, doused the place with gasoline and lit a match," Gold said.

Now, a big sign behind the counter says, "All products sold in this store are under rabbinical supervision. By order of the rabbis, no MP4s are sold here."

Clothing stores that sell clothes regarded as provocative have been vandalized, and bleach thrown at merchandise.

Suspicion is all that's needed to spark an attack.

Girls have been expelled from school after being seen talking to boys, a punishment that ruins their marriage prospects.

"It could be very innocent; she could be talking to her brother," Ragen said. But once thrown out of school, "no one _ NO ONE _ will take you in," she added.

In one case, the violence reached the highest levels of haredi society.

Three years ago, a son of Israel's Sephardi chief rabbi, Shlomo Amar, was accused of kidnapping a 17-year-old boy, beating him at knifepoint and terrorizing him with snarling dogs because he had sought the attentions of the accused's unchaperoned sister.

The son was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail.

His sister married a different suitor the following year.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/04/jewish-modesty-patrols-so_n_131960.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

'Space elevator' would take humans into orbit

Moriji — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 00:16:50 GMT

A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating.

The project is a "space elevator," and some experts now believe that the concept is well within the bounds of possibility -- maybe even within our lifetimes.

A conference discussing developments in space elevator concepts is being held in Japan in November, and hundreds of engineers and scientists from Asia, Europe and the Americas are working to design the only lift that will take you directly to the one hundred-thousandth floor.

Despite these developments, you could be excused for thinking it all sounds a little far-fetched.

Indeed, if successfully built, the space elevator would be an unprecedented feat of human engineering.

A cable anchored to the Earth's surface, reaching tens of thousands of kilometers into space, balanced with a counterweight attached at the other end is the basic design for the elevator.

It is thought that inertia -- the physics theory stating that matter retains its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force -- will cause the cable to stay stretched taut, allowing the elevator to sit in geostationary orbit.

The cable would extend into the sky, eventually reaching a satellite docking station orbiting in space.

Engineers hope the elevator will transport people and objects into space, and there have even been suggestions that it could be used to dispose of nuclear waste. Another proposed idea is to use the elevator to place solar panels in space to provide power for homes on Earth.

If it sounds like the stuff of fiction, maybe that's because it once was.

In 1979, Arthur C. Clarke's novel "The Fountains of Paradise" brought the idea of a space elevator to a mass audience. Charles Sheffield's "The Web Between the Worlds" also featured the building of a space elevator.

But, jump out of the storybooks and fast-forward nearly three decades, and Japanese scientists at the Japan Space Elevator Association are working seriously on the space-elevator project.

Association spokesman Akira Tsuchida said his organization was working with U.S.-based Spaceward Foundation and a European organization based in Luxembourg to develop an elevator design.

The Liftport Group in the U.S. is also working on developing a design, and in total it's believed that more than 300 scientists and engineers are engaged in such work around the globe.

NASA is holding a $4 million Space Elevator Challenge to encourage designs for a successful space elevator.

Tsuchida said the technology driving the race to build the first space elevator is the quickly developing material carbon nanotube. It is lightweight and has a tensile strength 180 times stronger than that of a steel cable. Currently, it is the only material with the potential to be strong enough to use to manufacture elevator cable, according to Tsuchida.

"At present we have a tether which is made of carbon nanotube, and has one-third or one-quarter of the strength required to make a space elevator. We expect that we will have strong enough cable in the 2020s or 2030s," Tsuchida said.

He said the most likely method of powering the elevator would be through the carbon nanotube cable.

So, what are the major logistical issues keeping the space elevator from being anything more than a dream at present?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics and astronautics Professor Jeff Hoffman said that designing the carbon nanotube appeared to be the biggest obstacle.

"We are now on the verge of having material that has the strength to span the 30,000 km ... but we don't have the ability to make long cable out of the carbon nanotubes at the moment." he said. "Although I'm confident that within a reasonable amount of time we will be able to do this."

Tsuchida said that one of the biggest challenges will be acquiring funding to move the projects forward. At present, there is no financial backing for the space elevator project, and all of the Japanese group's 100-plus members maintain other jobs to earn a living.

"Because we don't have a material which has enough strength to construct space elevator yet, it is difficult to change people's mind so they believe that it can be real," he said.

Hoffman feels that international dialogue needs to be encouaraged on the issue. He said a number of legal considerations also would have to be taken into account.

"This is not something one nation or one company can do. There needs to be a worldwide approach," he said.

Other difficulties for space-elevator projects include how to build the base for the elevator, how to design it and where to set up the operation.

Tsuchida said some possible locations for an elevator include the South China Sea, western Australia and the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific Ocean. He said all of those locations usually avoided typhoons, which could pose a threat to the safety of an elevator.

"As the base of space elevator will be located on geosynchronous orbit, [the] space elevator ground station should be located near the equator," he said.

Although the Japanese association has set a time frame of the 2030s to get a space elevator under construction -- and developments are moving quickly -- Hoffman acknowledges that it could be a little further away than that.

"I don't know if it's going to be in our lifetime or if it's 100 or 200 years away, but it's near enough that we can contemplate how it will work."

Building a space elevator is a matter of when, not if, said Hoffman, who believes that it will herald a major new period in human history.

"It will be revolutionary for human technology, and not just for space travel. That's why so many people are pursuing it," he said. "This is what it will take to turn humans into a space-bearing species."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/02/space.elevator/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

Escape From New York!?

DevastatorJr — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:35:53 GMT

Alright, alright, I get the hint! I'm just about ready to haul ass outta here before the sh*t really hits the fan if it ain't too late already. I think it's time to abandon ship, quite possibly the whole U.S. Any suggestions?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Great Depression II

Moriji — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 20:24:23 GMT

So how long do you think we have before we plunge into Great Depression II?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 15 replies

Stockbrokers Sneer at Protesters

seal — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:25:08 GMT

Two snips of this article::

Protesters Take Their Outrage to Wall Street

.....The demonstration originated with an e-mail sent out Monday afternoon by Arun Gupta, an editor at the leftist Indypendent. "They said providing health care for 9 million children, perhaps costing $6 billion a year, was too expensive, but there's evidently no sum of money large enough that will sate the Wall Street pigs," it read. "We need to act now while we can influence the debate. With Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, the money markets and now this omnibus bailout, well in excess of $1 trillion will be distributed from the poor, workers and middle class to the scum floating on top? Let the bondholders pay, let the banks pay, let those who brought the 'toxic' mortgage-backed securities pay!"

......Though Lower Manhattan is one of the most heavily locked down areas in the country -- the Stock Exchange is surrounded by an iron fence, the closest subway exit is barricaded off, and surrounding streets have concrete stanchions and raised metal sheets to block traffic, with guards and dogs in booths watching them -- police presence at the demonstration was surprisingly light, especially by the draconian standards of the Giuliani-Bloomberg era.

Gupta attributed that to the "media feeding frenzy" surrounding the protest. "You think that while those fuckers are debating in D.C., they want pictures of protesters being beaten by cops being beamed around the world?" he asked.

Many Wall Street types greeted the protesters with contempt. "Just look at these people," sneered one broker as the march neared the Stock Exchange. Another group held a "Get a Job" sign in an office window, and one man dropped a few dollar bills out of his. They fluttered down short of the marchers, landing in a construction site.

Such contempt from the upper classes is nothing new to the lowly proles of Gotham. On Broadway near Wall Street is a stone slab commemorating billionaire real estate developer Harry B. Helmsley, "whose richness of spirit and love for New York helped build this great city." New Yorkers of a certain age and level of cynicism are more likely to remember Helmsley's late widow, Leona, a hotel magnate nicknamed the "Queen of Mean."

She achieved notoriety by leaving $12 million to her dogs -- more than she left to any of her grandchildren -- and telling her housekeeper that "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."

***Don't you love it? GET A JOB???? These people need to be given a fair trial by a jury of their low income peers, then fucking hung like Mussolini.

http://www.truthout.org:80/092608M

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 5 replies

Police say teen plotted to kill mom for breast implants

Moriji — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 22:26:24 GMT

A Colorado teenager hired men to kill his mother so he could use her money to get breast implants for his girlfriend, police said.

Nikita Lee Weis, 18, was arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, said Fountain Deputy Police Chief Mike Barnett.

Weis' mother, Hyun Weis, was attacked Thursday with a small wooden baseball bat at her home but escaped, authorities said. She was released Friday from a hospital.

His girlfriend, Sophia Nicole Alsept, and two men police said he hired, Juan Antonio Velez Gonzalez, 18, and Brandon Michael Soroka, 19, were also arrested on the charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

Barnett said Weis wanted to sell his mother's car and use money in her bank accounts to pay for breast implants for Alsept, 21.

Barnett also said the suspects discussed wrapping Hyun Weis' body in plastic and dumping it in the desert in New Mexico or Arizona.

All were being held on $50,000 bail. Officials did not know whether they had attorneys and said they couldn't get messages to them.

Fountain is about 10 miles south of Colorado Springs.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/09/27/implant.hitmen.reut/index.html

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

These are the minds I want to connect with!

Ted — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:11:58 GMT

I was beginning to feel that I wasn't going to find any more fun enlightening tribes on tribe, then I found you guys!

Now my next question is which tribes do you also find are your favorites on tribe right now?

I am market ignorant, but you guys have brought more of a layman interpretation/understanding of what's going on.

Also if there are any websites you think I should check out let me know!

I am sure I'll be speaking my mind here!

Peace and happy to be here!

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 2 replies

We're Done For!

DevastatorJr — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:56:58 GMT

Holy crap -- the economy is going down the tubes! Is this the beginning of world wide economic collapse? I currently work for one of the two remaining big investment banks, but for how long...?

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 18 replies

Latest Palin Trooper-gate

seal — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:43:08 GMT

Alaska attorney general says state employees won't honor subpoenas in probe of Gov. Palin
By STEVE QUINN | Associated Press Writer

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) _ Alaska's investigation into whether Gov. Sarah Palin abused her power, a potentially damaging distraction for John McCain's presidential campaign, ran into intensified resistance Tuesday when the attorney general said state employees would refuse to honor subpoenas in the case.

In a letter to state Sen. Hollis French, the Democrat overseeing the investigation, Republican Attorney General Talis Colberg asked that the subpoenas be withdrawn. He also said the employees would refuse to appear unless either the full state Senate or the entire Legislature votes to compel their testimony.

Colberg, who was appointed by Palin, said the employees are caught between their respect for the Legislature and their loyalty to the governor, who initially agreed to cooperate with the inquiry but has increasingly opposed it since McCain chose her as his running mate.

"This is an untenable position for our clients because the governor has so strongly stated that the subpoenas issued by your committee are of questionable validity," Colberg wrote.

Last week, French's Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed 13 people. They include 10 employees of Palin's administration and three who are not: her husband, Todd Palin; John Bitney, Palin's former legislative liaison who now is chief of staff for Republican House Speaker John Harris; and Murlene Wilkes, a state contractor.

French did not immediately return a telephone call Tuesday for comment.

Earlier in the day, Harris, who two months ago supported the "Troopergate" investigation, openly questioned its impartiality and raised the possibility of delaying the findings.

Like Colberg's letter, the surprise maneuver by Harris reflected deepening resolve by Republicans to spare Palin embarrassment or worse in the final weeks of the presidential campaign.

And it marked a further fraying of a bipartisan consensus, formed by a unanimous panel before Palin became McCain's running mate, that her firing of the state's public safety commissioner justified the ethical investigation.

In a letter, Harris wrote that what "started as a bipartisan and impartial effort is becoming overshadowed by public comments from individuals at both ends of the political spectrum," and he urged lawmakers to meet quickly to decide on a course.

"What I may be in favor of is having the report delayed, but only if it becomes a blatant partisan issue," he told The Associated Press, while indicating he already believes it has become politically tainted.

Democratic state Sen. Kim Elton, chairman of the Legislative Council, the 14-member panel that authorized the probe, had no immediate comment on Harris' request. Under an unusual power-sharing agreement, the council is made up of 10 Republicans and 4 Democrats.

At issue is whether Palin abused her power by pressing the commissioner to remove her former brother-in-law as an Alaska state trooper, then firing the commissioner when he didn't.

The matter risks casting a shadow on Palin's reputation, central to her appeal in the campaign, that she is a clean-government advocate who takes on entrenched interests — not a governor who tried to use her authority behind the scenes to settle a personal score.

Palin has defended her behavior and said she welcomed the investigation. "Hold me accountable," she said. But she and the McCain campaign have taken actions that could slow the probe, possibly past Election Day.

Also Tuesday, five Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit against an investigation they called "unlawful, biased, partial and partisan." None serves on the bipartisan Legislative Council that unanimously approved the inquiry. They want it pushed past the election or top Democrats removed from the probe.

Making clear the dispute has ramifications beyond Alaska, Liberty Legal Institute, a Texas-based legal advocacy group, was working on the lawsuit. The institute has taken on a variety of cases in defense of conservative Christian positions.

Elton called the lawsuit "a distraction."

"The silver lining in this action initiated by the five lawmakers is that some of that debate now has been kicked to the judicial branch which, unlike the Legislature and the governor's office, is more insulated from the red-hot passion of presidential politics," he said.

Palin fired public safety commissioner Walt Monegan in July.

Weeks later, it emerged that Palin, her husband, Todd, and several high-level staffers had contacted Monegan about state trooper Mike Wooten, who had gone through a nasty divorce from Palin's sister before Palin became governor. While Monegan says no one from the administration ever told him directly to fire Wooten, he says their repeated contacts made it clear they wanted Wooten gone.

Palin maintains she fired Monegan over budget disagreements, not because he wouldn't dismiss her ex-brother-in-law. She has sought through her lawyer to have the matter investigated in a more favorable forum, the state personnel board.

Palin won't meet with 'Troopergate' investigator

By GENE JOHNSON
The Associated Press
Tuesday, September 16, 2008; 12:56 AM

ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Gov. Sarah Palin is unlikely to speak with an independent counsel hired by Alaska lawmakers to review the firing of her public safety commissioner, a spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Monday.

Spokesman Ed O'Callaghan said he has not spoken with Palin, but she was "unlikely to cooperate" with the inquiry "as long as it remains tainted."

Democrats charged that the McCain campaign was trying to stall the investigation.

"The partisan presidential campaign of McCain/Palin has interfered and is picking partisan targets to smear in order to make this investigation look like something it isn't," said Patti Higgins, chairwoman of the Alaska Democratic Party. "Rather than cooperating with the investigation, the Republican presidential campaign is doing everything it can to stall and smear."

O'Callaghan also said he did not know whether Palin's husband, Todd, would challenge a subpoena issued Friday to compel his cooperation. Thomas Van Flein, the Palins' lawyer, who has accepted service of the subpoena, did not return messages seeking comment. The governor herself has not been subpoenaed, but the Legislature's investigator, Steve Branchflower, has said he hopes to speak with her.

Palin and her husband campaigned Monday in Colorado and Ohio. Palin also planned appearances Tuesday in Ohio.

McCain's campaign insists the investigation into the firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan has been hijacked by Democrats.

Palin initially said she welcomed the inquiry. But after she became McCain's running mate on Aug. 29 her lawyer sought to have the three-member state Personnel Board take over the investigation, alleging that public statements by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic state Sen. Hollis French, indicated the probe was politically motivated.

French said Sept. 2 that the results of the investigation could constitute an "October surprise" for the McCain campaign. He later apologized for the remark, but Palin's lawyer has said the biased impression it created can't be undone.

The McCain campaign says it can prove Monegan was fired in July because of insubordination on budget issues, and not because he refused to fire a state trooper who went through a nasty divorce from Palin's sister.

To that end, the campaign released a series of e-mails detailing the frustration several Palin administration officials experienced in dealing with Monegan. The "last straw," the campaign said, was a trip Monegan planned to Washington in July to seek federal money for investigating and prosecuting sexual assault cases.

In a July 7 e-mail, John Katz, the governor's special counsel, noted two problems with the trip: the governor hadn't agreed the money should be sought, and the request "is out of sequence with our other appropriations requests and could put a strain on the evolving relationship between the Governor and Sen. Stevens."

Monegan was fired four days later.

In the weeks since, it has emerged that the Palins and her staff repeatedly had contacted Monegan expressing their dismay at the continued employment of Trooper Mike Wooten, who divorced Palin's sister in 2005. The following year, Wooten was suspended for five days based on complaints filed by the Palins, including that he drank in his patrol car, used a Taser on his 10-year-old stepson and illegally shot a moose.

A bipartisan panel of the Legislature voted unanimously to authorize an investigation into the circumstances of Monegan's firing.

In an effort to move the investigation into the Personnel Board's court, Van Flein filed a complaint there. But on Monday, he asked the board to dismiss the matter, citing the e-mails about budget issues as proving the real reason for Monegan's dismissal.

"The Governor decided to replace Mr. Monegan based on his refusal to execute her administration's policy on fiscal and budget matters, a refusal that between late 2007 and the middle of 2008 blossomed into outright insubordination."

Monegan's attorney said he had no immediate comment.

Also made clear in the e-mails is that some Palin staffers believed Monegan worked outside normal channels in making budget requests, in one case writing a letter to the governor in support of a funding for a project she had already vetoed.

Fired Official: Governor Sarah Palin Did Not Tell the Truth to ABC
Walt Monegan Says He Was Called to Gov.'s Office Over a "Private Family Matter"
By RHONDA SCHWARTZ and JUSTIN ROOD
September 15, 2008

"She's not telling the truth when she told ABC neither she nor her husband pressured me to fire Trooper Wooten," said Walt Monegan, the Alaskan official whose dismissal by Sarah Palin is the focus of a state investigation known as "Troopergate". "And she's not telling the truth to the media about her reasons for firing me."

In an exclusive interview with ABC News.com, former Alaska Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan said he resisted pressure by the First Couple to re-open an old case against a state trooper, who was in a hotly contested divorce and custody battle with the Governor's sister Molly.

Alaskan lawmakers are investigating whether Palin and her husband used the power of the Governor's office to conduct a personal vendetta against their former brother-in-law, whose behavior during the 2005 divorce was described by the Palin family as " threatening."

In a 20/20 interview, Palin told ABC's Charles Gibson she dismissed Monegan for poor job performance and that neither she nor her husband pressured Monegan to fire State Trooper Wooten. "We never did. I never pressured him to hire or fire anybody," Palin said.
But Monegan told ABC News.com he was summoned to a meeting with Todd Palin in December 2006, shortly after Sarah Palin became governor.

"I was called to her Anchorage formal Governor's office to talk with Todd Palin about an issue that was a private family matter," recounted Monegan. Todd became "upset," Monegan recalled, when told the allegations had already been investigated and the case would not be re-opened.

"When Sarah later called to tell me the same thing, I thought to myself, 'I may not be long for this job.'" But, Monegan said, he stood by his position. "I held the public trust. As Chief, I was responsible."

Governor Palin initially agreed to "cooperate fully" with the Alaska state legislative investigation but since being chosen as John McCain's running mate both she and her husband have refused to testify voluntarily. Friday the legislature issued a subpoena for Todd Palin.

Monegan said he tried to persuade the first couple to drop the matter. "As a cop for 35 years I'm pretty familiar with issues that come up in divorce cases," and said his argument to both Todd and Sarah was, "if this was so egregious, why didn't you bring it up sooner? Why did you wait until several years later?"

Monegan, who gave sworn testimony behind closed doors for nearly eight hours last week, said he also provided the State's investigator with copies of e-mails he received from the Governor in which she referred in disparaging terms to her former brother-in-law.

"This is not a 'he said she said' situation. Others were contacted by Todd and Sarah as well," according to Monegan, who said he was confident the investigation would find adequate documentation to corroborate his testimony.
The former Public Safety Commissioner also strongly defended his job performance in response to Palin's complaints about his work to ABC's Gibson.

"After two years he wasn't meeting the goals I wanted met in that area of public service, there were a lot of things we were lacking and a lot of goals weren't being met." Palin said on 20/20.

"No goals were conveyed to me by the Governor at any time," said Monegan.

"All of the Commissioners who worked for the Governor would say the same. She was preoccupied with her pipeline proposal," Monegan said. "All of us were waiting to hear what goals she would set for our departments."

Monegan said the Governor never sat down to talk with him about public safety priorities. "She met with us perhaps four times," he said, "and half the time the Governor was busy on her Blackberry. In one meeting she took a phone call and left the room, directing us to talk to her aide."

The only goals that were set for his department, said Monegan, "we incorporated through the Department of Public Safety Strategic Plan, which we ran past her, she approved and we posted on our website."

The former Commissioner said under his leadership the department was pursuing several new initiatives, but that efforts were slowed down by union contract negotiations.

Monegan stressed he was not upset and did hold any animosity toward his former boss. "I like the lady," said Monegan. "I bear her no animosity, I admire her intelligence and initiative. I wish I could respect her more for her integrity."

Meanwhile the Governor has requested her own investigation of Monegan's dismissal by the State Personnel Board and Anchorage attorney Thomas V. Von Flein has been retained to represent the First Couple in the state legislature's investigating committee.
When asked how he came to represent the Palins, Von Flein told ABC News he could not reveal who hired him due to attorney client privilege but that "he worked through word of mouth."

Von Flein said he questioned the validity of the legislature's subpoena power and expressed his concerns that the committee's investigation had become "a highly politicized investigation conducted in secret " reminiscent of "the McCarthy era."

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 0 replies

Fuck tribe

Moriji — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:40:06 GMT

So tribe is finally back up. Sheesh, this has got to be a record for being down for the longest time. Seriously, if tribe can't improve its stability and just gets worse like this over time, then I don't see much hope.

I saw a message yesterday I think where it said they were waiting on a part. Waiting on a part? They are located in Silicon Valley, for Christ sakes! Don't tell they can't get a replacement part any time of the day!

Anyway, I'm thinking of starting a group/mailing list on Yahoo or Google which will act as a refuge for us when tribe is down, or if it totally ever goes away. I would like to keep in touch with the active members here so we can keep talking politics and religion and spread the word around.

So please send me a PM with your email so I can include you. Also, let me know if you prefer Yahoo or Google. I'm leaning Google, as they are a left leaning organization, but I'm on groups on both sites and they'll both do for me.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 7 replies

Ugh, How Revolting.

DevastatorJr — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:29:43 GMT

Well, it looks like McCain and Palin are gonna win, huh? The whole world's gone gaga over this born again, gun-toting Jerry Springer beauty queen. So Obama's got you pissed off because he's leaning more too much to the center, Maple? Let's see how you like John and Sarah's regime. They'll probably deport you.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 12 replies

Governor Barbie

Moriji — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 00:44:51 GMT

This thread is dedicated to Governor Barbie, also known as Sarah Palin, who will be our next Commander in Chief after McCain croaks.

posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 11 replies

Reflections on 9-11

Moriji — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:50:37 GMT

My apologies to those sensitive souls who can't stand to hear any criticisms directed at the Democratic Party...

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by Cindy Sheehan

The 7th anniversary of September 11, 2001 is approaching and it seems like a good time to reflect on what our nation has lost since that tragic day and what we can do to go forward.

I do not think that anyone alive on that day will forget the shock that struck our nation when the symbols of US capitalism and militarism were struck out of the clear blue sky. I was in panic mode for a few days, because I did not hear from Casey who was stationed at Ft. Hood on that day and his base went into lock-down and he was too busy to call. Even though we mourn with our fellow Americans, the loss of over 3000 innocent people and the pain their families have had to deal with, the attacks of 9-11 have touched every American.

There are several ways to look at 9-11:

• 9-11 was planned and executed by the US government.

• BushCo did not plan 9-11, but they knew it was going to happen and did nothing to prevent it and, in fact, may have allowed it to happen.

• 9-11 was planned and executed by a group of 17 terrorists (14 of them from Saudi Arabia) without the fore knowledge of the US government and we were attacked because the terrorists "hated our freedoms and democracy."

Whichever of the theories is true, one thing is for sure: the Bush regime's response to 9-11 was woefully inept and criminal and many people have been killed, wounded, displaced or destroyed because of the Bush regimes' exploitation of the tragedy to use ultra-violence against the innocent people of two nations in response to a criminal act perpetrated by a few. Watching the recent RNC was a reminder of 9-11 hysteria used to justify implementing the Project for a New American Century and excusing BushCo for the crimes they have committed on the non-existent graves of our brothers and sisters who perished that day and whose remains were never recovered.

Instead of taking a hard and critical look at the corporate-imperialistic policies of our government and trying to objectively figure out why we were attacked, we set off on a nationalistic flag waving fervor of mass fear that was only to be cured by shopping, traveling and allowing George and Dick to make a demented response to it. After 9-11 our country lost a real opportunity to search our souls and make amends to the world for our greed and violence. An apt response would have been to punish the perpetrators of the crime in a court of law and not by rabidly seeking the first country to destroy. Attacking Afghanistan was like bombing Sicily to oblivion for the crimes of the Mafia. Attacking Iraq was just for neocon kicks.

George Bush was handed a Presidential Daily Briefing in Crawford, Texas on August 6th, 2001, that read: "Osama bin Laden determined to strike in the United States." According to journalist Ron Susskind, Bush told the agent who delivered the message: "Okay, you've covered your ass." Instead, our collective asses are twisting in the wind of the abuses and excesses of the last 7 years.

Our economy is being destroyed by 7 years of seemingly endless occupations that have made Dick and his cronies wealthy, but have harmed the rest of us. The price of gas has almost tripled since 9-11, thus causing all other consumer goods to skyrocket. People are losing their jobs and homes because this war economy cannot be sustained with Monopoly money printed and devalued to cover our rising deficits. We have become the worlds' worst debtor nation and our treasury is trillions in debt.

Our famous "freedoms" that the terrorists "hated" have been eroded due to the PATRIOT ACT, the Military Commissions Act and the violent response to protest from our robo-clad police state. We can be guaranteed that any call, email or text message that we send or receive is being read and if we dare protest we will be pepper-sprayed, maced, tear gassed, tasered, or beaten with a Billy club by our employees: law enforcement; authorized by our other employees: government.

My opponent, Nancy Pelosi, has cooperated and collaborated with the Bush regime to allow torture and incarceration without due process and NSA spying on Americans without warrants. She opens her Gucci bag and doles out billions for his War OF Terror while sitting in her mansion, children and grandchildren out of harms way, while our country implodes and Iraq and Afghanistan burn. She has legitimized BushCo's crimes and refuses to hold them accountable for the destruction they have unleashed upon our world.

It's not only time for new leadership in our government, but it's time for a new 9-11 Commission that has subpoena power and is not facilitated by the crooks who either perpetrated the crime and/or collaborated with it. Government abuses cannot be credibly investigated by government commissions: A citizen's investigation that is independent from the federal government and where people like George and Dick will actually have to give their testimony in the light of day, under oath and not holding hands, must be empowered and empanelled.

If you agree with me that a new 9-11 investigation is warranted, please contribute to my campaign to unseat Vichy-Pelosi who would never agree to investigate her buddy Bush for any crimes, much less the crime of our new century.

But most importantly, Cindy for Congress sends our deepest condolences to those who lost family member on 9-11 and anyone else on this planet who have lost their jobs, homes, or lives due to George's tragic response to the tragedy of 9-11.

My son is one of the ones whose life was ended prematurely. I mourn deeply for him each day, but the way forward is towards healing, peace, accountability, environmental sustainability and economic equality and away from the violence and greed that has colored every aspect of our lives since that sad day.

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posted in If You Meet the Buddha, Kill Him! - 1 reply