http://www.scoopit.co.nz Submit and vote on the news you care about Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:10 NZST en http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=murdoch-and-the-big-lie
We now face an altogether more profound falsehood: a government that flatly denies doing what it is doing. The Prime Minister told the BBC ↑ on its flagship Andrew Marr show that when it came to his government and the Murdochs, "It would be absolutely wrong for there to be any sort of deal and there wasn't... There was no grand deal".

This is a big lie. There was a deal. It was indeed wrong. We should not just be talking about the Murdochs, we should focus on the heart of the problem: the government.

The Murdochs and the Conservatives "shared" ↑ the code-name ‘Rubicon’ for the BSkyB bid that would have led to its complete takeover by NewsCorp. In an email of 11 January 2011 ↑ that would make a classicist shudder, James Murdoch’s Director of Public Affairs even reports a conversation with Jeremy Hunt’s office about “the Rubicon process”.

Fortunately the ‘process’ was wider than the Rubicon itself, a river south of Ravenna in northern Italy that Julius Caesar crossed with his legion to challenge the Roman Republic. It was his point of no return. He went on to become Dictator and although assassinated turned the Roman Republic into an Empire. ]]> Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:10 NZST Diogenes Commentary 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=murdoch-and-the-big-lie http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=how-to-bankrupt-a-generation- Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:10 NZST TeKarere Commentary 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=how-to-bankrupt-a-generation- http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=hey-not-so-fast-on-european-austerity-
Have they looked at their own numbers? It has been two years since moves to austerity started, but the crisis is still with us. Growth in European gross domestic product was negative in the last quarter of 2011. Unemployment in the entire euro zone in February was 10.8 percent; in Spain it was an astounding 23.6 percent. And judging from the renewed turbulence in bond markets, investors don’t believe that prosperity is just around the corner.

Fiscal austerity is normally a sensible response to a loss in confidence in a country’s solvency, as has occurred in parts of Europe. But the current situation is exceptional. Short-term interest rates are very low, so large rate reductions to offset the negative impact of budget cutting are impossible.

In addition, the troubled countries of Europe are part of a common currency area. This means that the other obvious tool for stimulating growth during a time of fiscal austerity — depreciating the currency relative to that of their main trading partners — is not available, either.

The result is that austerity is uniquely destructive right now. Indeed, because of the harsh effect of budget cutting on growth, debt-to-G.D.P. ratios in Europe have continued to rise.

If stringent belt-tightening isn’t the answer, what is? It’s not to just ignore the deficit. Many European countries have long-run fiscal situations that are unsustainable and must be dealt with.

The core of a more sensible approach is to pass the needed budget measures now, but to phase in the actual tax increases and spending cuts only gradually — as economies recover. To use economists’ terminology, the measures should be backloaded.

They should also be specific — no more deficit targets without specifying how they’ll be achieved. Instead, lay out right now whose taxes will be raised and what spending will be cut. And specify when the measures will take effect — either along a set schedule, or tied explicitly to indicators of economic recovery. ]]> Sun, 13 May 2012 19:01:10 NZST John.Law Commentary 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=hey-not-so-fast-on-european-austerity- http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=un-mute-over-nato-syrian-death-squads
The HRW report titled, "Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses," is broken into three parts; kidnapping, torture, and executions. And while the report attempts to focus mainly on atrocities carried out against security forces and government supporters, the mention of civilian victims is made as well. The report states:
Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.
Now, almost daily, the Syrian opposition is carrying out vicious attacks not only on security forces, but a terrorist bombing campaign across Syria that has already killed and maimed scores of civilians.

While the Syrian opposition claims it lacks the ability to carry out such attacks, the opposition is exposed as very well armed, their fighters sheltered in NATO member Turkey, its leadership sheltered in Washington and London, and their fighters wielding not only an endless supply of small arms, but rocket propelled grenades, mortars, missiles, and even tanks.
]]> Sun, 13 May 2012 19:00:41 NZST Grapes.Of.Wrath World 5 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=un-mute-over-nato-syrian-death-squads http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=taliban-stronger-than-before-troop-surge-us%C2%A0lawmakers Fri, 11 May 2012 01:40:44 NZST Honest.John World 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=taliban-stronger-than-before-troop-surge-us%C2%A0lawmakers http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=hunting-king-declared-persona-non-grata
The town council of Berga, population 17,160, in Catalonia, approved a symbolic motion proposed by the pro-Catalan independence Popular Unity Candidature party declaring King Juan Carlos ''persona non grata''.

The king has faced condemnation after breaking a hip while on a lavish safari in southern Africa at a time when nearly one in four Spaniards are unemployed and the economy enters its second recession in three years.

The accident happened in the early hours of April 13 while the king was on the fourth day of an elephant hunt in Botswana's northern Okavango region, and he was immediately flown home by private jet for emergency hip replacement surgery.

Although the king apologised for having gone on the hunt while everyday people endured a severe economic crisis, this act of royal contrition was not enough for Berga's councillors. Berga is 108 kilometres north of Catalonia's capital, Barcelona.

The royal family has been under intense media scrutiny.

The king's son-in-law, Inaki Urdangarin, is a suspect in a corruption case, accused of using his position to embezzle several million euros in public contracts through a supposedly not-for-profit foundation he set up.

Then, over Easter, the king's 13-year-old grandson, Felipe Juan Froilan, shot himself in the foot with a shotgun, even though by law in Spain you must be 14 to handle a gun. ]]> Fri, 11 May 2012 01:38:02 NZST Res.Publica World 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=hunting-king-declared-persona-non-grata http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=galbraith-the-predator-state
Our rulers deliver favors to their clients. These range from Native American casino operators, to Appalachian coal companies, to Saipan sweatshop operators, to the would-be oil field operators of Iraq. They include the misanthropes who led the campaign to abolish the estate tax; Charles Schwab, who suggested the dividend tax cut of 2003; the “Benedict Arnold” companies who move their taxable income offshore; and the financial institutions behind last year’s bankruptcy bill. Everywhere you look, public decisions yield gains to specific private entities. ]]> Fri, 11 May 2012 01:37:41 NZST Grapes.Of.Wrath World 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=galbraith-the-predator-state http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=is-tom-crone-rupert-murdoch%E2%80%99s-john-dean Wed, 09 May 2012 02:16:58 NZST Res.Publica Commentary 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=is-tom-crone-rupert-murdoch%E2%80%99s-john-dean http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=keen-australian-house-price-bubble-is-bursting
Australian house prices have now fallen 6.1% from their peak, and have been falling for 21 months, which is the longest downturn in nominal prices ever recorded by the ABS – the previous longest being the 12 months from the beginning of the GFC (which was terminated by my favourite government policy of all time, the First Home Vendors Boost). ]]> Wed, 09 May 2012 02:16:58 NZST Diogenes Commentary 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=keen-australian-house-price-bubble-is-bursting http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=a-closer-look-at-the-secret-service-1
Maybe that’s why the media reacted with such astonishment to learn that Secret Service agents preparing for Obama’s visit to Cartagena, Colombia, consorted with prostitutes. Eight agents have been forced out of their jobs, and a ninth is on his way out. Military personnel along on the trip are under investigation as well. The activity raised questions not only about the appropriateness of such conduct, but of whether this behavior threatened the President’s safety.

Just a One-Time Thing, Folks ]]> Mon, 07 May 2012 04:10:58 NZST Rangitatau.Pa.1819 World 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=a-closer-look-at-the-secret-service-1 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=gfc-don%E2%80%99t-mention-the-a-word
The simple answer is: because our central bank is not mad (unlike other central banks). The RBA looks like a standard inflation-targeting central bank. Except it does not have a fixed inflation target, it has an explicit average-over-the-business-cycle target. Which means that, if output falls, the money supply does not have to follow output down. On the contrary, counteracting monetary stimulus “smooths out the bumps”. The effect is not merely to anchor price expectations, but to anchor income expectations as well. We did not end up in the situation where people are nervous about their income expectations but confident in their price expectations (i.e. the future-swap-value-of-money), which then encourages people to hold onto their money, which leads to less transactions and so less income (income being someone else’s spending; i.e. price x transactions), which increases concerns about income, leading to a downward spiral in transactions. Low interest rates are not a sign of “easy” money; they are generally a sign of “tight” money; of money being expected to retain—or even increase—its average swap values. (Inflation expectations in the US are currently very low while cash flow uncertainty can have, unsurprisingly, a significantly negative impact on corporate investment and employment.) ]]> Mon, 07 May 2012 04:10:53 NZST Diogenes Commentary 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=gfc-don%E2%80%99t-mention-the-a-word http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=krugman-and-shiller-we%E2%80%99re-in-a-depression
The best way to think about this continued slump, I’d argue, is to accept that we’re in a depression …. It’s nonetheless essentially the same kind of situation that John Maynard Keynes described in the 1930s: “a chronic condition of subnormal activity for a considerable period without any marked tendency either towards recovery or towards complete collapse.”

Robert Shiller said yesterday that the world is in a state of “late Great Depression”.

Many other top economists also say that were in a Depression.

We are stuck in a depression because the government has done all of the wrong things, and has failed to address the core problems.

For example:

An economics professor says we’ll have “a never-ending depression unless we repudiate the debt, which never should have been extended in the first place”
Fraud was one of the main causes of the Depression, but nothing has been done to rein in fraud today. Indeed, the only action the government is taking is to help cover up fraud
All leading independent economists have said that the economy cannot recover until the big, insolvent banks are broken up, but the government has just helped them to get bigger
Excessive leverage helped cause the Great Depression and the current crisis, but the government has encouraged more leverage
The Federal Reserve caused the Great Depression and the current crisis, and has done nothing but help the fatcats at the expense of the little guy. And yet the government has given the Fed more power than ever.
Government policies send manufacturing jobs and dollars abroad ]]> Thu, 03 May 2012 22:36:24 NZST Grapes.Of.Wrath Commentary 10 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=krugman-and-shiller-we%E2%80%99re-in-a-depression http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=the-constitutional-crimes-of-barack-obama
* A federal court also ruled that President Bush had committed a felony in using the National Security Agency and several complicit telecommunications companies to spy on massive numbers of Americans with no warrants. Again, instead of prosecuting the president once he replaced him, President Obama said there would be no prosecution, and he went on to expand that spying program exponentially, effectively shredding beyond recognition the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches and seizures, which had been a leading rallying issue for the revolutionists of 1776.

* President Obama, on his own initiative, has moved beyond the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, launching illegal wars against Libya, Yemen and Pakistan, largely through the use of American military aircraft, cruise missiles and especially pilotless drones. In addition to being illegal acts of war against nations that pose no imminent threat to the US, these clear acts of war have caused vastly disproportionate civilian deaths — reportedly as many as 40 civilians, including many children, are being killed by drone strikes inside Pakistan for each of the supposed targeted “terrorists.” Jist the disproportionality of such “collateral damage” is a heinous war crime, even leaving aside the illegality of such strikes being conducted by the US within the border of a sovereign nation not at war with the US.
.. snip .. ]]> Thu, 03 May 2012 03:48:36 NZST John.Law Law & Order 9 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=the-constitutional-crimes-of-barack-obama http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=the-meaning-of-%E2%80%9Causterity-measures%E2%80%9D
So the downturn was a basically matter of choice, a self-inflicted wound brought on by poor decision-making in Brussels and Frankfurt. Anyone could see what the result was going to be because contractionary policy leads to economic contraction. Implement policies that are designed to shrink the economy, then the economy will shrink.

For the last month or so, the focus has mainly been on Spain, and for good reason. Spain’s banking system is crumbling beneath the weight of tens of billions in non performing loans generated by the gigantic housing bubble which is still deflating. Unemployment in Spain is the highest in Europe at 24 percent. (Youth unemployment is over 50 percent) Even so, Spain’s right wing PM Mariano Rajoy is attempting to reach the deficit targets demanded by the troika which will push unemployment higher while further deepening the depression. According to Der Speigel:

“The prime minister recently announced that he wants to reduce expenditures in the country’s education and health system by €10 billion. …. To meet the demands of the central government, the regions would have to slash 80,000 out of 500,000 teaching positions.” ]]> Tue, 01 May 2012 03:02:31 NZST John.Law Commentary 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=the-meaning-of-%E2%80%9Causterity-measures%E2%80%9D http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=spanish-jobless-rate-hits-20yr-high
In the first three months of this year close to 370,000 people lost their jobs and Spain's jobless rate is now at 24.4 per cent.

The pain from the latest unemployment figures has been compounded by news of a credit ratings downgrade and there are fears Spain will be forced to accept a bailout from Brussels.

The government says the gloomy jobless rate is all the more reason for Spain to embrace reforms to cut its deficit, which will lay the foundation for future job creation.

But this talk is hard to swallow for those lining up in unemployment queues across the country. ]]> Mon, 30 Apr 2012 03:45:53 NZST Rodrigo World 11 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=spanish-jobless-rate-hits-20yr-high http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=yemen-popular-committees-take-control Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:56:48 NZST apres.moi.la.deluge World 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=yemen-popular-committees-take-control http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=will-iran-war-be-another-october-surprise
Each of them is nefarious enough to tempt fate. To make matters worse, it turns out that the two of them are friends.

It doesn’t help either that Barack Obama, having publically endorsed the Israeli view of Iran’s nuclear program, reinforced their pretext, the one that media pundits in thrall to the Israel lobby have promoted for years. Neither does it help that, despite overwhelming evidence that it produces the opposite of the intended effect, it is now taken for granted in Western capitals that it is good policy to wage or threaten to wage disarmament wars – ostensibly to block nuclear proliferation.

If we could be confident of the rationality of the parties involved, there would be no cause for alarm. But can anyone reflecting on the absurdity of American politics in the Bush-Obama era, or on Israeli politics, not help but worry? In both countries, the left is a shell and the center is spineless and insipid. Meanwhile, the right is not just mindless but also dangerously full of what William ButlerYeats called “passionate intensity.” ]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:56:40 NZST Cassandra Politics 6 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=will-iran-war-be-another-october-surprise http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=caring-for-traumatized-soldiers-in-the-us Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:56:26 NZST Dharawal Health 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=caring-for-traumatized-soldiers-in-the-us http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=jj-could-mlk-get-a-job-in-today%E2%80%99s-america
Twenty-five years ago, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sensibly ruled under the Civil Rights Act that it is illegal for employers to disqualify job applicants based on arrest or conviction records unless the criminal record is directly relevant to the job in question. New studies show that companies routinely ignore this ruling — and the EEOC has not updated its guidelines for more than 20 years.

Now, under new Chair Jacqueline Berrien, the EEOC will meet this week to consider how to enforce the law. It is vital that the commissioners reassert the force of the original ruling and give employers clear guidelines.

A recent study by the National Employment Law Project revealed that more than 90 percent of employers use criminal background checks in hiring decisions. They routinely deny someone with a record any chance to review the charges. Nonviolent youth offenders are eliminated, even though data suggest that once an early offender turns 26, many are less likely to engage in criminal activity than the general population. Even activists arrested in nonviolent protests find that their records can be used to disqualify them. Such arrests can also affect one’s credit rating, and that, too, acts as a negative. ]]> Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:56:12 NZST Grapes.Of.Wrath Culture 7 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=jj-could-mlk-get-a-job-in-today%E2%80%99s-america http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=dutch-pastor-crusades-against-lust-phobia- Thu, 26 Apr 2012 01:12:53 NZST TeKarere Health 8 http://www.scoopit.co.nz/story.php?title=dutch-pastor-crusades-against-lust-phobia-