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<channel>
	<title>PLIGG_Visual_Name - PLIGG_Visual_RSS_Published</title>
	<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz</link>
	<description>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_Description</description>
	<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:01:52 NZDT</pubDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<item>
		<title><![CDATA[No Scandal behind these gates | Sign On]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=No_Scandal_behind_these_gates__Sign_On-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=No_Scandal_behind_these_gates__Sign_On-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:01:52 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Environment</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=No_Scandal_behind_these_gates__Sign_On-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Since December there has been a glut of stories challenging the science of climate change as represented by the IPCC. Should we be concerned? Only about climate change. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.signon.org.nz/blog/no-scandal-behind-these-gates'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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	<item>
		<title><![CDATA[2010: A second wave of defaults/foreclosures]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=2010_A_second_wave_of_defaultsforeclosures-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=2010_A_second_wave_of_defaultsforeclosures-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:56 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=2010_A_second_wave_of_defaultsforeclosures-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As we have been forecasting for the last two years, the second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year. Not only will we have failure in prime loans and option-arm loans, but we are faced with a new crop of subprime and ALT-A loans put into motion by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA. In addition, we find it of great interest that the FHA is changing the rules to purchase homes. That, of course, means less homes will be purchased. The incidence of unemployment may be lessening, but it isn't going away. Those of you who keep your ear to the ground know that real unemployment is 22.5% and in cities like Detroit it is somewhere near 45 to 50 percent. This is the result of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. No city in America has been deprived of their livelihood more than Detroit. Yet, this is only the beginning. If allowed to continue 30 percent more of our jobs will be allowed to leave America, making our country an economic basket case over the next 20 years. The $25 billion that our federal government is about to loan to the states will help keep unemployment paying out and save some 40 states from going into bankruptcy. That will keep some Americans going but not for long. Foreigners are buying less and less US dollar denominated assets, specifically Treasury and Agency bonds. As an example, Russia is buying Canadian dollar denominated assets. We ask how does the US fund its debt and its growing debt? The administration is planning for some sort of exchange of retirement funds for a government guaranteed annuity. That is so they can fund their enormous debt domestically as Japan has done for almost 20 years. Who would want to have a government guaranteed annuity from a bankrupt nation? It should also be noted that these retirement plans are still vastly under funded. What will happen if the Dow again revisits 6,600 and these funds' assets again fall 40 percent? The collateral behind any annuity would be almost cut in half. We will have to see what the government comes up with but any kind of voluntary plan would in time become a mandatory plan. The funds may well be funneled to insurance companies, so they can take part of the action, but they will be buying Treasuries and Agencies with those funds, you can take that to the bank. One of the rumors floating about is that a new 5 percent tax will be foisted upon what is left of American taxpayers, in the form of forced savings, which would be in the form of an annuity. The need for funds to run the government is advancing by more than 10 percent a year, as government becomes bigger and bigger. We see no abatement in Marxist, socialist or fascists in government in their desire to spend to make government ever bigger. The public is howling for blood, particularly from banking and Wall Street, and rightly so, but the main culprit was the Fed and in third place lies our government. In populist pose our President wants to tax Wall Street and banking for looting our economy. We might remind our President that these are the very people who financially put him in office. There is also talk emanating from the Oval Office of breaking up the banks, so that the too big to fail problem will be solved. This is the result of trillions of bailout funds for banks, which then post outsized mega profits, and little or nothing to assist the taxpayer. Investigations are going on to find out what caused the collapse of the system, but Americans believe they will go nowhere. The main brokerages and banks that caused most of the problems are the owners of the FED, the 12 regional Fed banks and the legacy, money center banks in NYC. How far do you have to investigate to find that out? Billions are being paid out to banks' top employees, money they made with the assistance of a taxpayer bailout. The public believes it is unfair and they are right. As an example, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, who says, &amp;quot;He is doing God's work,&amp;quot; will receive $100 million as the unemployment lines lengthen day by day. The President in his new budget says he will spend $100 billion creating jobs for Americans and $25 billion will be loaned to 40 states, so they can pay extended unemployment benefits. The gap between the haves and have-nots grows wider. As a result of the changing of the guard in who rules Wall Street and Washington, JP Morgan Chase has again surged to the forefront and with them former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker. This time his role will be more subdued then it was in the early 1980s. He cannot advocate a purging of the system as he did in the early 80s, because the financial system has been allowed to go too far. Any such purge would take the system down; something of that nature should have been done three years ago. Mr. Volcker wants banks to go back to taking deposits, making loans and to return to 8 to 10 to one leverage, not 40 to 70 to one. He believes banks should not have proprietary trading operations and that they should be transferred into unregulated hedge funds. That would solve very little. The change would be cosmetic. Then again isn't that what government, Wall Street and banking are all about - subterfuge? The administration and Congress refuse to deal with ever growing debt in spite of its decaying affect on our financial structure and banks and many other corporations are carrying two sets of books and refuse to deal with toxic assets. The Fed has purchased $900 billion of these toxic assets and they won't tell us what they paid and from who they bought them from. Monetary growth continues and much of it sits on bank balance sheets having borrowed it from the Fed, where much of it lies gaining interest that is being paid by the taxpayer. Those are costs that are deducted from any profit the Fed makes that is returned to the Treasury. In addition, overall there is no transparency and the gambling by Wall Street and banking goes on unabated just as it has in the past - the sort of high velocity risk that caused all these problems in the first place. Much of what they do is off balance sheet. The next three years will see lenders buried in falling commercial real estate, so the death dance won't end for some time to come. The banks and hybrid brokerage-banks are all involved in flash trading, which is more appropriately known as front running. They continue to engage in naked shorting and the SEC stands by and does nothing. This gambling and criminal activity is funded by the Fed via very cheap loans. Then there is their business and relationship with totally unregulated hedge funds. The money center legacy banks are growing not shrinking and now control more than 70 percent of global banking assets. You add this all up and you find you have a financial oligarchy that is gaining in dominance not shrinking, as Wall Street would have you believe. While this transpires our President and Congress have doubled the federal deficit. The previous two administrations and the current one have taken debt from almost nothing to $12.3 trillion, which will be $14.3 trillion by December. Even the Fed's debt has risen to $2.2 trillion having engorged themselves on bonds from Agencies, Treasuries and with toxic waste. The Fed is lying about their holdings; they purchased 80 percent of last year's Treasury debt. What they did was stuff billions in purchases under other investors - household, which is ludicrous. While the Fed went overboard lending, extending credit and buying paper, the government saw spending grow 13 percent, not counting $200 billion for wars as tax revenues fell 14%. Household debt only improved slightly but is still 165% of disposable income. That is as unsustainable as is the public making up 69.5% of GDP. America is nowhere near solving its debt problems and in fact the situation is worsening. That means in the second half of the year we could see a drop in the US credit rating. This problem is true worldwide. US debt to GDP could be 85% by the end of the year with Germany at 80% and Ireland 83%. As you can see many nations have debt problems. All nations have and are continuing to debase their currencies versus gold, which will range higher as continued debauchery takes place. The number of mortgage applications in the U.S. rose 21 percent last week to the highest level in more than a month as refinancing rebounded. The Mortgage Bankers Association's index rose to 620.7 in the week ended Jan. 29 from 513 in the prior week. The group's refinancing gauge increased 26 percent, while the purchase gauge rose 10 percent. The gain in purchase applications may be the first sign a renewed and expanded government tax credit is stirring demand after sales dropped late last year on expectations the incentive would expire. The market, faced with mounting foreclosures and 10 percent unemployment, may need continued government assistance to sustain gains in the second half of 2010. &amp;quot;Both mortgage rates and house prices remain low, but the market lacks a catalyst for a vigorous recovery,&amp;quot; Michael Larson, an analyst at Weiss Research in Jupiter, Florida, said before the report. &amp;quot;We're muddling through.&amp;quot; The mortgage bankers group's refinancing gauge increased to 2,854.8 from 2,260.4 the prior week. The purchase index rose to 237.8 from 215.6. The average rate on a 30-year fixed loan fell to 5.01 percent from 5.02 percent the prior week, the group said. The rate reached 4.61 percent at the end of March, the lowest since the group's records began in 1990. At the current 30-year rate, monthly borrowing costs for each $100,000 of a loan would be $537.43, or about $17 less than a year ago, when the rate was 5.29 percent. Mohamed A. El-Erian, whose firm runs the world's biggest mutual fund, said the largest stock market decline in 11 months may worsen amid persistent U.S. joblessness and economic growth that trails analysts' forecasts. Investors have wrongly priced in an &amp;quot;orderly&amp;quot; withdrawal of stimulus measures, a rebound in bank lending and coordinated government policy to restore growth, the chief executive officer of Pacific Investment Management Co. wrote in a Bloomberg News column. That means Wall Street projections for gains in 2010 may prove incorrect and prices will slump, he said. &amp;quot;Investors may well find that January's global equity sell-off was just a precursor to a disappointing year for several asset classes,&amp;quot; El-Erian, 51, wrote. &amp;quot;The global financial crisis has undermined growth and job creation; it has clogged many of the pipes that allocate funds to productive uses; and it has rapidly taken public debt and the budget deficit to worrisome levels.&amp;quot; A &amp;quot;safe harbor&amp;quot; agreement that protects the underlying assets of securities held by failed banks from being seized by U.S. regulators may be kept in place beyond March, a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. official said. FDIC officials had wanted to exempt all assets securitized through March 31 to ensure a smooth transition to a new accounting rule that rattled credit markets because of the prospect of more aggressive asset seizures. &amp;quot;I think it's safe to say that we will need to extend the March 31 safe harbor period,&amp;quot; Michael Krimminger, a special policy adviser to FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, said yesterday at the American Securitization Forum's annual conference near Washington. New accounting rules sparked concern among bond buyers and rating firms that the FDIC would be able to tap the pools of debt underlying credit-card securities to protect its deposit insurance fund after banks fail. The concern halted sales of such bonds in October and early November after issuance totaled $10.7 billion in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Policy makers are seeking to transform the almost $4 trillion U.S. market for securitizations not created by government-supported entities. Risky lending enabled by asset- backed bonds and investor losses on debt including subprime- mortgage securities contributed to a collapse in the world's economies. The US economy appears to be positioning itself to make the vital turn to positive job growth by beating market expectation only losing 22,000 positions in January while forecasts had called for 35,000 persons to join the unemployment roles. a4¨a4¨January's figures mark the lowest job destruction recorded since February 2008 when the recession pushed the job market into negative numbers as well as the eleventh straight month of a slowdown in the number of jobs shed.a4¨a4¨December's reading was also revised upwardly to -69,000 from the originally reported -84,000. Employers announced 71,482 planned job cuts last month, up 59 percent from December and the most monthly job cuts since August, according to the report from Challenger, Gray &amp;amp; Christmas, Inc, a global outplacement consultancy. &amp;quot;The increase in January is not necessarily a sign of a recession relapse. It is not uncommon to see a surge in job-cut announcements to begin the year,&amp;quot; said John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray &amp;amp; Christmas, in a statement. &amp;quot;Companies are making adjustments based on the previous year's results and the outlook for the year ahead. The beginning of the year is particularly rough on retail workers, as these employers enter one of the slower sales periods of the year,&amp;quot; he said. The January job cuts were up from 45,094 in December and marked the first increase since July. December had marked the fewest job cuts in 24 months. Still, the planned layoffs remain well below year-ago levels, when planned job cuts hit 241,749 in January 2009, the peak of downsizing activity in the recession. Technology wages in Silicon Valley, home to Google Inc. and Intel Corp., have declined almost 14 percent since 2000, a sign that the region has yet to recover fully from the dot-com bust. The average compensation for technology workers was $103,850 in 2008, down from $120,064 in 2000, with the biggest drops caused by the falling value of stock-based pay, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said today in a report. Average wages increased to $105,500 in the first half of 2009. The Internet bust triggered job cuts across Silicon Valley, with semiconductor makers, Internet startups and telecommunications companies taking the largest losses. Silicon Valley, which runs from San Francisco to San Jose, will probably be slow to recover from the latest recession, said Amar Mann, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. &amp;quot;We agree with more of a U shape, a gradual rise,&amp;quot; Mann said today at a press conference. Declines in venture capital investment resulted in slow technology-job growth in past economic cycles, a pattern that the current recovery will likely follow, he said. Silicon Valley has lost 134,000 technology jobs since 2000, including 30,000 during the nine months ended in June. The six- county region now has about 410,000 technology jobs, Mann said. The area lost jobs from 2000 to 2004, then added positions before the latest recession, he said. Technology accounts for about one in seven local jobs. http://www.dailyjobcuts.com/ The end of a Federal Reserve program that helped unlock credit markets is spurring sales of asset- backed bonds with relative yields five times wider than on debt secured by car loans. The expiration of the Fed's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility is driving companies to sell bonds tied to loans that would otherwise require higher yields. Borrowers are offering bonds backed by subprime auto loans, mortgage-servicing payments and assets that have proved hard to sell after the worst credit seizure since the Great Depression. &amp;quot;What we are seeing in the last couple of rounds are issuers in non-traditional asset classes and weaker issuers looking to fund as much as they can before the window closes,&amp;quot; said James Grady, a managing director at Deutsche Asset Management in New York. The firm has $240 billion in assets under management, including asset-backed securities. Ally Bank, a Midvale, Utah-based unit of GMAC Inc., is selling $750 million in so-called floorplan securities backed by payments on loans that finance cars on lots. Nissan Motor Co., in Yokohama, Japan, issued $900 million of the debt last week. Sales total $3.35 billion this year, including deals being prepared, compared with $3.9 billion all of last year, according to Informa Global Markets in New York. The bonds offer investors higher relative yields because the collateral is considered riskier. Ally Bank's sale of AAA debt backed by floorplans may yield 1.75 percentage points more than swap rates, compared with a spread of 0.35 percentage point for top-rated auto-loan bonds, according to Bank of America Corp. data. The annual revision of US employment to be issued tomorrow, February 5, will show that the US labor market was even worse off than was known during the deepest stretch of the recession when it shed 824,000 jobs from April 2008 to March 2009, reports Bloomberg. This would make it the worst 12-month period for the American worker in 18 years.a4¨The Labor Department's annual revision adjusts the monthly figures which, according to Bloomberg, suffer a flaw in assuming that the number of company closings is offset by new ones opening, the so-called &amp;quot;birth/death model&amp;quot;. This means that in times of a deep economic downturn when the number of companies going under greatly outstrips the number of those starting up, the monthly model gives a positively distorted vision of the labor market. Service industries in the U.S. expanded less than anticipated in January, a sign the recovery will be slow to spread from manufacturing to the rest of the economy. The Institute for Supply Management's index of non- manufacturing businesses, which make up almost 90 percent of the economy, climbed to 50.5 from 49.8 in December, figures from the Tempe, Arizona-based group showed today. Readings above 50 signal growth. Other reports showed firings eased last month. The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families. In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth. The US Treasury reports withheld taxes of $140.381B for Jan 2010; FYTD is $547.710B. For January 2009 withheld taxes are $151.285B; FYTD is $597.593B. Jan 2010 withheld taxes are down 7.2% y/y; FYTD is down 8.35%. January NFP should continue to show job losses. But it could be crafted to show unrealistic strength like the ridiculous Q4 GDP of 5.7%, or seasonally adjusted employment surveys. Fifteen months after Fannie and Freddie were effectively nationalized; neither the Obama administration nor Congressional leaders see a quick solution to one of the thorniest problems in. American finance: how to fix the twin mortgage giants without choking the flow of credit to homeowners and dealing a blow to a still-fragile housing market. But for now, the only real consensus is that no one quite knows what to do with the companies. Just as the recovery of securitisation around the world was gathering momentum, the asset class is facing another disastrous blow. This time, its nemesis is the judge handling the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, who announced a ruling last week that threw out a crucial assumption about the subordination of failed swap counterparties. A swathe of deals now face downgrades and new deals may be much harder to sell. William Thornhill and Matthew Davies report. Last week a US bankruptcy court passed a judgment that threatens the future of the structured finance industry. If upheld, the ruling would have &amp;quot;profound effects on structured finance transactions because it challenges long-held assumptions relating to the subordination of swap termination payments to a swap counterparty following a swap counterparty bankruptcy&amp;quot;, said Moody's. US law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen &amp;amp; Hamilton shares those concerns. &amp;quot;This case creates significant uncertainty regarding the enforceability of market-standard subordination provisions and threatens the legitimate commercial expectations of CDO noteholders and other participants in structured finance transactions,&amp;quot; the firm said in a commentary explaining the significance of the ruling. In our opinion, the conditions examiners observed during a 2007 examination provided FRB Atlanta with an opportunity to be more aggressive in addressing Neighborhood's high speculative real estate concentration, the report said. Zero Hedge on Obama's proposed FY2011 budget: We are confident that not one politician will read the whole thing from cover to cover. We won't either. Not because we don't care about what's in it, but because we are much more concerned with what is not included, namely $2.8 Trillion and $1.9 Trillion of MBS guaranteed portfolios at Fannie and Freddie, and an additional $782 billion and $809 billion in company debt outstanding for the two GSEs, respectively. This amounts to a total of $6.3 trillion in liabilities, which should be counted toward the budget. And yet, oddly, the error-checker somehow made this rather justifiable omission: after all if we were to look at a number which written out looks as follows $6,264,000,000,000.00, we would also probably just avoid it - it is somewhat difficult to hide a number that big even in the 1,420 pages of the budget's appendix. That's ok, we are here to remind them about the omission, and also to remind Mr. Orszag, who himself, in that long ago 2008, espoused that these companies should be put on the Federal Budget. The unemployment rate in the U.S. unexpectedly declined in January to 9.7 percent, the lowest level since August, while payrolls dropped as companies boosted worker hours and overtime instead of taking on new hires. Employment fell by 20,000 last month, reflecting a plunge in construction jobs and a drop in state and local government hiring, figures from the Labor Department in Washington showed. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg News forecast a gain. Manufacturing employment, factory hours and overtime increased. Payrolls were forecast to increase by 15,000, according to the median estimate of 85 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Estimates ranged from a decrease of 100,000 to a gain of 100,000. The jobless rate fell from 10 percent in December. It was projected to hold there. Forecasts ranged from 9.8 percent to 10.3 percent. The survey of households showed employment increased by 541,000 workers last month and the number of people in the labor force rose. The gain brought the participation rate, or the share of the population in the labor force, up to 64.7 percent in January from 64.6 percent. In early 2009, the Obama administration's economic advisers forecast the $787 billion stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 8 percent. Employment declined a revised 150,000 in December and increased 64,000 a month earlier. The revisions subtracted 5,000 from payroll figures previously reported for those two months. Government payrolls decreased by 8,000 in January. State and local governments reduced employment by 41,000 during the month, while the federal government added 33,000. The increase at the federal level reflected in part the hiring of temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census. The Labor Department today also issued the annual benchmark update showing the economy lost 930,000 more jobs than previously estimated in the 12 months ended March 2009. With this report, the Labor Department for the first time issued data on earnings and hours for all workers. Before today, the figures reflected changes in earnings and hours for production staff. The average workweek for all workers rose to 33.9 hours in January from 33.8 hours the prior month. The increase signals companies making more part-time workers full-time employees. The number of part-time workers for economic reasons dropped to 8.3 million in January from 9.2 million the previous month. Average weekly earnings increased to $761.06 from $757.46. Factory payrolls increased 11,000 in January, the biggest gain since April 2006, after falling 23,000 in the prior month. The median forecast by economists called for a drop of 20,000. Payrolls at builders fell 75,000 last month, after decreasing 32,000. Financial firms reduced payrolls by 16,000, after a 7,000 decline the prior month. Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, added 40,000 workers after subtracting 96,000 in December. The number of temporary workers increased 52,000 in January. Payrolls at temporary-help agencies often turn up before total employment because companies prefer to see a steady increase in demand before taking on permanent staff. Retail payrolls increased by 42,000 after an 18,000 decline. The so-called underemployment rate -- which includes part-time workers who'd prefer a full-time position and people who want work but have given up looking -- fell to 16.5 percent from 17.3 percent. The economy grew at a 5.7 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter, the biggest gain in six years, according to data from the Commerce Department released last week. The government revised its job loss numbers for November, saying the economy gained 64,000 in that month rather than 4,000. But the numbers in December were much worse than previously stated; the economy lost 150,000 jobs rather than the 85,000 originally reported. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&amp;code=CHA20100206&amp;articleId=17451'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Goff: Joint Special Operations Command]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Goff_Joint_Special_Operations_Command-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Goff_Joint_Special_Operations_Command-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:50 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Goff_Joint_Special_Operations_Command-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, pronounced jay-sock by members of the US armed forces, carries with it a mystique. The press, JSOC's promoters and its critics, as well as the entertainment media, have all contributed to its mystique; and that mystique is promoted my the military because it functions as a kind of deterrent.One of the advantages of offical secrecy is its contribution to this mystique - writ large for secretive units, but this mystique-maintenance is also useful throughout the military. Hollywood, pulp fiction, television drama, infotainment &amp;quot;news,&amp;quot; and military-veteran boosterism all contribute to the vast ignorance of military matters, by overdramatizing military life and military operations, and by idealizing it.Film and popular literature are packed with protagonists whose past or present CV includes membership in some elite and highly secret combat unit, where individuals are seven-language linguists, flawless marksmen with every firearm ever manufactured, field surgeons, helicopter pilots, chess masters, and gymnasts.The arms race among entertainment moguls to one-up each other's fantasies has only accelerated this stupidity; and the thirst among (primarily male) consumers for this drivel has corresponding and escalating ratio of profit to humbug.Hannah Arendt once noted:    The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.Obviously, I insert this quote with the subject of evil in mind, and in the context of a discussion of this mystique-laden military institution, JSOC. Because that is what they actually do, evil, and not some salvific secret missions that keep us unkowingly safe abed at night. Moreover, they are not the idealized archetypes, but simply a bunch of men who are conjoined primarily by their overarching commitment to US nationalism, their belief that ends justify means, and their personal pursuit of probative masculinity.Few are multi-lingual, most are only marginally in better physical condition than the average civilian gym rat, many are stupid - moreso than you want to know - and all are committed, when under orders, to bully and kill helpless people.They are far more banal than anyone would like to believe; and the culture is closer than anything else to a boys locker room. They like sports, pornography, gun culture, video games, alcohol, and misogynist humor.A little background.For the record, I was a member of a constituent organization for a few years in the 80's while they were forming JSOC as a coordinating command in the wake of the 1979 hostage rescue debacle in Iran. Like all these coordinating elements that recieve truckloads of money, it grew into a kind of bureaucratic empire that was planted in some upscale digs on the boundary between Fort Bragg, NC, and the adjacent Pope Air Force Base. This is a process I call institutional dog-waggerya4¦ when the coordinaton and support apparatus becomes the tail that ends up wagging the dog.Included in JSOC, then, were special counter-terrorism units from the Army and Navy, with special aircraft and air coordination asssets from the Army and Air Force. God only knows what tack-ons have happened since then, especially since Donald Rumsfeld privileged the role of so-called special operations as part of his doctrinal rewrite for the entire Department of Defense.Money has flowed like water into special operations; and this is the institutional equivalent of pouring buckets of ox blood into the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chagres River. Along with the boys who want to kill to prove themselves have come opportunists and mountebanks of every stripe, not unlike the intellectual swindlers who sold Rumsfeld on his doctrine in the first place. Well, to be honest, Rumsfeld himself was one of the chief con artists, but that's another story.In time, the very precise and limited skill sets that had been developed by the early counter-terrorist units - mostly geared to hostage-barricade resolution - had diffused out of the CT units, via retirees and ex-members, as well as training agreements with other agencies, until anyone who wants to observe what used to be called close-quarter battle (CQB) can see it reenacted with a fair amount of verisimiltude on prime time tva4¦ SWAT tactics to the layperson.The original Delta Force commander, Charlie Beckwith, RIP, who wanted to ensure that these skills remained close-hold, used to tell subordinates that &amp;quot;the only way to keep a secret is don't tell anybody.&amp;quot; He was prescient, as it turns out, and the CT units had - within a decade - worked themselves out of their dangerous and exclusive job.This applied to JSOC, which also included infantry support units, i.e., Ranger Battalions, like the one Pat Tillman worked for when he was killed by his own comrades in Paktia Province Afghanistan in 2004. That was a JSOC operation; and it was not helpful in the maintenance of the enemy-deterring mystique. Three or so Taliban irregulars with an RPG and a couple of AKs, shooting ineffectively from half a mile away, created a public relations crisis that contributed to the disappearance of the Secretary of Defense, killing three people in the process.The debacle in Somalia in 1993? JSOC.Given the proven ability of special operations to fail, and given the diffusionary loss of its original focus, the only asset that remained for JSOC to do things that are &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; was its high level of secrecy. Many alumni are now performing special duties at six-figure salaries as mercenary contractorsa4¦ still paid by the Department of Defense - that is, with your taxes - only without that pesky potential Congresdsdional overisght. I say potential, because Congress has no stomach to oversee anything military. The idealization of the military has ensured that.Which brings me to the sycophancy of elected officials in the face of military commanders, and that includes Barack Obama.Elected officials are forced to factor the mystique into anything and everything they say about anyone and everyone military. A sizeable fraction of the voting public believes that cops are like the interesting, intelligent people they see on endless Law and Order reruns, and they believe that military people are like the equally complex and ethical characters played by their favorite actors in idealized representations by the media. Or they are related to military members, an equally biasing condition.Consequently, we have been forced to repress our gag reflex every time one of these Generals comes before a Congress that lines up to see who can fawn most effusively before the stars.Barack Obama is terrified of the military-security nexus within his own government, because they are uniquely positioned, by this special status, to bring him downa4¦ his legal status as Commander-in-Chief notwithstanding. That is why he has dragged his feet on don't-ask-don't-tell - which he could suspend by fiat now until law is repealed; and that is why Obama didn't sack Stanley McChrystal - a la Truman-McArthur - when McChrystal, now the military viceroy of Afghanistan, leaked a report last year to back McChrystal's own play to increase troop strength in Afghanistan by 45,000.Instead, Obama gave him 30,000 - enough less to save a little face, and enough more to dig the Obama administration deeper into the hole that the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen war has become.General Stanley McChrystal, by the way, is the fomrer commander of JSOC; and he was the JSOC commander who alerted then Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush to drop references to Pat Tillman in a speech, when it became apparent that the original cover-up of Pat Tillman's death by fratricide was going to unravel around a fraudulent award that couldn't be retrieved. McChrystal was in charge of the operation, in the loop on the cover-up, and helped Bush dodge the PR bullet on it.In the military, we used to say, &amp;quot;No fuck-up shall go unrewarded,&amp;quot; and McChrystal is living proof. But that doesn't tell us what else McChrystal and JSOC have been doing with themselves, aside from hiding. What other kinds of things does this secrecy permit?Well, for one, McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the military-media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by JSOC operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, &amp;quot;No Blood, No Foul,&amp;quot; meaning if you don't make them bleed, you can't be charged with the crimes you are committing.Impunity. That's what secrecy buys. JSOC's new &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; is impunity.In an article in Harpers this month, Scott Horton, a fomer classmate of now-JSOC commander Admiral &amp;quot;Billy&amp;quot; McRaven, published a stunning expose of this impunity at Guantanamo Bay's still-open prison camp. Apparently, within Guantanamo Bay, there is a &amp;quot;special&amp;quot; prison within a prison, quite likely run by JSOC, called &amp;quot;Camp No&amp;quot; by the soldiers now speaking out, meaning, no, it doesn't exist. It was in this camp that three prisoners, held in Guantanamo for years now without any charges, allegedly commited suicide.The suicide story was given to an uncritical press in June 2006, right after all three prisoners died, with the bizarre statement by Camp Commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris that the suicides were act of war against the US.The U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (yes, the NCIS of the popular tv programa4¦ &amp;quot;Characters Welcome&amp;quot;) conducted an investigation of the suicide story, declared the official story valid, then classified the investigative report and placed it off limits to the publica4¦ until a Freedom of Information Act request forced the Navy to cough up a highly redacted copy.In Horton's article, he explains:    According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell's eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.Four soldiers from the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion who were at Guantanamo Bay (now named Camp America) have now come forward with a different story, a story about Camp No.Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani did not simultaneously commit suicide in their separate cells as an act of asymmetric spite against the United States of America. They died at Camp No, in an extraordinary circumstance that the Harpers story outlines very well.Given that these men appeared likely to have proven their innocence if granted a hearing in accordance with the most minimal standards of jurisprudence, the question arises, why were they killed?I'll make a suggestion, not an accusation, since I have no direct knowledge of this incident. Proving innocence can be very damaging, especially if release brings revelations of more torture, rape, and murdera4¦ all of which happened, involving special operations, at various times in the conduct of the now expanding war. These are felonies; and they can send people to prison.Anyone who hoped the Obama administration would investigate these kinds of activities during the Bush era has been disappointed. On the contrary, Obama has expanded the war into new countries, expanded the participation of the CIA and JSOC, left Guantanamo intact, refused to initiate independent investigations of military actions, and promoted the former JSOC commander - tainted by cover-ups and torture - to the most powerful warlord in Afghanistan.Now the Obama administration's Justice Department is declining to investigate Guantanamo and the NCIS.Meanwhile, JSOC flourishes, cloaked in secrecy with just the mystique peeking out. But there was no leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, no warrior-poets protecting us from the manifold dangers lurking outside our borders. There's just garden variety machismo, men who beat, torture, and kill unarmed detaineesa4¦ men who have learned to relish violence, because it raises their esteem in the eyes of other men - the terrrible escalations of probative masculinity that continue to underwrite war like no other phenomenon.What Simone Weil said remains unfortunately true:    As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2010/01/31/jsoc/'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Fisk: Why the blind eye to Israeli bulldozers ?]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Fisk_Why_the_blind_eye_to_Israeli_bulldozers_-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Fisk_Why_the_blind_eye_to_Israeli_bulldozers_-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:49 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Fisk_Why_the_blind_eye_to_Israeli_bulldozers_-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&amp;quot;Palestine&amp;quot; is no more. Call it a &amp;quot;peace process&amp;quot; or a &amp;quot;road map&amp;quot;; blame it on Barack Obama's weakness, his pathetic, childish admission - like an optimistic doctor returning a sick child to its parents without hope of recovery - that a Middle East peace was &amp;quot;more difficult&amp;quot; to reach than he imagined.But the dream of a &amp;quot;two-state&amp;quot; Israeli-Palestinian solution, a security-drenched but noble settlement to decades of warfare between Israelis and Palestinians is as good as dead. Both the United States and Europe now stand idly by while the Israeli government effectively destroys any hope of a Palestinian state; even as you read these words, Israel's bulldozers and demolition orders are destroying the last chance of peace; not only in the symbolic centre of Jerusalem itself but - strategically, far more important - in 60 per cent of the vast, biblical lands of the occupied West Bank, in that largest sector in which Jews now outnumber Muslims two to one.This majority of the West Bank - known under the defunct Oslo Agreement's sinister sobriquet as &amp;quot;Area C&amp;quot; - has already fallen under an Israeli rule which amounts to apartheid by paper: a set of Israeli laws which prohibit almost all Palestinian building or village improvements, which shamelessly smash down Palestinian homes for which permits are impossible to obtain, ordering the destruction of even restored Palestinian sewage systems. Israeli colonists have no such problems; which is why 300,000 Israelis now live - in 220 settlements which are all internationally illegal - in the richest and most fertile of the Palestinian occupied lands.When Obama's elderly envoy George Mitchell headed home in humiliation this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu celebrated his departure by planting trees in two of the three largest Israeli colonies around Jerusalem. With these trees at Gush Etzion and Ma'aleh Adumim, he said, he was sending &amp;quot;a clear message that we are here. We will stay here. We are planning and we are building.&amp;quot; These two huge settlements, along with that of Ariel to the north of Jerusalem, were an &amp;quot;indisputable part of Israel forever.&amp;quot;It was Netanyahu's victory celebration over the upstart American President who had dared to challenge Israel's power not only in the Middle East but in America itself. And while the world this week listened to Netanyahu in the Holocaust memorial commemoration for the genocide of six million Jews, abusing Iran as the new Nazi Germany - Iran's loony president supposedly as evil as Hitler - the hopes of a future &amp;quot;Palestine&amp;quot; continued to dribble away. President Ahmadinejad of Iran is no more Adolf Hitler than the Israelis are Nazis. But the &amp;quot;threat&amp;quot; of Iran is distracting the world. So is Tony Blair yesterday, trying to wriggle out of his bloody responsibility for the Iraq disaster. The real catastrophe, however, continues just outside Jerusalem, amid the fields, stony hills and ancient caves of most of the West Bank. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-why-does-the-us-turn-a-blind-eye-to-israeli-bulldozers-1883670.html'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Afghanistan: A new Fallujah ?]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Afghanistan_A_new_Fallujah_-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Afghanistan_A_new_Fallujah_-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:43 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Afghanistan_A_new_Fallujah_-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As US and British troops prepare to attack the town of Marjah in Afghanistan's Helmand Province, military commanders and the media are openly comparing the operation to the November 2004 siege of Fallujah, one of the bloodiest war crimes of the Iraq war.The operation in central Helmand province, long an area of intense resistance to the US-led occupation, will constitute the largest military offensive since Washington invaded the country in October 2001. At least 15,000 troops are expected to lay siege to the Helmand river valley town, which has 80,000 inhabitants and is said by the US military to be a stronghold of the Taliban.A total of 125,000 people live in the district around Marjah, which is an agricultural center 350 miles west of Kabul. The population has been swelled by Afghans fleeing villages occupied by US Marines last summer, following President Barack Obama's order shortly after he took office to send 21,000 more troops into Afghanistan.US Marines, frustrated and enraged over casualties suffered at the hands of an unseen enemy who is able to attack and then blend back into the local population, will be unleashed against the town in a violent military assault, with predictable results.Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, commander of the US Marines in southern Afghanistan, spelled out the character of the upcoming offensive. Those found in Marjah would have three options. &amp;quot;One is to stay and fight and probably die,&amp;quot; he said. &amp;quot;The second one is to make peace with his government and reintegrate.&amp;quot; The third would be to attempt to escape, &amp;quot;In which case we'll probably have some people out there waiting on them as well.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;We're going to go in big,&amp;quot; said Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade. &amp;quot;I'm not looking for a fair fight,&amp;quot; he added.In a highly unusual move, the US command has publicly announced plans for the offensive. &amp;quot;It's a little unconventional to do it this way, but it gives everybody a chance to think through what they're going to do before suddenly in the dark of night they're hit with an offensive,&amp;quot; said General Stanley McChrystal, the senior US commander in Afghanistan.The stated intention of revealing the target of the upcoming offensive is to allow civilians to flee before the Marines move in. It also provides a preemptive alibi for the US offensive by painting those who fail to heed the warning as die-hard Taliban who deserve to be killed.Stratfor, a military-intelligence web site with close ties to the US state apparatus, reported Thursday that &amp;quot;the assault is likely to include the cordoning off of the area, so many of the fighters dedicated to its defense will probably be forced to fight to the death or surrender.&amp;quot;The article continued: &amp;quot;With assaults on Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq under their belts, the Marines are experienced with this sort of urban assault.&amp;quot;What is the record of urban assaults of &amp;quot;this sort&amp;quot;?The Marine assault on Fallujah in November 2004 reduced most of the city of 300,000 people to rubble, as warplanes dropped thousands of tons of explosives and helicopter gunships and battle tanks fired missiles into buildings and strafed the area with cannon fire.The US military command claimed to have killed 2,000 &amp;quot;insurgents,&amp;quot; but the real death toll remains unknown. Civilians who remained in the town were subjected to the same bombardment. Some were shot to death during the door-to-door raids that followed, and others were killed while fleeing. Wounded fighters were summarily executed, and medical facilities were targeted for military attack. All those in the city were denied food, water and electricity for more than 10 days.The operation was a vicious exercise in collective punishment against the population of Fallujah for the killing there of four Blackwater mercenaries and the city's protracted resistance to foreign occupation. It embodied the criminality of the entire war and was characterized by multiple and gross violations of the laws of war.If American military commanders are to be believed, a similar operation is being prepared in Afghanistan, and for similar reasons. The town of Marjah is to be turned into a killing field.As in Fallujah, vengeance plays a role. US military forces have seen a steady escalation in casualties over the past year, while the CIA suffered a humiliating attack at the end of December that left seven of its operatives dead on the Afghan border.In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the US military command sees value in making an example of a population center known as a center of resistance to occupation, sending a message to the entire country that such resistance is futile and will be met with slaughter and destruction.This bloodletting is officially justified in the name of a never-ending struggle against terrorism. Behind the propaganda, the driving force of the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, is the attempt by America's ruling elite to counter the crisis of US capitalism through the use of force and the seizure of strategic positions in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, both centers of vast energy reserves.A year ago, when Barack Obama entered the White House, there existed hope among broad layers of the American people that his inauguration would turn such words as Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, GuantÃ¡namo, Blackwater, torture and rendition into the lexicon of a dark and shameful, but closed, chapter in US history.The preparation of the Marjah offensive only underscores that, far from being ended, the crimes of the Bush administration are continuing and escalating under the Democratic president.Today there are more US troops deployed abroad in colonial-style wars and occupations than under Bush, and the killing has spread from Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan and Yemen. The Obama administration is seeking $322 billion for the two ongoing wars and occupations, a figure that will doubtless be swelled by further demands for &amp;quot;supplemental&amp;quot; funding.The supposed candidate of &amp;quot;hope&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;change&amp;quot; has emerged ever more clearly as the hand-picked agent of sections of the political establishment and military-intelligence complex that wanted to effect certain tactical changes in policy, while continuing to employ militarism abroad and wage a relentless assault on the working class at home.American working people cannot accept a new round of war crimes carried out in their name. The demand for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all US and other foreign troops from Afghanistan must be joined with a political offensive against the Obama administration and the financial oligarchy that it defends. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f06.shtml'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Sovereign Debt: New Stage of Global Crisis]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Sovereign_Debt_New_Stage_of_Global_Crisis-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Sovereign_Debt_New_Stage_of_Global_Crisis-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:36:37 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Sovereign_Debt_New_Stage_of_Global_Crisis-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Stock markets in Europe and Asia fell sharply Friday in the second day of a near-panic selloff fueled by fears that the debt crisis facing weaker European economies will throw the world economy into a &amp;quot;double-dip&amp;quot; recession. Commodity prices-oil and gold, in particular-also fell sharply. In the US, triple-digit losses on the Dow Jones Industrial Average were recouped in the final hour, resulting in small gains for the Dow and the other major indexes in volatile trading, following a sharp selloff on Thursday. The Dow ended the day with a 10-point gain, following a 268-point plunge on Thursday. The index, which was below the 10,000 mark for most of the day, has lost 6.5 percent over the past two weeks. All of the major European indexes closed down, with France's CAC-40 falling the most-3.4 percent, its biggest one-day drop since November 26. The Pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index was off 2.2 percent, its lowest close since November 3. Japan's Nikkei fell 2.89 percent and the Shanghai Composite was off by 1.87 percent. Stocks were down for the second day in Greece, Portugal and Spain, three heavily indebted eurozone countries whose ability to redeem bondholders-including major European and US banks-is increasingly in doubt. Prices of government bonds of all three countries continued to fall and interest rates rose further, as global investors increased pressure on the three governments to impose draconian austerity measures on their respective populations. The cost of credit default swap (CDS) contracts on the debt of the three countries rose even more dramatically. Credit default swaps-now a multi-trillion-dollar market-are a form of unregulated derivatives in which CDS sellers guarantee the value of bonds held by CDS buyers. Rising CDS prices reflect eroding confidence in corporate or government bonds insured by the sellers of the CDS contracts. The CDS market is a hotbed of speculation, since investors, including banks and hedge funds, can bet on the price of CDS contracts without holding the underlying bonds. The threat of sovereign default, most immediately by Greece, but also by Portugal and Spain, has provided an opportunity for speculators to drive up the price of insuring the countries' bonds by speculating on the likelihood of a default, thereby further undermining confidence in the countries' debt and increasing the prospects of such an outcome. All three countries have pledged to impose sweeping cuts in public-sector jobs and wages and in social benefits, along with new consumption taxes, in line with demands from the European Union that they sharply reduce their budget deficits, currently 10 percent or more of their respective gross domestic products. Greek President George Papandreou of the social-democratic PASOK party, who was elected last year on the basis of promises to reverse the right-wing policies of the preceding conservative government, this week announced plans for an across-the-board freeze on public sector wages along with a cut in allowances, which amounts to a wage cut of 4 percent. He also called for a pension &amp;quot;reform,&amp;quot; which entails raising the retirement age, as well as higher fuel taxes. The social-democratic Portuguese and Spanish governments have pledged to impose similar austerity measures. Signs of mounting resistance by the working class in these countries are playing an enormous role in the tremors rippling through the global financial markets. There is a growing sense in governments and board rooms around the world that a major confrontation with the working class is coming, with potentially revolutionary implications. The banks and the media are demanding that heads of state and parliaments demonstrate the &amp;quot;political will&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;political consensus&amp;quot; necessary to impose historic attacks on the working class. These phrases are euphemisms for a degree of ruthlessness that implies a readiness to employ state repression. However, the financial markets are at once skeptical over the willingness of political leaders to employ the required measures and anxious over the outcome of such a confrontation. On Thursday, Greek workers launched the first in a series of strikes to protest the government's austerity package. Customs and tax officials began a 48-hour strike that shut ports and border crossings throughout the country. Strikes by other public and private-sector workers have been called for next week. Greek farmers have been blockading highways in protest against government austerity proposals. A major cause of the global stock selloff that began Thursday was the announcement by the Greek unions of a one-day general strike set for February 24. The unions had initially indicated their willingness to assist the PASOK government in carrying out its austerity plans, but have been forced by pressure from the working class to call the strike actions. Union leaders hope to use the partial labor mobilizations to defuse popular anger and channel it behind nationalist slogans, while they maneuver to work out a deal with the government acceptable to the banks and the European Union. However, there are fears within ruling circles that the unions may not be able to contain the anger of workers and young people, who are already facing mass unemployment and declining living standards. Portuguese and Spanish unions are also threatening to call strikes and protests. Among other factors that precipitated the stock selloff was the failure of the Portuguese government to find buyers for the full amount of a government bond offering on Wednesday, and the defeat of its austerity package at the hands of opposition parties in parliament. The debt crisis of the weaker countries in the 16-nation eurozone, including Ireland and Italy in addition to Greece, Portugal and Spain, is raising questions about the viability of the euro itself. There is increasing public speculation that the 11-year-old currency could collapse under the pressure of the economic and financial crisis. In recent weeks, the euro has fallen precipitously against the US dollar and the yen. On Friday, it fell to $1.3620. It has declined 9 percent against the dollar since December. This does not reflect any inherent strength of the US currency. On the contrary, looming above the debt crisis in Europe is the far greater crisis of the world's biggest debtor-the United States. It is no accident that the European crisis has erupted in the aftermath of last week's budget announcement by President Obama. The US budget plan revealed that the current deficit is $1.6 trillion, equivalent to 10.6 percent of the country's' gross domestic product, a record high since the end of World War II. This approaches Greece's deficit ratio of 12.7 percent of GDP, is higher than that of Spain and twice the eurozone average. The US budget, moreover, projects trillion-dollar deficits for years to come. As in every other industrialized country, the American state responded to the financial crash of 2008 by taking on the debts of its banks and essentially bankrupting its treasury in order to preserve the wealth of its financial elite. The Obama administration, no less than the governments of Europe, is demanding that the cost be borne by the general population in the form of sweeping cuts in basic social programs and a reduction in consumption-i.e., a permanent and dramatic decline in working class living standards. Unlike in previous international financial crises, such as the Asian debt crisis of the 1990s, the United States cannot play the role of lender of last resort. The United States has irretrievably lost its previous position as the dominant world economic power, and its decline is reflected in growing challenges to the role of the dollar as the world reserve and trading currency. At last month's World Economic Forum in Davos, French President Nicolas Sarkozy in his keynote speech said he would use his upcoming presidency of the Group of 20 nations to push for a new international monetary system in which the dollar would no longer be the primary reserve currency. And on Wednesday, Moody's Investors Service warned that the United States faces the loss of its triple-A sovereign credit rating unless Obama moves to slash the federal deficit by carrying out more draconian spending cuts than he has thus far announced. It is the erosion of US economic power and solvency that lends to the sovereign debt crises in Greece, Portugal and other European countries such an explosive and universal character. The recent rise in the dollar is the result of a &amp;quot;flight to safety&amp;quot; by investors who fear a collapse in world asset bubbles and consider US Treasury bonds, along with German government debt, to be a temporary haven. In important respects, the short-term reversal in the dollar's decline is an expression of a deepening of the crisis on world financial markets. As a number of economists warned last year, the US policy of flooding financial markets with cheap credit on the basis of near-zero interest rates and the electronic equivalent of printing a trillion dollars-designed to prop up the major US banks and enable them to record bumper profits despite double-digit unemployment-fueled a huge wave of speculation on risky assets such as stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. These economists predicted that a major rise in the value of the dollar would pull the rug out from under this speculation, which was based on the assumption of a continued decline in the dollar, and force a rapid and destabilizing selloff of inflated assets. It now appears that this collapse in asset bubbles has begun. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&amp;code=GRE20100206&amp;articleId=17449'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs: Why the Market Was Down 7 Days in a Row]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=JPMorgan_vs-_Goldman_Sachs_Why_the_Market_Was_Down_7_Days_in_a_Row-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=JPMorgan_vs-_Goldman_Sachs_Why_the_Market_Was_Down_7_Days_in_a_Row-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:15:35 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Politics</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=JPMorgan_vs-_Goldman_Sachs_Why_the_Market_Was_Down_7_Days_in_a_Row-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Goldman, which has the power to manipulate markets with its high-speed program trades, may be engaging in a Mexican standoff. The veiled threat is, &amp;quot;Back off on the banking reforms, or stand by and watch us continue to crash your markets.&amp;quot; The same manipulations were evident in the bank bailout forced on Congress by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson in September 2008. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://91.192.36.12/news/1/12722-jpmorgan-vs-goldman-sachs-why-the-market-was-down-7-days-in-a-row.html'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Predators pound North Waziristan camp]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Predators_pound_North_Waziristan_camp-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Predators_pound_North_Waziristan_camp-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:55:17 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Predators_pound_North_Waziristan_camp-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A swarm of unmanned US aircraft pounded an al Qaeda camp today in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan.Five unmanned US strike aircraft, likely the Predators and Reapers, are reported to have fired 18 missiles at a camp and vehicles in the village of Datta Khel, a known al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold. This is the largest recorded US airstrike in Pakistan, indicating a top al Qaeda, Taliban, or Haqqani Network leader, or leaders, may have been present.Seventeen terrorists are reported to have been killed in the missile attack. At this time, no senior al Qaeda or Taliban commanders have been reported killed.The US has ramped up the attacks in Pakistan since the beginning of December, after a lull in strikes in October and November of 2009, when only four airstrikes were launched. There were eight strikes in December 2009, and 11 in January of this year. Today's strike is the 12th this year. [For up-to-date charts on the US air campaign in Pakistan, see: Charting the data for US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010.]Today's airstrike is the 13th since Dec. 30, 2009, when a Jordanian al Qaeda operative and double agent carried out a suicide attack at Combat Outpost Chapman in Afghanistan's Khost province. The bomber killed seven CIA officials, including the station chief, and a Jordanian intelligence officer.Since the Dec. 30 suicide attack, the US has been hunting Hakeemullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban. Hakeemullah appeared with the Jordanian suicide bomber on a martyrdom tape that was released shortly after the attack.Hakeemullah was rumored to have been killed in a strike on Jan. 14, but the Taliban later released a tape to confirm he is alive. Rumors of his death have since resurfaced, as unnamed tribal elders claimed Hakeemullah died from wounds received in the strike and was buried in the Arakzai tribal agency.Pakistani Taliban leaders have since denied the rumors and claimed that Hakeemullah would release another tape to prove he is alive. But today, Azam Tariq, Hakeemullah's spokesman, backtracked on previous statements and said there is no need to release a tape, fueling suspicion the Taliban leader may have been killed.&amp;quot;We don't feel any need presently to release a video, but whenever we feel a need, we will do so,&amp;quot; Tariq told The Associated Press. &amp;quot;We are not going to fall prey to this trap and make our leader vulnerable to the spy network, and secondly, the leadership council has restricted the leader from speaking to the media for certain reasons.&amp;quot;Datta Khel is a hub of al Qaeda activityThe Datta Khel region is a known hub of Taliban, Haqqani Network, and al Qaeda activity. Hafiz Gul Bahadar, the Taliban commander for North Waziristan, administers the region, but the Haqqani Network, al Qaeda, and allied Central Asian jihadi groups are also based in the area. The Lashkar al Zil, or al Qaeda's Shadow Army, is known to have a command center in Datta Khel.The Datta Khel region has been hit hard by the US, especially in the past several weeks. The US has conducted nine airstrikes in the Datta Khel region since June 2007, and six of those nine strikes have taken place since Dec. 17, 2009.A strike on Dec. 17, 2009, targeted Sheikh Saeed al Saudi, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law and a member of al Qaeda's Shura Majlis, or executive council. Al Saudi is thought to have survived the strike, but Abdullah Said al Libi, the commander of the Shadow Army or Lashkar al Zil, and Zuhaib al Zahibi, a general in the Shadow Army, were both killed in the attack.Datta Khel borders the Jani Khel region in the settled district of Bannu. The Jani Khel region has long been a strategic meeting place and safe haven for al Qaeda and the Taliban. Jani Khel was identified as the headquarters for al Qaeda's Shura Majlis back in 2007. Ayman al Zawahiri, al Qaeda's second in command, has operated in the Jani Khel region. The US has struck al Qaeda safe houses in Jani Khel twice since last year. These strikes are the only two Predator attacks that have occurred outside of Pakistan's tribal areas since the US airstrikes began in 2004.The town of Jani Khel is a known haven for al Qaeda leaders and fighters. Senior al Qaeda operative Abdullah Azzam al Saudi was killed in a Predator strike in Jani Khel on Nov. 19, 2008. Azzam served as a liaison between al Qaeda and the Taliban operating in Pakistan's northwest.In addition, Al Qaeda is known to have deposited its donations received from Europe into the Bayt al Mal, or Bank of Money, in Jani Khel, according to a report at the NEFA Foundation. The Bayt al Mal served as al Qaeda's treasury.Background on the recent strikes in PakistanUS intelligence believes that al Qaeda has reconstituted its external operations network in Pakistan's lawless, Taliban-controlled tribal areas. This network is tasked with hitting targets in the West, India, and elsewhere. The US has struck at these external cells using unmanned Predator aircraft and other means in an effort to disrupt al Qaeda's external network and decapitate the leadership. The US also has targeted al Qaeda-linked Taliban fighters operating in Afghanistan, particularly the notorious Haqqani Network.As of the summer of 2008, al Qaeda and the Taliban operated 157 known training camps in the tribal areas and the Northwest Frontier Province. Al Qaeda has been training terrorists holding Western passports to conduct attacks, US intelligence officials have told The Long War Journal. Some of the camps are devoted to training the Taliban's military arm; some train suicide bombers for attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan; some focus on training the various Kashmiri terror groups; some train al Qaeda operatives for attacks in the West; some train the Lashkar al Zil, al Qaeda's Shadow Army; and one serves as a training ground for the Black Guard, the elite bodyguard unit for Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other senior al Qaeda leaders.The air campaign has had success over the past two months. Since Dec. 8, 2009, the air campaign in Pakistan has killed two senior al Qaeda leaders, a senior Taliban commander, two senior al Qaeda operatives, and a wanted Palestinian terrorist who was allied with al Qaeda. The status of Hakeemullah Mehsud is still unknown.Already this year, the US has killed Mansur al Shami, an al Qaeda ideologue and aide to al Qaeda's leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu Yazid; and Haji Omar Khan, a senior Taliban leader in North Waziristan. Jamal Saeed Abdul Rahim, the Abu Nidal Organization operative who participated in killing 22 hostages during the 1986 hijacking of Pan Am flight 73, is thought to have been killed in the Jan. 9 airstrike. And Abdul Basit Usman, an Abu Sayyaf operative with a $1 million US bounty for information leading to his capture, is rumored to have been killed in a strike on Jan. 14, although a Philippine military spokesman said Usman is likely still alive and in the Philippines.In December 2009, the US killed Abdullah Said al Libi, the top commander of the Shadow Army; Zuhaib al Zahib, a senior commander in theShadow Army; and Saleh al Somali, the leader of al Qaeda's external network [see LWJ report, &amp;quot;Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders killed in US airstrikes in Pakistan, 2004 - 2010&amp;quot; for the full list]. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2010/02/predators_pound_terr.php'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[Life after oil: "A thousand barrels a second"]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Life_after_oil_A_thousand_barrels_a_second-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Life_after_oil_A_thousand_barrels_a_second-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:55:08 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=Life_after_oil_A_thousand_barrels_a_second-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Peter Tertzakian has a double education in geophysics and economics and is &amp;quot;Chief Energy Economist&amp;quot; at a Canadian energy investment company. His book &amp;quot;A Thousand Barrels a Second: The Coming Oil Breakpoint and Challenges facing an energy dependent world&amp;quot; was published in 2007, but was, based on the contents of the book, presumably written up around 2005. The book's title, &amp;quot;A Thousand Barrels a Second&amp;quot; refers to the rate at which we globally extract and consume oil today; a thousand barrels is equivalent to 159 000 liters of oil per second - or 86 million barrels of oil (more than 13 000 000 000 liters) per day. Of these incredibly high volumes of oil, nearly half ends up in a gas tank close to you.Peter does not talk about &amp;quot;Peak Oil&amp;quot; but about &amp;quot;the coming oil break point&amp;quot;. Exactly how these terms differ from one another is not easy to know, and one may speculate about the reason(s) for Tertzakian to avoid the more conventional/well-known term. My guess is that it is not easy for someone who works in the energy industry - and is richly rewarded for his efforts - to undermine or create too much suspicion about the sustainability of the current system. You may discuss the challenges ahead in terms of &amp;quot;enormous changes&amp;quot;, but you must also strive to find the right tone and a balance between your concerns and your utmost confidence that we can and will cope with these problems.It is a bit strange though, because Peter describes exactly the same grim picture as more conventional oil peak advocates do when he talks about today's energy realities: that oil production in the United States peaked in 1970, that our oil thirst is unquenchable and unsustainable, that all the major oilfields in the world have been discovered and that the trend is that we find less and less oil each year. Today, a newly discovered &amp;quot;large&amp;quot; oil field satisfies the global need for oil only for a few days or weeks. One example is the Hibernia oil field off Newfoundland, Canada. It is one of the major oilfields discovered during the past 30 years, but the total (estimated) amount of oil there is equal to only 11 days of global consumption.The &amp;quot;break point&amp;quot; that Tertzakian referers to is one of four phases in a cycle that each dominant source of energy passes through: Pressure buildup, Break point, Rebalance and Growth and Dependency. The oil crisis of the 1970s marked a break point which caused a nearly fifteen year long period of rebalancing. We are now, since 2001, in the pressure buildup phase, and this time the break point and rebalancing phase will be more dramatic, longer and more difficult, since there are no easy solutions, no new technologies and no suitable energy substitutes that can solve our current problems.A recurrent theme in Tertzakian's book is that changes in our energy infrastructure take time. The size and shape of our infrastructure and of the energy industry today is the result of decisions made one or more generations ago. He compares this with the &amp;quot;abrupt&amp;quot; and smooth transition from whale oil to kerosene, a shift that took &amp;quot;only&amp;quot; 20 years during the second half of the 1800s:&amp;quot;Changes in the world of energy are measured not in months, not in years, but often in decades. The abrupt transition from whale oil to kerosene took less than two decades. In the history of energy substitutions, that's a duration of time akin to an eye blink.&amp;quot;This &amp;quot;quick&amp;quot; shift can be compared to the transition from wood to coal, a shift that took 75 years (1825-1900) despite the fact that coal is in many ways superior to wood (it contains more energy per unit volume, burns hotter and does not rot). The more we build on and refine our current solutions (the &amp;quot;Growth and Dependency&amp;quot; phase), the more difficult the transition to some other form(s) of energy:&amp;quot;Recasting consumer habits is a large undertaking, but the primary obstacle to real change comes from the inflexibility of the technological standards and physical infrastructure that are placed up and down the energy supply chain. For example, our oil-fed energy supply chains have developed over a 145-year-old growth cycle [a4¦] We are dependent on this multitrillion dollar global infrastructure as much as we are dependent on the petroleum that feeds the entire supply chain.&amp;quot;Since the development of new energy sources and technologies in the energy field takes decades from experiments to scalable applications, Tertzakian emphasizes that during the next 10-20 years, there is no radical new technology (&amp;quot;no magic bullet&amp;quot;) that will solve the problems we face today.On the contrary, oil has many attractive properties that no other energy source has. Oil for example contains a lot of energy per unit volume, is easy to store, easy to transport and easy to scale up. Unlike previous transitions, the coming transition will be a switch &amp;quot;down&amp;quot; to energy sources that in some respects are &amp;quot;not as good&amp;quot; than oil. This makes the problem of finding replacements even more challenging, and the transition more difficult, longer and harder to get going. Exactly because oil is such a flexible and powerful energy source, we have found so many uses for it, and at the same time made ourselves completely dependent on it. According to Tertzakian, gasoline and diesel are nothing less than &amp;quot;the Microsoft Windows operating system of the transportation world.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;The better and more robust a fuel is, the more we put it to work in our daily lives. In turn, the more successful a fuel is, the more necessary it becomes to the well-being of the overall economy. This creates a dependency that grows deeply rooted over time.&amp;quot;Tertzakian reproduces an imperialistic quote in the spirit of harsh realpolitik that Richard Nixon uttered in the midst of the oil crisis of 1973. Nixon pinpoints the positive aspects of increased energy usage (which goes hand in hand with increased economic growth), but completely misses the negative aspects of increased dependency and increased vulnerability:&amp;quot;There are only seven percent of the people of the world living in the United States, and we use thirty percent of all the energy. That isn't bad; that is good. That means we are the richest, strongest people in the world and that we have the highest standard of living in the world. That is why we need so much energy, and may it always be that way.&amp;quot;The only thing Nixon forgot for the quote to be &amp;quot;perfect&amp;quot; - completely updated and adapted to Bush-speak - was to ask God to bless the United States... In the early 1970s, the U.S. imported 10% of its oil, but 35 years later that figure has risen to over 65%, and the country is now so stuck in that trap that it has to go to war (Iraq) in order to secure its oil imports.How many new sources of energy have been introduced over the past 100 years, Tertzakian asks rhetorically. The answer is one (1) and that power source is nuclear energy which currently accounts for approximately 6% of the world's total energy production (about one-sixth of the oil's share). Renewable energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy) are this far insignificant and associated with theoretical and practical problems that make it difficult for them to play a major role in the industrialized countries' energy mix for at least the next 10 years. Tertzakian claims that they may be useful in the rebalancing process after a break point, but they will not in any meaningful way replace oil or avert the coming break point (energy crisis). Another example of the long lead times to develop new energy sources is Canada's oil sands. To my surprise I learned that the history of mining oil sand in Alberta started already 40 years ago - and only recently reached substantial volumes.In the book's first chapter, Tertzakian tells the story of our hunt for whales. In 1751, it was discovered that spermaceti oil from Sperm whales (and later whale oil) was valuable. Every Sperm whale may carry up to two tons of spermaceti oil in its skull and the function of this oil is still not completely understood. But humans know what the oil may be used for - namely to produce candles. Since these candles were better than any comparable alternative, the whaling industry expanded in the subsequent decades. 100 years later, whales had become scarce and you had to go to the ends of the earth and back again on trips that lasted up to four years in order to find the whales (a chapter in the book is actually called &amp;quot;To The Ends of the Earth&amp;quot;). Just in time before the whales got extinct in the mid 1800s, the fossil fuel kerosene took over the task of illuminating our homes and our growing cities.Tertzakian makes a point of the observation that our quest for oil today is just as desperate as the hunt for whales was a few decades into the 1800s. Today we hunt for oil in every corner of the world and we head off to the most inhospitable environments, the deepest oceans and the most politically corrupt and unstable countries in our quest for more oil. Unfortunately, the good oil -- &amp;quot;light sweet crude&amp;quot; - is becoming harder and harder to obtain:&amp;quot;For light sweet crude, the evidence strongly suggests that we are very close to Hubbert's peak, and that we have reached the stage [a4¦] where we must start exploiting secondary and synthetic sources to prolong the onset of the overall oil peak.&amp;quot;It is impossible to get any closer to the theory of peak oil without actually embracing it. As the &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; oil is running out, we must now turn to the worse, &amp;quot;sour&amp;quot; oil that contains more sulfur, costs more to refine and is more harmful for the environment. Other alternatives are even worse, for example Canada's oil sands - a source of energy that no one would have considered if the better options had still been easy to exploit. After the lowest hanging fruit has been picked, we should from now anticipate more expensive oil. This has implications far beyond more expensive transportation, since our entire society and everything we consume directly or indirectly depend on oil and petroleum products (for example plastics).Thus, it is obvious to Tertzakian that we approach the mother of all break points and that the effects will reach into every household and every home. The four phases of the break point are 1) complaining and paying up, 2) conserving and being more efficient, 3) adopting alternative energy sources and 4) making societal, business, and lifestyle changes. This process could easily last for decades. Regarding the fact that we currently do nothing or very little to prepare for the coming break point, Tertzakian writes:&amp;quot;At a break point [a4¦] lifestyle changes can seem like painful sacrifices until we readjust. It is the pain of those sacrifices that makes any political administraion reluctant to tell the whole truth about our energy situation. Until the evidence of the need for change is more obvious to all citizens, it will be difficult politically to make the necessary tough choices.&amp;quot;Tertzakian soberly notes that today's politicians have nothing to gain, but much to lose by trying to act proactively. Since there are no quick solutions with immediate positive effects and no political gain in making decisions which make sense only in the long term, politicians prefer the (non-)strategy of &amp;quot;wait-and-see&amp;quot;.An example is the issue of raising taxes on gasoline in the United States. Such a decision would be very wise in the sense that it would &amp;quot;encourage&amp;quot; people to make the &amp;quot;right&amp;quot; personal financial decisions. But it would also be political suicide. In the United States, the individual's right to buy the car (or SUV) he or she wants is just as holy as the right to own a gun - and there are a lot more car owners than gun owners in the U.Sa4¦ There are also many practical problems with a high petrol tax. In order for such a tax to be efficient, there must be functioning alternatives to using a car in the form of public transport. In addition to high costs for expanding public transport, it is also exceedingly difficult to make it work in the United States after 20+ years of emigration to suburbs which have been spreading in all directions around American cities.At the end of the book, Tertzakian paints himself into a corner in his attempts to propose solutions that on one hand will have some effect, and on the other hand will be &amp;quot;lifestyle neutral&amp;quot;. There are big savings to be done regarding personal transports (cars), but it all ends up in a few weak proposals about smaller and lighter cars, lower speed on the roads and other bits and pieces of plaster on these open wounds. On the whole, however, the book is a nice read. Its main merit is to give an understanding of how difficult, challenging and time consuming it is to switch away from the oil infrastructure we have been building piece by piece for more than 100 years. The author's analysis is good, but the concluding recommendations are a bit too weak to stand on par with the size of the problem. A review of the book which draws attention to completely different aspects can be found here.Since I bought this book, Tertzakian has published another book: &amp;quot;The end of energy obesity: Breaking today's energy addiction for a prosperous and secure tomorrow&amp;quot;. &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://life-after-oil.blogspot.com/2010/01/thousand-barrels-second-by-tertzakian.html'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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		<title><![CDATA[How to talk to friends about climate change]]></title>
		<link>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=How_to_talk_to_friends_about_climate_change-1</link>
		<comments>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=How_to_talk_to_friends_about_climate_change-1</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:55:00 NZDT</pubDate>
		<dc:creator></dc:creator>
		<category>Commentary</category>
		<guid>http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=How_to_talk_to_friends_about_climate_change-1</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I may soon end up walking the streets of Boston with a sandwich board and a tinfoil hat. I know you'll all remember me fondly when that day comes, and stop to say hello and maybe buy me a sandwich. But in the meantime, with my wits still somewhat collected, I'm going to tell you about my present struggles with self-expression and what I think they mean.I was lucky to find an old friend on Facebook recently, and then to have breakfast with him in Washingon D.C., where we were both attending conferences.  Eric and I spent a summer together in NIcaragua in the 80s, and now he's a professor of physics at a reputable university, and I am someone who is building a zero-carbon house, with thick padded walls, and making it known to all and sundry that I think we're likely headed for social collapse.  It was Eric who suggested that I wear the tinfoil hat. I challenged him to a debate on the subject. Here's my part of our email exchange, which summarizes my answer to his question &amp;quot;Do you really believe that we're in a state of collapse?&amp;quot;&amp;quot;The short answer is, yes I do, but I'd like to elaborate a bit, because I can see that you fall into a category of people in my life (friends and family), who are worried that I've become ungrounded and perhaps apocalyptic.With people as educated as you, I generally just say &amp;quot;consider the evidence&amp;quot;, and leave it at that. With those I feel don't have the interest in doing so, I change the subject. But it's become clear that I need to be able to back myself up with facts and figures and reliable professional opinions, so I'm practicing doing that. Bear with me.The economic crisis of last year-in which I lost 1/3 of my money which was invested in the stock market, and that was nothing compared to what I saw happen to friends and neighbors-was a major milestone in this process. The fact that the government has bailed out large banks and corporations with taxpayer money reveals the inherent corruption of the government, as does the Supreme Court decision of last week. Obama, however much we may like him, seems utterly stymied by the power of the corporate interests in government. Better heads than I have declared that we are living in a failed state. This isn't so unusual-governments and empires collapse all the time.I know much more about climate change than I do about the economy though, and I find the evidence that our way of life is unsustainable to be incontrovertible there. I keep up with the science pretty well, and follow the work of James Hansen, NASA climatologist, very closely. His conclusion, after years of research on glacial melting, ice-core samples, temperature data, etc., is that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 must be kept to 350 parts per million or less in order to preserve the planet as we know it. Anything more is going to lead to runaway warming due to feedback loops (those are the natural mechanisms that accelerate warming once it's already underway, such as melting permafrost, which releases methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas). Runaway warming will lead to sea-level rise, ocean acidification, massive extinction (already happening), drought and catastrophic weather events, etc. Right now the CO2 is at 387 ppm, and the promises made at Copenhagen by the major emitters, to cut their emissons, are so weak that they will lead us to 770 ppm within this century. It would be arrogant to assume that we can both survive that, and continue our way of life at the same time.I think I can safely challenge you, because I remember that you enjoy a good debate! So here's what I would say to you, or anyone with your smarts: What makes you think we AREN'T in an early stage of collapse?&amp;quot;I didn't get a good answer to that question &amp;quot;What makes you think we AREN'T in an early stage of collapse?&amp;quot; and it didn't surprise me much.  Eric's response was that he thought it unlikely that things would go bad all at once-he felt that positive change could happen over the course of a century or so, without great upheaval in the process.  But while I had given a good deal of the evidence that I find persuasive, Eric's reply was only a few sentences. I felt as though I was being patted on the head reassuringly.Many, many conversations with friends and family have ended with me changing the subject, and I did it because I found I was making people uncomfortable. The people I upset are always educated. They include my father, a decorated and highly respected professor or molecular biology, who doesn't like to see me get upset. They include my writing class, a group of journalists with multiple publication credits, one of whom said to me, angrily &amp;quot;I don't know why you think that climate change is any worse than anything else!  I feel like I hear about this all the time in the news. There's a lot of stuff being done, you know-wasn't there just a big conference in Copenhagen?&amp;quot;  They include a good friend, reeling from a divorce and a year of unemployment and an ex with breast-cancer, who says &amp;quot;I know about this stuff, but I just can't deal with it right now.&amp;quot; Who can?I prowl the internet for writing by psych professionals, or anyone really, on the emotional and spiritual effects of living with the threat of cataclysm.  What can we expect to see as typical reactions as the crisis progresses? What are the historical precedents?  How can people work, love and parent under these circumstances? Until about two years ago, I could find almost nothing written on this subject, and I felt isolated and fearful of my own mental health.I&amp;quot;m a little embarassed to be talking about my communication problems with family and friends, but I'm doing it because I think it's important to remember that the personal IS political. We are all involved in creating the story of our culture, and that story can be so powerful that it obscures the evident truth. The story of this culture, that we have all been steeped in for our whole lives, is that we are entitled to thrive, prosper and grow. Growth is in fact necessary for our well-being, for our powerful status in the world, and for our capacity to help the less fortunate. Many in this country believe that American prosperity and leadership is mandated by God. To suggest that all this success we have achieved and will achieve and seem destined to achieve, is actually failure, and will soon implode, is to contradict the story of our culture. But we can only change the story if we tell new ones.This is an American story, and a conversation with almost any immigrant will turn it on its head. Most of the world's poor already live in a state that we would call collapse. And even prosperous Europeans remember the Second World War in their homelands, and the countries formerly known as the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and know that such disasters are possible.I recently came across the work of Dmitriy Orlov, a Russian-American who saw the Soviet Union collapse up close, and has lived in the US for many years. His work compares the collapse of the Soviet Empire to the present US economic crisis, factoring in climate change and peak oil, as well as other resource depletion. It is particularly compelling to me because I witnessed the Soviet collapse from a closer vantage point than this-I was living in Czechoslovakia in the 1990s, in a post-communist society rebuilding itself to look more like ours.Here's an excerpt from Orlov's essay &amp;quot;Thriving in an Age of Collapse&amp;quot;&amp;quot;An economy collapses one person, one family, one community at a time.  First the dreams evaporate: the future starts looking worse than the present, and ever more uncertain. Then people are forced to withstand ever greater indignities and privations, which they tend to accept as their personal failings. The resulting stress causes them to experience a variety of physical and psychological symptoms. Our pride, our habits and expectations, and our unwillingness to adapt can kill us faster than any physical hardship. But eventually something has to give, and even if life does not get any easier, one morning we wake up, and not only has life all around us been transformed all out of recognition, but everyone we encounter recognizes that times have changed.  And we realize that none of this is about us personally, and feel better.&amp;quot;&amp;quot;An economy collapses one person, one family, one community at a time.&amp;quot; Does this seem right? Can you picture unemployed friends? Whole communities losing homes to foreclosure? Families taken down by health-care costs? Detroit, maybe? Dmitriy Orlov's writing struck me with the force of plain-spoken truth, based on what I know of the collapse of the Soviet Empire, what I know about the US economy at this time, what I know about the implications of climate change, and what I see around me. His story, which is about surviving, and even thriving, through collapse, is the one that compels me now. I am talking about the difficulty of expressing the truth-or what I think is the truth-about how imperilled our country and our world is right now.  The news is unwelcome, it makes for deadened conversations, it furrows brows and it irks people. Responses to the bad news on the environment and the economy range from denial to rage to hopelessness. Many good folks do not think about this stuff, or change their lives in accordance with the new reality, because they have no idea what to do in the face of cataclysm. I have found solace in the words of Dmitriy Orlov and many others, and there are two reasons for this. One is that the voices of truth relieve our anxiety that the liars are right and we are crazy.  The truth, however awful, is safe and real. The other reason we can embrace the truth is that it allows us to move past denial into action.  I know that this is almost a cliche now, but I have found it a huge relief in my life to contemplate the reality of a world without cars, of local gardens and revived community and useless television sets. We may have to spend much of our energy finding food and water, maintaining our homes and taking care of our families; we may have to school our own children, tend to the ill without hospitals, and bury our own dead. But it's our spiritual work to take this on now, to prepare, and that begins with acknowledging the truth.But, as Orlov says, wryly, &amp;quot;Your participation in this program is optional.&amp;quot; &nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;<a href='http://www.grist.org/article/how-to-talk-to-your-friends-about-climate-change/'>PLIGG_Visual_RSS_OriginalNews</a>]]></description>
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