Neoliberalism, debt, and the smokescreen of hatred

As the global economy tanks and wealth flows to those at the apex, ripped out of the paychecks, pensions, and credit card debts of the working class, the ugly old stereotypes of race and sex are floating to the surface, aided both by politicians and the corporate media.

The loathsome antics of Rush Limbaugh are just one example of a much broader scenario, in which the attention of the public is diverted from the real evils plaguing society by inflaming sentiment with images of ancient bogeymen.

There’s a certain natural human tendency in times of crisis to invoke images of seemingly less-troubled times, the days when things followed “the natural order.”

The real causes of the crisis are ignored, in part because real solutions would require a major transformation of the existing order, including real and sweeping changes in the fundamental patterns of our lives.

Because we’re creatures of habit, change is threatening, especially when the mass media offer no real alternative visions of ways we could transform our world into a place that’s both richer and more fundamentally satisfying to a species that evolved in small groups charactierized by rich, intense relationships.

Libertarianism and the cult of greed

Libertarianism, especially the Ayn Rand version so popular with the neoliberal set [Alan Greenspan was a member of her inner circle], denies the mutual interdependence of Homo sapiens, and celebrates naked opportunism and seeks to profit by destroying the very institutions that bind us together.

The brilliance of the demonizing strategy is that it strikes at very deep instincts, so deep and unthinking that they transform the people who are being most victimized by their manipulations into the system’s most vocal proponents.

The very things the angry right deplores — destruction of their lives and livelihoods, the loss of community, the sense of invasion — are fundamental attributes of the agenda they so stridently support.

Take Limbaugh for example. At the heart of his rant is a carefully contrived construct of commodified women, in his example, and system which institutionalizes paying women for their sexuality — insurance-provided birth control] for having sex.

Workers and small business owners who trumpet the Limbaugh line also damn the liberal [sic] media for commodifying women, both in their programming to draw viewers/listeners/readers and in their advertisements, where sex sells.

But Limbaugh, his brothers and sisters of the airwaves, as well as their corporate backers, cleverly subvert a legitimate concern and focus the ensuing outrage against other people who are just as unhappy with very same system and for many of the same deeply instinctual causes.

Similarly, their liberal counterparts are distracted from notions of fundamental structural change and diverted into playing the rivals of the Limbaugh set, debating the issues set by an agenda in which neither side had a role in crafting the rules.

Defining the rules of the game

So who does set the rules? And what is the real object of the game?

Think “too big to fail.”

One brilliant given, a de facto part of American politics since the rise of the Republican Party in the 1860 presidential election, occurred with the transformation of American political system into a duopoly. Third parties have merely served to tip control from one dominant party to the other, and have no role in legislation, unlike countries with a parliamentary system.

The duopoly system enables the same forces to control both sides of the game. All that remains at stake is the shifting of resources among alliances within the closed circle of the real players, the corporateers and the banksters.

The end game is austerity, disaster capitalism, the gutting of the commons, and its aim is the complete capture of all the world’s resources — global privatization.

And at the heart of the game is debt.

The global game would collapse without growth, because growth is the only mechanism for paying debt, and debt, in turn, is the only way the modern machine can keep running. If that sounds like a vicious circle, it is. Rather, it’s an odious system, a system made possible by odious debt.

And what is odious debt?

Wikipedia’s definition is a good one:

In international law, odious debt is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state. In some respects, the concept is analogous to the invalidity of contracts signed under coercion.

Just as many Greeks feel isolated from their government and its subservience to the Troika, what typical American voter had a hand in crafting out the Bush/Obama bankster bailouts?

Well, you might argue, those decisions were made by officials we elected.

Who, then, gave you the candidates? And how were they presented? Did Barack Obama campaign on a promise to give the more money to the banksters, as well as de facto immunity from their legal and moral crimes?

And in what arena does political discourse occur? Who owns the news media and hires the news managers who provide the platform for community debate? Is it the same small clique who also fund political campaigns? And, if so, how can any government elected through such a venue claim to serve in the best interests of a family living in poverty and headed by a single mother? Or a unionized factory worker? A janitor?

Excluded form political discourse is anything more than fleeting coverage to critics who come from outside the system, who offer alternative visions grounded in deep fact and historical insight?

But the harsh realities cannot be denied. The earth simply cannot provide for the endless growth of a species grown dependent on ruthless exploitation of its finite and increasingly scarce resources while poisoning the planet with its toxic byproducts. But only such a model can hope to sustain a system financed by debt and remorselessly compounding interest.

We would argue that humanity’s greatest talent is for living creatively, not consuming endlessly.

We have the opportunity to create fuller lives, lives less dependent on material possessions and made richer by the freeing of our imaginations from the carefully crafted channels of the corporate media on which we have become dependent.

The happiest people we’ve ever met were men and women who had relatively few possessions and found true wealth in the community and the natural world around them. They have lessons to teach us all.

Welcome to the brave new world of drones

First, “Heart & Mind-O-Matic,” an animation from Mark Fiore:

Here’s a little wrap-up of the latest news on the drone front.

EU firms rush to crash in on the drone biz

With armed drones filling the skies over ever-larger parts of the world these days, the corporate world is rushing to cash in.

From Andrew Rettman of EUobserver:

EU firms have joined the gold rush on military and civilian unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). But ethical and legal questions dog the technology.

The global UAV market is worth $6 billion (€4.6bn) a year and will hit $12 billion by 2018, according to US forecaster Teal Group.

It is not a real market. Currently, military-industrial complexes in China, Israel, the EU, Russia and the US make drones for their armed forces and sell them to close allies only. Almost half the spending is government research.

But with big money at stake, some analysts predict rapid proliferation.

“China has made a copy of the predator – the pterodactyl. It’s identified a hole in the market for attack UAVs and it plans to sell more widely. This will force everyone to sell more widely … I’ve traced 51 countries which are interested in acquiring this kind of technology, but I’m sure there are more out there,” Noel Sharkey – a British robotics professor who advises the military – told EUobserver.

Read the rest.

Flying over the real estate, getting broker

And drones are flying in American skies, too — only some controlled by the forces of law and order.

From Nick Wingfield and Somini Sengupta of the New York Times:

Daniel Gárate’s career came crashing to earth a few weeks ago. That’s when the Los Angeles Police Department warned local real estate agents not to hire photographers like Mr. Gárate, who was helping sell luxury property by using a drone to shoot sumptuous aerial movies. Flying drones for commercial purposes, the police said, violated federal aviation rules.

“I was paying the bills with this,” said Mr. Gárate, who recently gave an unpaid demonstration of his drone in this Southern California suburb.

His career will soon get back on track. A new federal law, signed by the president on Tuesday, compels the Federal Aviation Administration to allow drones to be used for all sorts of commercial endeavors — from selling real estate and dusting crops, to monitoring oil spills and wildlife, even shooting Hollywood films. Local police and emergency services will also be freer to send up their own drones.

But while businesses, and drone manufacturers especially, are celebrating the opening of the skies to these unmanned aerial vehicles, the law raises new worries about how much detail the drones will capture about lives down below — and what will be done with that information. Safety concerns like midair collisions and property damage on the ground are also an issue.

American courts have generally permitted surveillance of private property from public airspace. But scholars of privacy law expect that the likely proliferation of drones will force Americans to re-examine how much surveillance they are comfortable with.

Read the rest.

And they’re even getting shot down

Consider the following from the Orangeburg, South Carolina, Times and Democrat:

A remote-controlled aircraft owned by an animal rights group was reportedly shot down near Broxton Bridge Plantation Sunday near Ehrhardt, S.C.

Steve Hindi, president of SHARK (SHowing Animals Respect and Kindness), said his group was preparing to launch its Mikrokopter drone to video what he called a live pigeon shoot on Sunday when law enforcement officers and an attorney claiming to represent the privately-owned plantation near Ehrhardt tried to stop the aircraft from flying.

“It didn’t work; what SHARK was doing was perfectly legal,” Hindi said in a news release. “Once they knew nothing was going to stop us, the shooting stopped and the cars lined up to leave.”

He said the animal rights group decided to send the drone up anyway.

“Seconds after it hit the air, numerous shots rang out,” Hindi said in the release. “As an act of revenge for us shutting down the pigeon slaughter, they had shot down our copter.”

He claimed the shooters were “in tree cover” and “fled the scene on small motorized vehicles.”

Read the rest.

Sorry for the absence of posting, machine crash

Hopefully, we’ll have things running again soon, but it may be some time.

We’re joining the anti-SOPA Internet blackout

Today, we are striking against censorship. Join the largest online protest in history: tell Congress to stop this bill now!

Here’s the petition.

See you Thursday.

Econowrap: Bad news at home, bankster quits

Today’s wrapup begins and ends at home, with stops in Europe. and we’ve saved the best for last, after the jump.

California state government starves for cash

And there’ll be a lot less than Gov. Jerry Brown had planned on, warns the state’s legislative analyst.

From Anthony York of the Los Angeles Times:

Gov. Jerry Brown’s tax measure could bring in billions less than what the governor is counting on, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan state legislative analyst.

Brown, who hopes to put a measure before voters to temporarily increase levies on upper earners and hike the state sales tax, says his initiative would generate nearly $6.9 billion annually over the next five years to help close the state’s budget deficit. But the Legislative Analyst’s Office says the plan would bring in only $4.8 billion in the 2012-13 budget year and about $5.5 billion in following years.

The wide discrepancy is the latest split over numbers between the administration and the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Last November, the Legislative Analyst’s Office released a revised estimate for the state’s current budget picture. Less than a month later, Brown’s department of finance came back with estimates that were $1.5 billion higher than the Legislative Analyst’s Office numbers.

Read the rest.

And it’s not just California, as evidenced in this chart from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

Meanwhile, we’ve got janitors with doctorates

Yep, you read that right.

Though this Richard Vedder Chronicle of Higher Education post dates back a bit, it’s a good reminder of how bleak things have been. [H/T to Buzzflash.]

Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with over 80,000 bartenders, and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS says require less than the skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.

>snip<

The relentless claims of the Obama administration and others that having more college graduates is necessary for continued economic leadership is incompatible with this view. Putting issues of student abilities aside, the growing disconnect between labor market realities and the propaganda of higher-education apologists is causing more and more people to graduate and take menial jobs or no job at all. This is even true at the doctoral and professional level—there are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with Ph.D.’s, other doctorates, or professional degrees.

This week an extraordinarily interesting new study was posted on the Web site of America’s most prestigious economic-research organization, the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Read the rest.

Swiss central bank boss throws in the towel

And a reasonable thing to do, consider that his spouse had made a tidy little pile on currency buys made in the weeks before her mate made a decision that made her a lot richer.

From Klaus Wille and Jennifer M. Freedman of Bloomberg:

Philipp Hildebrand resigned as head of the Swiss central bank (SNBN) in a surprise reversal four days after pledging to fight for his job as furor of his wife’s currency trading undermined his credibility as franc guardian.

“I came to the conclusion that it’s not possible for me to deliver definite prove that my wife requested the currency transaction without my knowledge,” Hildebrand, 48, said at a press conference in Bern today. Vice President Thomas Jordan, 48, was appointed interim chairman, according to Hildebrand.

Pressure on Hildebrand to resign increased after media reported his family may have used insider knowledge to its advantage. While the government said it still supports the SNB head and internal investigation cleared him of wrongdoing, the purchase of $504,000 by his wife in August, three weeks before the SNB imposed a currency cap, was found “sensitive.” Economists at VTB Capital and Swissquote Bank SA said his departure will leave investors testing the franc cap.

Read the rest.

Germany booms while France fizzles

The Merk part of Europe’s dynamic duo is doing just fine, but not the ozy half of the Merkozy dyad which had led the push for harsh austerity measures in Southern Europ’s ailing economies.

From Reuters:

German exports bounced back in November boosting the country’s trade surplus, a sign that Europe’s largest economy may avoid a sharp slowdown in contrast to France which is

The End of Poverty?, with a Berkeley message

A stunning French documentary [in English] written and directed by Phillippe Diaz and narrated by Martin Sheen, and featuring a wide ranging series of interviews drawn from both the First and Third Worlds exploring the deep, six-century-old connection between state and corporate imperialism and poverty in the Third World.

Among those featured are: Harvard economist and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, fellow Nobel economics winner and Yale Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the late author and Asian expert Chalmers Johnson, French economic think Serge Latouche, former economic hit man John Perkins, and a range of African and Latin American activists, government officials, and peasants.

But it’s the film’s Berkeley resonances we find especially fascinating and relevant.

The End of Poverty?, 2008, 106 minutes

The film’s relevance, with a Berkeley emphasis

The sequences shot in Brazil on sugar cane plantations are especially illuminating for us, given out deep concerns over agrofuels.

The film conclusively proves that ethanol, hailed as a “green” replacement for the planet’s dwindling petroleum reserves, is based on the 21st Century equivalent of slavery, grown and harvested by poorly fed, low-paid workers [and sometimes outright slaves].

This is especially relevant here in Berkeley, given that a UC Berkeley spinoff corporation, Amyris, is basing most of its production in Brazil, where it relies on sugar cane as the stock from which to harvest chemicals with its patented genetically engineered microbes.

So the Cal-spawned start-up relies for its hoped-for riches on the exploitation of workers who are treated as slaves and often paid less that $30 a month — and sometimes as little as $120 a year — for working endless hours in dangerous conditions.

Ironic, no?

And when you watch the segment on the corporate land grab, think of UC Berkeley’s Helios project, funded with $500 million of money from BP to develop genetically modified microbial agrofuel factories to turn plant cellulose into fuels.

When you hear the story of child dying in Africa because their farms are polluted by the water and chemicals used to grow crops for America on land grabbed by American corporations, remember that the first action of the Helios project — conducted before the agreement between BP and UC was even signed, was the dispatch of UC scientists to Africa and India in search of crops and places to grow them. [And remember too that BP has first dibs on any patents developed out of the research of UC Berkeley scientists.]

For folks in Berkeley who considers these facts, two basic responses are possible. First, of course, is anger. The second is to do what folks like campus administrators [including Secretary of Energy Steve Chu, who promoted the pact in his earlier incarnation as director of UCB’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory] and campus bioengineers like Amyris founder Jay Keasling and Helios chief Chris Somerville did, which was ponder the potential profit and “close you eyes and think of good ol’ Cal.”

And recall too that BP, under its earlier Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. moniker, was the company that ordered the overthrow of elected Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after his government had the temerity to nationalize its own oil, as the late Chalmers Johnson makes clear in the film.

Parsing the Prime Directive

Amyris and BP are both publicly traded state-chartered corporations, and as such have a responsibility to their shareholders, rather than the stakeholders — the workers who produce all that raw material which is the foundation for all that wealth they covet and the peoples of Third World nations who must produce the raw materials and suffer the environmental consequences of these imperial [and imperious] American and British corporations.

And that perhaps is one of the central messages of the film, that colonialism continues. No longer headed by the crowned heads of Europe, the modern colonizing force is directed from boardrooms, the tax-exempt foundations they and their directors fund, and by governments elected with the help of the funding and messaging flowing from those boardrooms.

A final point: The first modern corporations were chartered by the monarchs of Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands to raise the money needed for colonial ventures, and in return, the investors demanded two things: Exemption from legal liabilities resulting from the misdeeds of the corporation and its officers, and binding provisions that investors could not be held liable for losses beyond the amount they had invested.

Added to this potent mix, of course, is the doctrine of fiduciary responsibility, the corporate Prime Directive, which boils down to this: As a general rule, when confronted with two alternatives, one which creates a good public good but little profit and another which creates great public harm permissible under law and which yields great profit, the corporate officer is obliged to chose the latter.

Monarchs — at least those who weren’t born sociopaths — had consciences. Corporations don’t, because they are sociopathic by nature and by law, driven by that same “what’s in it for me” imperative that defines the essence of sociopathic behavior.

Cochambamba as a grandfather of Occupy

The film also rightly focuses on a movement which can, in many ways, be rightly considered as both an ancestor of the Occupy movement and a possible blueprint for its growth.

Under the direction of the World Bank’s disaster capitalism model, Bolivia was bailed out of a debt crisis on the condition that it accept “structural adjustment” [sounds like the product of a demented chiropractor-turned-economist, no?] which included a lot of the usual privatization of the commons.

One result was the sale of the water system in the city of Cochambamba, which was snapped up by an American corporation, Bechtel — then headed by the man who would become President and fellow Californian Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State five years later, George P. Schultz.

When water rates were raised by an average of 35 percent, in January 1990 protesters hit the streets, a mix of peasants and university students united in outrage of rates that left users paying 25 percent more for their monthly water bills than they did on food.

A general strike followed by massive assaults on protestor’s occupying the city’s central square in early February failed to halt the protests. Declaration of a state of siege followed in early April, accompanied by arrests and actual shooting. Then teachers went on strike, leading to the cancellation of the enabling legislation later in the month.

All the elements that led to the U.S. Occupy movement were in play: Bankster fiats, corporate greed, an economic depression, and governmental acquiescence.

Perhaps it’s time to rethink Occupy in light of Cochambamba, and direct action at a more specific focus?

And a final note

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has a new rule: To qualify for the Best Documentary Oscar, your film’s gotta be reviewed by either the New York Times of the Los Angles Times.

This film met the qualification, and we’ll quote from a qualifier, by Neil Genzlinger of  the New York Times, published 12 November 2009:

These experts sound a bit naïve, but they do at least make the case that handouts from wealthy countries won’t undo the current inequities.

What will? Serge Latouche, a French economist, suggests what he calls de-growth as the way back to economic Eden, but the film ends without explaining how to bring that about.

Did he pay any attention at all when watching the film?

The film’s website is here.

And a hearty esnl H/T to Moussequetaire!

Quote of the day: OWS, mayors, and the DHS

Naomi Wolf, writing in The Guardian, noting a report by Rick Ellis alleging that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have been involved in coordinating city-implemented attacks on occupy encampments:

[F]or the DHS to be on a call with mayors, the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.

But wait: why on earth would Congress advise violent militarised reactions against its own peaceful constituents? The answer is straightforward: in recent years, members of Congress have started entering the system as members of the middle class (or upper middle class) – but they are leaving DC privy to vast personal wealth, as we see from the “scandal” of presidential contender Newt Gingrich’s having been paid $1.8m for a few hours’ “consulting” to special interests. The inflated fees to lawmakers who turn lobbyists are common knowledge, but the notion that congressmen and women are legislating their own companies’ profitsis less widely known – and if the books were to be opened, they would surely reveal corruption on a Wall Street spectrum. Indeed, we do already know that congresspeople are massively profiting from trading on non-public information they have on companies about which they are legislating – a form of insider trading that sent Martha Stewart to jail.

Mr. Fish: The Red Menace

From his invariably provocative and informative blog, Clowncrack:

Birgitta Jonsdottir on the surveillance state

Jonsdottir is the iconoclastic Icelandic artist turned legislator, and the impetus behind Iceland’s unique media protection laws.

She also worked closely with WikiLeaks on the preparation of the gun camera footage of the American helicopter attack that killed two Reuters photographers, a project that drew the ire of Obama administration, which has been eager to prosecute those linked to the leak of the video, the State Department diplomatic cables, and the Guantanamo prisoner files which have caused so much embarrassment for Washington.

In their hunt for prosecutable suspects, the Department of Justice targeted, among others, Jonsdottir herself, issuing sub poenas for her Twitter account. After a legal battle, the Department of Justice won, leading the Icelandic activist to reflect on her experiences in a speech delivered delivered to the Kapittel Stavanger International Festival for Literature and Freedom of Speech in Norway in September.

The following is an excerpt via her blog:

What I have learned about my lack of rights in the last few months is of concern for everyone that uses the Internet and calls for actions to raise peoples awareness about their legal rights and ways to improve legal guidelines and framework online be it locally or globally.

I guess the problem and the dilemma we are facing is that there are no proper standards, no basic laws in place that deal with the fundamental question: are we to be treated as consumers or citizens online? There is no international charter that says we should have the same civic rights as in the offline world.

Our legal systems are slow compared to the speed of online development. With the social media explosion many people have put into databases very sensitive information about themselves and others without knowing that they have no rights to defend themselves against attempts by governments to obtain their personal data – be it locally or like in my case globally. According to the ruling of the judge in my Twitter case, we have for[feited] those rights when we agree to the terms and conditions by the company hosting our data even if it is not kept on servers in the USA, the company would only need to have a branch in the USA for authorities to be able to demand the information to be given to them. We have to rely on, for example, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter to look out for our interests. It might not always be in their interest to look out for us.

The reason we humans make international treaties and declarations about human rights is because somewhere along the line we agreed that certain rights are sacred and universal. We need to make the same principles applicable to our human rights online as they are offline. These two worlds have fused together and there no way to define them separated anymore.

I[t] is too easy to obtain the information stored online and thus it is too easy to abuse. If someone wants to go through all my regular mail they would have to obtain a search warrant in advance. No such thing happened in my case. I am according to the DoJ not under a criminal investigation yet they demanded Twitter to hand over my personal messages and IP numbers without my knowledge. If authorities want to tap your phone they need warrants, but not in order to get your IP number. If authorities want to search anything of personal nature or spy on someone in the real world they would have to get warrants. It has never been as easy for big brother to pry into all our most sacred information without us ever knowing.

Chart of the day: Broker, or what their pay makes us

Via Catherine Rampell of the New York Times, a chart from the New York State Comptroller’s Office report [PDF] revealing the massive wage inflation in Wall Street salaries compared to the rest of the Big Apple’s working stiffs:

UC mines our brains for the sake of corporate profit

While we’ve offered a lot of criticisms about the corporate capture of the University of California, The Consumer Trap calls our attention to what must rank as the most odious example of academic profiteering yet.

In a superb post captioned “Vampire School,” author Michael Dawson directs our attention to UCLA med school psychiatry prof Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who is harnessing the technology designed to explore the innermost workings of our brains to help corporations prey on our wallets.

The tool in question is functional magnetic resonance imaging, [fMRI], which allows scientists to monitor instant-by-instant changes in brain activity.

Dawson discovered an AdWeek story that describes how research done at UCLA has led Dawson to found a new corporate spinoff — that institution so beloved of UC Berkeley Chancellor Bobby “Anything for a Buck” Birgeneau and Berkeley Mayor Tom “Man of the [Corporate] People” Bates.

Seems one of the experiments Iacoboni conducted at UCLA led to the discovery that women who professed to be offended by deeply sexist Superbowl ads were really turned on by all that T&A. So the good doctor thought, “Aha! There’s a buck to made in helping corporations fine-tune their ads to prey on our deepest, unspoken vulnerabilities.

And here’s one of the ads used in the study:

So Iacoboni and his pals created a start-up, Illuminare, to market their delightful skills. Well, at least they didn’t name it Illuminati. Their goal: Finding the most effective counterintuitive ways of tapping our deepest prejudices and desires to make commercials most effective.

In sum, corporate pandering.

From Dawson:

Iacoboni is careful to point out that even with the ability to peer below the surface using fMRIs, “brain regions do a multitude of things, not just one.” But some associations between stimuli and brain region, he says, are stronger than others, particularly when it comes to marketing messages—and the key with fMRI is that it can hone in on those regions much more specifically than an EEG can because of the 3-D view it provides.

Don’t you feel so much better, knowing that all that scientific acumen is being put to profitable use?

Meanwhile, Bates and Birgeneau are busy plundering the Berkeley commons, easing hard-won zoning rules with giveaways for UC Berkeley-spawned startups by effectively pricing artists and craft workers our of the city’s only neighborhood they can still afford.

Doncha just love it?

And one more thought. Iacoboni is a psychiatrist, and presumably somewhere along the line took an oath that obligated not to harm patients.

And since compulsive shopping is a recognized psychiatric condition [though whether it’s a unique disorder or a manifestation of other conditions is still in debate] , how is it not a violation of his oath to make the most vulnerable still more susceptible to the urges that other psychiatrists devoted so much time to trying to cure?

Primum non nocere goes the old medical maxim. “First, do no harm.”

Mr. Fish: Election Year

From his blog, Clowncrack, wherein may be found lots of goodies.

Slow posting, computer problems to blame

Hopefully, we’ve got it worked out.

We’ll be back with some more WikiLeaks cables later today.

Breaking: Stock market slide continues across Asia

From the BBC:

Asian stocks have slumped on Monday, extending one of the worst sell-offs in recent years, after Standard and Poor’s cut the US’s triple-A credit rating.

Japan’s main Nikkei 225 index fell 2.4%, while South Korea’s Kospi lost 5%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 4%, and Mumbai’s Sensex slid 3%.

Investors are worried about the outlook for global growth and debt issues in the US and Europe.

If you had any last doubt that it’s a depression. . .

Consider the following two news items announced today.

First, the average length of unemployment is at all-time high, the latest in a continuing series of peaks chalked up since the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] began keeping records back in January, 1948.

The new average? It’s 40.8 weeks.

As Catherine Rampell observes at the New York Times:

This pattern is especially worrisome because unemployment begets unemployment — that is, for a whole host of reasons, people who are already out of work for a long period of time have very slim chances of finding new work in the near future. Just consider the catch-22 some employers are creating by stating that they’ll only hire workers who already have jobs.

In other words, what started out as a cyclical problem could morph into a structural one — particularly if the country allows the nation’s 14 million jobless workers to become a sort of underclass like the one many European countries have struggled with.

Here’s the chart from numbers provided by the BLS:

Next, consider this from Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg:

The number of Americans receiving food stamps rose to a record 41.8 million in July as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government said.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 18 percent from a year earlier and increased 1.4 percent from June, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said today in a statement on its website. Participation has set records for 20 straight months.

>snip<

An average of 43.3 million people, more than an eighth of the population, will get food stamps each month in the year that began Oct. 1, according to White House estimates.

The fundamental error with most economic reporting is this: When journalists write about “recovery,” the lion’s share of any financial gains are concentrated in the hands of the top one percent of Americans, the same people who have bribed congress and the White House [what else can you call those now unlimited campaign contributions?] to rig the game in their favor.

So while there are gains in some sectors, they’re not reaching the working class. Instead, unemployment and inflation figures are recalculated to disguise the unending flow of bad news.

We are served badly by our downsized and corporatized press, which distracts us from the deep wounds inflicted unceasingly on the body politic.

The fine art of nurturing a climate of villification

From Gerardo Joffe, president of Facts and Logic About the Middle East, sent in December 2002 [PDF] [emphasis added]:

Those who believe that only a small group of Muslims — the “Islamists” are involved in this hatred are simply uninformed or in denial. Not all Muslims, of course, participate in the outrages. But, virtually all Muslims sympathize with them. When the jets slammed into the Pentagon and into the World Trade Center, there was dancing in the streets in virtually all Muslim cities, certainly in all of those in the Middle East..

>snip<

You are aware, I am sure, of the terrible reality of anti-Semitism, which most of us believed to have perished in the Holocaust. But it has again reared its nasty head. Fortunately, we in the United States, at least so far, have not been touched by this ugly development. It is now rampant again in Europe — mostly in France, but, sad to say, also in Germany and even [i]n the Scandinavian countries. All of this is prompted by the unceasing propaganda, by the “public relations” of the Arabs, who have been able to convince the Europeans of the terrible “misdeeds” of Israelis against the “Palestinians.”

In Israel, Anders Behring Breivik is being hailed as a hero, at least if you believe the comments posted on news stories in the Israeli press.

And, as we’re learning, Breivik is mentally disturbed — albeit quite lucid and capable of sustained complex thought —and deeply misogynistic, as well as a user of stimulant drugs.

But his violence arose from a milieu, a murky stew of violent rhetoric largely originating from the right wing militantly pro-Zionist blogosphere, and he named as sources prominent American figures, including “Ground Zero mosque” hate-baiter Pamela Geller [see previous post] and Daniel Pipes.

Breivik stands at the center of a unique fusion of political extremes on the far right, the unique blend of racist Christian populism and militant Zionism.

While traditionally, Christian racists directed their hatred at Jews and people of color, the new version is the result of the rise of a once-marginal Christian theology called Dispensationalism.

While the core antisemitism remains, the Dispensationalist’s interpretation of the Bible holds that the Messiah will return only after the world’s Jews relocate to Israel, where all but 144,000 Christian converts will be annihilated in a Holocaust that will dwarf the Third Reich’s wildest dreams.

The exemplar of Dispensationalism is Texas Pastor James Hagee, founder of Christians United for Israel [CUFI], who became briefly famous when John McCain was forced to disavow his endorsement in 2008 when confronted with Hagee’s claim that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel.

But Hagee has an outspoken supporter in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who attends CUFI’s annual rallies, either in person or by satellite uplink, offering praise for their unconditional support of Israel and his right wing government.

Here’s a report from CUFI’s website on Netanyahu’s televised appearance last week at CUFI’s annual gathering:

Israel’s prime minister has addressed Christians United for Israel’s annual gathering in Washington, calling the United States and Israel one and the same.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke via video link to Christians United For Israel (CUFI), which gathered in their thousands to reassert allegiance to Tel Aviv, Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on Wednesday.

“When you support Israel, you don’t have to choose between your interests and your values; you get both,” he told the mostly-evangelical Christians in the gathering.

“Our enemies think that we are you, and that you are us. And you know something? They are absolutely right,” he said.

Back in April, 2007, an organization on which Daniel Pipes then served as a board member sent out a mailing to supporters singing Hagee’s praises. An excerpt:

Suffice it to say, Evangelical Christians are by far the most assertive in their support of Israel because of their strict interpretation of the Bible, both Old and New Testaments. Evangelicals are important to the pro-Israel movement because they number some 50 million in the U.S. alone, compared with five million U.S. Jews, many of whose support for Israel is tentative at best.

One of the most moving speakers at the AIPAC conference was the Reverend John Hagee of the John Hagee Ministries out of San Antonio, Texas. Hagee is a powerful orator, whose declaration of love for Israel and the Jewish people provoked numerous standing ovations. I urge you to view a segment of this speech right now by going to http://www.jerusalemonline.com/specials12.asp. When you’ve listened to Hagee’s inspiring address, please return to this letter.

Below you’ll find a detailed, seven-point explanation by Hagee, based in Torah and New Testament texts, as to why Christians should support Israel. Hagee also heads up an organization called Christians United for Israel (www.cufi.org), which advocates and lobbies Congress on behalf of the Jewish state. Whether you’re a Jew or a Christian, I think you’ll find Hagee’s exegesis eye-opening and useful.

Read the rest.

The organization sending the endorsement was FLAME, Facts and Logic About the Middle East [the source of our opening quotes], and the document was signed by Jim Sinkinson, one of the key figures in conducting the advertising boycott of our former employer, the Berkeley Daily Planet.

At the time the document was sent, FLAME listed three members as its complete board of directors, founder Gerardo Joffe and his spouse, Priscilla, and Daniel Pipes. The document, signed under penalty of perjury, was filed with the IRS on 22 September 2008.

That’s the same Daniel Pipes who was quoted so favorably by Breivik.

When we noted the Pipes connection to outfit fronted by Sinkinson in a previous post, he objected, writing that

Have I got it right: Daniel Pipes was associated with FLAME, Sinkinson is associated with FLAME, Breivik quotes Daniel Pipes . . . post hoc ergo propter hoc: Sinkinson what? inspired Breivik? Pipes made Breivik do it? Richard, in your own way, you’re as removed from reality and perverted as Breivik. Get help.

So we’ll respond, starting with those two paragraphs with which we began this entry.

We don’t say that Pipes, Geller, or Sinkinson’s outfits “made” Breivik do it.

But what we do say is that Pipes, Geller, and the others cited in Breivik’s screed provided the medium in which Breivik’s hatred flourished, and which focused his rage on Muslims and those he sees as aiding their entry into Europe. Had he been born a few decades earlier, his targets would, most likely, have been Jews,

WikiCable: Talking Turkey and more in Paris

Today, A SECRET/NOFORN 16 September 2009 cable from Ambassador Charles Rivkin in Paris, reporting on wide-ranging discussions between French diplomats and Philip H. Gordon, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs covering everything from Afghanistan to Hugo Chavez.

An excerpt, focusing on Franco-Turkish relations:

Paris hopes that it will be the Turks themselves who realize that their role is best played as a bridge between the two worlds of Europe and Asia, rather than anchored in Europe itself. He stated that Turkey is in a difficult position as it wants to enter the EU but has refused to accept one of the other EU member states. Levitte predicted that a worse case scenario would be if Turkey finally manages to complete the acquis [legal obligations] and end negotiations and a public referendum is held in France which is finally opposed to their membership. Despite all of these problems, Levitte claimed that President Sarkozy is a friend of Turkey and has visited the country at least 10 times in his life.

The document is posted online here.

VZCZCXRO6701
PP RUEHDBU RUEHFL RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHNP RUEHROV RUEHSL
DE RUEHFR #1254/01 2590734
ZNY SSSSS ZZH
P 160734Z SEP 09
FM AMEMBASSY PARIS
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7146
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHBUL/AMEMBASSY KABUL PRIORITY 0881
RHEHNSC/WHITE HOUSE NSC WASHINGTON DC PRIORITY
S E C R E T SECTION 01 OF 04 PARIS 001254
NOFORN
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/16/2018
TAGS: PREL PARM KNNP BH SM MK GR FR

SUBJECT: A/S GORDON’S MEETINGS WITH POLICY-MAKERS IN PARIS: A TOUR D’HORIZON OF EUROPE AND AFGHANISTAN

Classified By: Ambassador Charles Rivkin, for reasons 1.4(b) and (d).

1. (S) Summary. During Assistant Secretary Gordon’s visit to Paris on September 11, he met with a number of French policy-makers including: Elysee Diplomatic Advisors Jean-David Levitte, Damien Loras, and Francois Richier, Assistant Secretary equivalent for Continental Europe Roland Galharague, and Acting Director of MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] Strategic Affairs bureau Jean-Hugues Simon-Michel. Discussions focused on Russia, upcoming developments in the Balkans (Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Kosovo), elections in Germany and Afghanistan, Turkey’s EU Accession, NATO Enlargement and Strategic Concept, and Georgia and Ukraine. End Summary.

————————————-
AFGHANISTAN: A MAJOR PRIORITY
————————————-

2. (C) Jean-David Levitte noted that while public opinion in France is opposed to the war in Afghanistan, the situation here is much calmer than in the UK, Germany, or Italy. Angela Merkel’s domestic political situation after the incident in Kunduz was particularly fragile, so that was part of the rationale behind the recent German-French-UK letter to UN SYG Ban Ki Moon to propose an international conference on Afghanistan by the end of the year. Levitte said that the goal of the conference would be to accelerate and improve the training of Afghan troops and police and to strengthen Afghan state institutions, which will help reinforce the importance of the international effort to skeptical publics. They are now waiting for Ban Ki Moon’s response. Levitte emphasized that France remains “totally engaged” in Afghanistan with no limits or caveats on its troops. This autumn, France will complete a transfer of troops from Kabul to Kapisa and Surobi provinces (a presence that will be reinforced on the ground as France reassigns some sailors to other regional activities and replaces them with ground troops). A/S Gordon assured Levitte that the U.S. would soon be able to share the elements of the McChrystal military review with Allies. Levitte responded by praising General McChrystal and saying that French forces have an excellent dialogue with him on the ground. He added that Germany and the UK are determined to stay in Afghanistan as needed, but we may need to convince the Netherlands to remain, and that President Sarkozy had recently reinforced this message in a meeting with Dutch PM Balkenende.

——————————————-
BOSNIA: FRENCH URGE TRANFER TO EU AUTHORITY
——————————————-

3. (C) Levitte noted that of the five major conditions required to transfer authority in Bosnia from the UN High Representative to an EU High Representative, four have been fulfilled, and only the question of division of state property remains. This final condition should not alone “block all progress,” especially as the current UN team in Bosnia is no longer effective. France wants to see the transfer of authority to a new EU team in November, as the rapprochement to Europe is an effective “carrot” to encourage the Bosniaks to continue progress in necessary reforms. A/S Gordon agreed that the current system is not working well, but noted that the international community will lose credibility if we move forward before all the necessary pre-conditions have been fulfilled. He added that the U.S. agrees that some form of carrot is necessary to urge Bosnian compliance. Levitte noted that they still have two months to urge Bosnian progress before a final decision is made. In a separate meeting, Assistant Secretary equivalent for Continental Europe Roland Galharague said that “transition is the number one objective,” suggested the division of state property will take much time to resolve, and urged the U.S. to support early transfer of authority that would open the door to Bosnian aspirations for greater integration into EU institutions. He noted that the growing perception of divisions between the US and Bosniaks on one side who favored retaining the UN role and the EU and Serbs on the other created unhelpful opportunities for manipulation. A/S Gordon said this perception was inaccurate, but noted the U.S. is sensitive to the

Details emerge on Norwegian mass murderer

First, the latest video report we could fine on the attacks:

UPDATE: It appears that the killer was obsessed with Israel. Details here.

Now, the suspect himself, captured at the scene of the island shootings, weapons in hand: His name is Anders Behring Breivik. He’s 32, stands 6‘2“, has blue eyes, is an ex-soldier and a native Norse who hates Muslims and espouses neofascist views.

In other words, another Timothy McVeigh.

And just as in the Oklahoma City bombing, the overwhelming majority of reports in the wake of the Oslo bombing and summer camp shooting named immigrant Muslims as the primary suspects, though we’ve also seen reports blaming the Mossad, CIA-sponsored Kurds, and even the [shudder] Illuminati.

But the truth seems to be far more mundane. Anders Behring Breivik is just one more angry, muddled white guy, looking for an alien scapegoat.

First, from Spiegel’s Gerald Traufetter:

The suspect in the twin attacks in Norway has been identified as Anders Behring B., a 32-year-old Christian fundamentalist with anti-Islamic views. A police officer who described B. as “cold as ice” said the suspect had no known links to the right-wing extremist scene.

Police have identified the man who killed at least 91 people in twin attacks in Norway on Friday as Anders Behring B., a 32-year-old Christian with conservative and nationalistic views. B., who had a gun permit for a Glock pistol and an automatic rifle, apparently lived with his mother in a nondescript four-story brick building in the west of Oslo.

A special police unit raided B.’s apartment around 11 p.m. on Friday. According to investigations by Norwegian media, B. was a right-wing extremist who had repeatedly made anti-Islamic statements on Internet forums. Six days before the attacks, he sent his first and only message from his Twitter account. It read: “One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100,000 who have only interests” — a quote from the British philosopher John Stuart Mill.

B.‘s Facebook page, which was taken offline late on Friday evening, featured a photograph of the suspect, who has wavy blond hair, a square jaw and blue eyes, looking off into the distance. B. apparently played the computer game “World of Warcraft” and was a member of a shooting club in Oslo. A childhood friend of the suspect told the Norwegian tabloid VG that B. had begun to talk about right-wing extremist ideas when he was in his late 20s. B. also maintained a racist profile on Facebook, the friend said.

Read the rest.

From The Guardian’s Peter Beaumont:

One of the few who knew him, who have spoken so far, was an anonymous friend who told the Norwegian newspaper VG that Breivik had been a far right winger since at least his late twenties, when he had begun posting a series of controversial opinions on Facebook.

What has emerged so far paints a disturbing picture: a Christian fundamentalist with a deep hatred of multiculturalism in his country, of the left and of Muslims who had written disparagingly of prominent Norwegian politicians. A far of violent video games as well who some former neighbours have told Norwegian media had sometimes been seen in “military-style” clothing.

Read the rest.

And Johan Ahlander and Victoria Klesty of Reuters have more on his blog posts:

Website entries under Breivik‘s name criticized European policies of trying to accommodate the cultures of different ethic groups, and claimed a significant minority of young British Moslems back radical Islamic militancy.

“When did multiculturalism cease to be an ideology designed to deconstruct European culture, traditions, identity and nation-states?” said one entry, posted on February 2, 2010 on the right-wing website http://www.document.no.

“According to two studies, 13 percent of young British Muslims aged between 15 and 25 support al Qaeda ideology,” said another entry dated February 16 last year.

Read the rest.

And Reuters adds that “Breivik was also a freemason, said a spokesman for the organization. Freemasons meet in secretive fraternal groups in many parts of the world.”

Ah, yes. . . A freemason, just like George Washington!

Brits arrest Murdoch’s chief international executive

It’s a perfect Fox News story. The head of a major media corporation with close ties to the country’s leading liberal party is arrested for corruption, threatening to bring down a media empire with close ties to two Labour Party administrations.

But there’s one small problem. The media empire played a major role in skewing the party to the right, and it’s equally close to the country’s conservative parties, benefiting equally from both.

Rebekah Brooks, 43, had just resigned Friday as chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News International. She was allowed to surrender herself to police today, the latest victim of a criminal scandal that’s inching its way closer to the top of the media empire.

Police issued a brief statement, reported by The Guardian:

At approximately 12.00 a 43-year-old woman was arrested by appointment at a London police station by officers from Operation Weeting [phone hacking investigation] together with officers from Operation Elveden [bribing of police officers investigation]. She is currently in custody.

She was arrested on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications, contrary to Section1(1) Criminal Law Act 1977 and on suspicion of corruption allegations contrary to Section 1 of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906.

“The Operation Weeting team is conducting the new investigation into phone hacking.

Operation Elveden is the investigation into allegations of inappropriate payments to police. This investigation is being supervised by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

It would be inappropriate to discuss any further details regarding these cases at this time.

The scandal has already claimed its first casualty on this side of the Atlantic, with Friday’s resignation of Les Hinton, CEO of Murdoch’s Dow Jones, publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

The scandal could go all the way to the top, if a newly launched FBI investigations finds that the company violated Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which criminalizes bribery of foreign officials by American corporations.

News International is a subsidiary of U.S.-based News Corp., and bribery of British police is one of the many allegations now swirling around the operation Brooks headed.

While Murdoch is an Australian native who built an empire from the newspaper chain he inherited from his father, the man the British press have dubbed the Dirty Digger. He took up American citizenship to satisfy a critical legal requirement: Only U.S. citizens can own television stations. No citizenship, no Fox News.

The Only Democracy in the Middle East™

Imagine a major national business conference held in a publicly owned meeting center like, say, San Francisco’s city-owned Moscone Center and attended by major corporate leaders, Mayor Ed Lee, and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner.

Now imagine that women weren’t allowed. You know, guys only.

All hell would break loose, right? In fact, no major business organization would even think of holding a sexually segregated nor would any government officials dare participate, right?

Well consider this from Frances Raday, chair of the Concord Research Center for Integration of International Law in Israel at the Haim Striks School of Law, writing in Haaretz:

Women who came to last week’s Management Forum conference in Jerusalem, hosted by the Haredi newspaper Hamodia, were not allowed to participate – the event was for men only.

Hamodia’s Management Forum is an important annual economic conference. It is the Haredi equivalent of the Caesaria conference. It is held at the Jerusalem International Convention Center, better known as Binyanei Ha’uma, which belongs to the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish Agency. Leading Israeli companies participate. This year, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz and Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat gave speeches.

Women were not allowed to take any part in the conference, whether from the podium, as members of the audience or in the journalists’ enclave.

The exclusion of women from this economic conference is another step on the path to destroying Israel’s liberal democracy. It is yet another indicator of the dangerous escalation of the ultra-Orthodox endorsement of a sexist and racist agenda, which has been yet again demonstrated in the refusal to let police investigate rabbis suspected of incitement to racial hatred. The exclusion of women from full participation in public spaces is anathema to the concept of democratic representation.

Read the rest.

And then there’s this, reported by The Guardian‘s Harriet Sherwood:

Israeli civil rights groups have launched legal challenges to a new law that in effect bans citizens from calling for boycotts of Israeli goods, services, businesses or cultural or academic institutions.

The passing of the law late on Monday night prompted a wave of criticism and condemnation in the Israeli press, with one eminent law professor describing it as “the blackest day in Knesset [Israeli parliament] history”.

Gush Shalom, an organisation that campaigns for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, filed a petition to the supreme court, saying the new law was an attempt “to silence criticism against the government’s policies in general and its policies in the occupied territories in particular, and prevent an open and productive political discourse, which is the backbone of a democratic regime”.

The Association of Civil Rights in Israel filed a petition to the high court of justice, saying the new law was “unconstitutional and undemocratic” and set a precedent for limiting freedom of expression.

A coalition of four rights groups – Adalah, a legal rights organisation for Israeli-Arabs, Physicians for Human Rights, the Public Committee Against Torture and the Coalition of Women for Peace – also pledged to launch a high court challenge. The new law “gives protection to the illegal West Bank settlements in Israeli law by penalising their opponents”, the coalition said.