Archive for September, 2011

For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question

By their books, ye shall know them.

I’m talking about the volumes, the libraries – nay, the very halls of literature – which the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001 have spawned. Many are spavined with pseudo-patriotism and self-regard, others rotten with the hopeless mythology of CIA/Mossad culprits, a few (from the Muslim world, alas) even referring to the killers as “boys”, almost all avoiding the one thing which any cop looks for after a street crime: the motive.

Why so, I ask myself, after 10 years of war, hundreds of thousands of innocent deaths, lies and hypocrisy and betrayal and sadistic torture by the Americans – our MI5 chaps just heard, understood, maybe looked, of course no touchy-touchy nonsense – and the Taliban? Have we managed to silence ourselves as well as the world with our own fears? Are we still not able to say those three sentences: The 19 murderers of 9/11 claimed they were Muslims. They came from a place called the Middle East. Is there a problem out there?

American publishers first went to war in 2001 with massive photo-memorial volumes. Their titles spoke for themselves: Above Hallowed Ground, So Others Might Live, Strong of Heart, What We Saw, The Final Frontier, A Fury for God, The Shadow of Swords… Seeing this stuff piled on newsstands across America, who could doubt that the US was going to go to war? And long before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, another pile of tomes arrived to justify the war after the war. Most prominent among them was ex-CIA spook Kenneth Pollack’s The Threatening Storm – and didn’t we all remember Churchill’s The Gathering Storm? – which, needless to say, compared the forthcoming battle against Saddam with the crisis faced by Britain and France in 1938.

Full Story Here: Robert Fisk: For 10 years, we’ve lied to ourselves to avoid asking the one real question – Robert Fisk, Commentators – The Independent.

An Eruption At Iceland’s Katla Volcano Could Be Imminent

This is the most significant activity I’ve witnessed at the Katla Volcano since the last update, and whether or not this raises the odds of an imminent eruption remain to be seen; there have been a few earthquake swarms and other seismic activity since the last update, but nothing significant enough to report upon. Today is different. This recent spate of activity began on September 1st when there was a Magnitude 3.2 quake in Katla’s caldera. Prior to that, The Global Volcanism Program noted that:

From 18 July until mid-August, ten new ice cauldrons formed along the W, S, and E borders of the Mýrdalsjökull caldera (figure 3), signifying increased geothermal activity along a large part of the caldera rim. Changes on the icecap surface have been reported for some of the earlier eruptions of Katla, and the current activity could be a possible long-term precursor to a new eruption. A flight over the area on 9 September by Reynir Ragnarsson at Vík, revealed that the ice cauldrons did not develop much after mid-August. (My emphasis) MUCH MORE

Seismic activity is still rising at Katla and you can view the activity at this LINK. What makes today’s activity especially notable was reported on by Jón Frímann wherein he presents evidence of inflation within the Katla Volcano:

Full Story Here: An Eruption At Iceland’s Katla Volcano Could Be Imminent – Update 2 | ThePoliticalBandit.com.

Obama guts pollution, clean air regulations

Greenpeace :-:

Corporate polluters don’t have to worry about dismantling the Clean Air Act, it appears that President Obama is doing it for them.

As Americans prepare for the holiday weekend, President Obama has announced that he doesn’t plan on enforcing a law that would have prevented 12,000 deaths every year by protecting Americans from ozone pollution.

The President, along with Big Oil and the other corporate polluters whose interest he is serving with this decision, are hoping you won’t notice.

Too bad. We’re paying attention and the President needs to know that putting thousands of American lives needlessly at risk is a serious political miscalculation.

Senior members from Obama’s Democratic party were swift in their criticism of the President’s decision. In reaction, Congressman Ed Markey who sits on the House Energy and Commerce committee stated:

Full Story Here: BREAKING: Obama guts pollution, clean air regulations | Greenpeace.

Job Growth Has Stalled Since Boehner’s GOP-Tea Party Took Charge

The GOP tea party won control of the House last year by promising independent voters that, if elected, they would focus on “jobs, jobs, jobs.” But upon gaining a majority in the House, the tea party has focused instead on abortion, gay marriage and playing political games designed to obstruct the economic recovery in order to ensure that Mitt Romney, Rick Perry or someone even more incompetent and less qualified is elected president next year.

The latest jobs report out today indicates that employment has stalled, with unemployment stuck at 9.1 percent, proving yet again that the GOP tea party’s obstructionism on the economy is paying off. And since their endgame is to saddle the White House with responsibility for the poor growth their own obstructionism creates, their leader, Speaker John Boehner, was quick to blame the president for the weak numbers.

Steve Benen at Washington Monthly has nailed Speaker Boehner and his tea party bosses for first claiming credit for a good jobs report in the early spring, but now trying to blame the White House for the stalled growth ever since.

Full Story Here: Job Growth Has Stalled Since Boehner’s GOP-Tea Party Took Charge.

Rich Lifestyles of the GOP’s Starve-the-Poor Presidential Candidates

 With the campaign season for Republican presidential primaries in full bloom, the candidates are falling all over each other in a fierce competition to tout their conservative bona fides. Even as housing foreclosures reach all-time highs, and unemployment in some states climbs into the double digits, Republican presidential contenders remain insistent in their demands for reducing government assistance to those suffering under the weight of economic disaster. So, let’s have a look at how the candidates themselves are faring on this dismal economic landscape.

1) Rick Perry

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the GOP’s presidential frontrunner, according to the latest Gallup poll, is hardly an elitist. Born into a farming family of modest means in rural Haskell County, Perry continued farming cotton and raising cattle even after he was elected to the state legislature in the mid-1980s, according to the Texas Tribune, yielding him and his wife a combined income of just $45,000 — a pittance compared to his current $150,000 annual salary as governor (not to mention the millions he’s earned on the side in real estate).

Full Story Here: Rich Lifestyles of the GOP’s Starve-the-Poor Presidential Candidates | | AlterNet.

We Can Now Legally Film The Police and Government Officials Without Being Prosecuted

Finally, The First Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that:

First Circuit Court of Appeals Rules OK to Film Police and Government Members

Please be advised that the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has just ruled on August 26, 2011 that citizens have the right under the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States to record the police. You will find beginning on page 8 of the copy of that ruling that it is well established that members of the public may record members of the government, including the police, while they are engaged in their duties in a public place.

(“It is . . .well established that the Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.”). An important corollary to this interest in protecting the stock of public information is that “[t]here is an undoubted right to gather news ‘from any source by means within the law.‘” Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11 (1978) (quoting Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 681-82 (1972)).

Gathering information about government officials in a form that can readily be disseminated to others serves a cardinal First Amendment interest in protecting and promoting “the free discussion of governmental affairs.” Mills v. Alabama, 384 U.S. 214, 218 (1966).

Full Story Here: We Can Now Legally Film The Police and Government Officials Without Being Prosecuted | ThePoliticalBandit.com.

Obama to Breathers: Sorry, Wait Until 2013

On Friday, in a move that shocked enviros and public-health advocates, President Obama asked the Environmental Protection Agency to withdraw its proposal to tighten a key air-quality standard. The request, Obama said, is part of the administration’s efforts to reduce “regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty.”

The EPA has been at work on new rules on ozone pollution, better known as smog, since September 2009. The agency rolled out new, tougher draft standards in January 2010, only to have the release of the final rules repeatedly delayed. In a statement, Obama said he has asked the agency to wait until 2013—you know, after the next election—to improve the standard.

The decision to single out this rule is significant. Back in 2008, the Bush administration EPA issued smog rules that called for limits of 75 parts per billion, which were weaker than those that the agency’s own scientists said was necessary to protect human health. Improving the standard has been a top priority for environmental and public-health experts, so when the EPA said in January 2010 that it was considering lowering the limit to between 60 and 70 parts per billion, those groups were cheering.

Full Story Here: Obama to Breathers: Sorry, Wait Until 2013 | Mother Jones.

Tax-dodging CEOs gave big to both parties

Highly-compensated leaders at companies that pay little in taxes have been extremely generous to politicians

The Institute for Policy Studies has a new report out looking at 25 of the highest-paid CEOs in the country who took home more money than their companies paid in annual income taxes.

The tax avoidance going on here — much of it ascribed to off-shoring corporate activity to tax havens — is all enabled by politicians, so we were curious whether any of the CEOs on the list are major donors to the two political parties.

A quick search of the campaign finance database reveals that, yes, they are. That doesn’t mean there’s necessarily a causal link between these CEOs’ political contributions and the tax policies that allow their companies to pay little or nothing to Uncle Sam. But it is still worth noting as a measure of political clout.

Here’s a sample of some of the biggest givers on the list of 25:

Full Story Here: Tax-dodging CEOs gave big to both parties – War Room – Salon.com.

Marketing Religious Supremacism as Social Justice

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, head of the National Hispanic Chrisitian Leadership Conference and a columnist for the Washington Post from 2007 -2009, is also vice president of the Oak Initiative, a religio-political entity initiated at Rick Joyner’s MorningStar Ministries in 2009. The Oak Initiative is described by Rodriguez as a social justice organization, but is now coordinating with Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. The Oak Initiative is also partnering with its affiliate, Transforming Michigan, Lou Engle’s The Call, and the nation’s apostolic prayer warrior networks, in preparation for The Call Detroit, described as a spiritual warfare offensive against Islam. Preparations have included speeches on the “Nine Prinicipals of Warfare” by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin and ceremonies held around the state for the purpose of fighting the demons they claim control freemasonry and Islam.

In one of the most of ironic of Rodriguez 49 Washington Post columns, he makes a statement about the controversy surrounding Rod Parsley, John Hagee, and Jeremiah Wright in the 2008 presidential election.

“These spiritual leaders need to focus more on the greatest religious asset in the faith arsenal of the American experience; religious pluralism.”

Full Story Here: | Samuel Rodriguez and the Oak Initiative – Marketing Religious Supremacism as Social Justice.

U.S. Military’s Prolific Production of Terrorists 4 Profit

I have too readily embraced the notion, as I did with the Bushco regime, that this country is being led by macho, narcissistic, addicted-to-power, patriarchal nincompoops unwittingly generating massive chaos and destruction.

The macho, narcissistic, addicted-to-power, patriarchal part is right. And there are nincompoops and sycophant, amoral cronies enabling their asses off at the upper levels of power. But I and the rest of us should at all times apply the savvy Naomi Klein’s “shock and awe” theory to the continuing, seemingly unsuccessful nightmares resulting in global U.S. military policies. We need to exit the fog of spiritual and intellectual confusion to rally against bottom-line and insane evil.

To be “confused” … from the Latin … meaning “fused with”. When one is confused, one is in a sense enthralled by the confuser. Stymied. Paralyzed, to a degree, in the struggle for dissemination. To be confused is to be vulnerable. Such is the power of “crazymaking” actions.

Full Story Here: U.S. Military’s Prolific Production of Terrorists 4 Profit – libbyliberalnyc – Open Salon.

Famine in Somalia: a man-made crisis

Starvation in the Horn of Africa is not only a natural disaster – conflict rages and international aid is hampered

The emergency unfolding in and around Somalia is being portrayed by many aid organisations and the media in one-dimensional terms, such as “famine in the Horn of Africa” or “worst drought in 60 years”. But only blaming natural causes ignores the complex geopolitical realities exacerbating the situation and suggests that the solution lies in merely finding funds and shipping enough food. Glossing over the man-made causes of hunger and starvation in the region and the difficulties in addressing them will not help resolve the crisis.

I have just returned from Kenya and Somalia and what I and my Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) colleagues are seeing indicates a profoundly distressing situation. In Mogadishu, I met a young woman from the southern region of Lower Shebelle who is now living in one of the many makeshift camps appearing all over the city. She left home with her husband and seven children because of a bad harvest and her inability to afford food and water. Somewhere along her trek, she had to leave her husband and three children behind, as they were too weak to complete the five-day walk.

Her story echoes those of thousands of other families in southern and central Somalia who have been ravaged by conflict for years and were tipped over the edge by drought. Malnutrition is chronic in many parts of the Horn of Africa and there needs to be a long-term international effort to ensure nutritious foods reach the people who need them. Today, however, the most urgent needs are concentrated in southern and central Somalia. Even if we do not have a full picture, we know the situation is dire from the large numbers of Somalis arriving in weak condition in the capital, Mogadishu, and at camps across the border in Kenya and Ethiopia.

Full Story Here: Famine in Somalia: a man-made crisis | Unni Karunakara | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Robert Redford: Is the Obama Administration Putting Corporate Profits Above Public Health?

One reason I supported President Obama is because he said we must protect clean air, water and lands. But what good is it to say the right thing unless you act on it?

Since early August, three administration decisions — on Arctic drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline and the ozone that causes smog — have all favored dirty industry over public health and a clean environment. Like so many others, I’m beginning to wonder just where the man stands.

For months, the Environmental Protection Agency has been poised to issue new ozone rules to reduce the smog that causes asthma attacks and other respiratory ills. We badly need these new standards, which the EPA estimates could prevent 12,000 premature deaths a year.

On Friday, though, the White House put the new rules on ice. The result: these vital protections will be delayed until at least 2013 – conveniently after next year’s presidential election.

Full Story Here: Robert Redford: Is the Obama Administration Putting Corporate Profits Above Public Health?.

The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years?

We’re homing in on the tenth anniversary of the destruction of the Wall Street Trade Towers and the attack on the Pentagon. One in seven Americans and one in four among those aged 16-24, (so a recent poll commissioned by the BBC tells us) believe that there was a vast conspiracy in which the U.S. government was involved. But across those ten years have the charges that it was an “inside job” –– a favored phrase of the self-styled “truthers” — received any serious buttress?

The answer is no.

Did the Trade Towers fall because they were badly built as a consequence of corruption, incompetence, regulatory evasions by the Port Authority, and because they were struck by huge planes loaded with jet fuel. No, shout the conspiracists, they “pancaked” because Dick Cheney’s agents–scores of them–methodically planted demolition charges in the preceding days inserting the explosives in the relevant floors of three vast buildings, (moving day after day among the unsuspecting office workers), then on 9/11 activating the detonators. It was a conspiracy of thousands, all of whom–party to mass murder–have held their tongues ever since.

What has been the goal of the 9/11 conspiracists? They ask questions, yes, but they never answer them. They never put forward an overall scenario of the alleged conspiracy. They say that’s not up to them. So who is it up to? Whom do they expect to answer their questions? When answers are put forward, they are dismissed as fabrications or they simply rebound with another question. Like most cultic persuasions they excitedly invoke important converts to their faith and the “1500 architects and engineers in the USA” who say the NIST official report is not thorough and needs another investigation. It’s a tiny proportion of the overall members of their profession. At least 80 per cent of faculty economists in the US believe stoutly in long-discredited theories that have blighted the lives of millions around the world for decades. Their numbers don’t equate with intelligence, let along conclusive analysis.

Full Story Here: The 9/11 Conspiracists: Vindicated After All These Years? » Counterpunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.

Mars Rover Discovers Rock With Zinc, NASA Overjoyed

Giddiness and excitement swept over NASA scientists Thursday after a small rover discovered a rock on Mars that could suggest life on the red planet, reports The New York Times.

Opportunity, NASA’s small exploratory rover treaded over Mars’ 13.6 mile wide crater called Endeavor in early August, reports the Telegraph.

Mission scientists have described the rock as “full of zinc and bromine, elements that, at least for rocks on Earth, would be suggestive of geology formed with heat and water,” reports The Age. Zinc is often found in rocks that have been exposed to water.

Though the rover has roamed Mars’ terrain on and off since 2004, never has it come across such samples of this kind.

Full Story Here: Mars Rover Discovers Rock With Zinc, NASA Overjoyed.

Joe Walsh To Skip Obama Jobs Speech, Calls President ‘Idiotic’

House Republican Joe Walsh, a Tea Party favorite from Illinois, will not be attending President Barack Obama’s Sept. 8 jobs speech, the Chicago Tribune reports.

“I don’t see the point of being a prop for another of the president’s speeches asking for more failed stimulus spending and more subsidies for his pet projects,” he said in a statement issued Thursday.

Walsh, a member of the House Small Business Committee, will instead be hosting a small business forum in Illinois. He said he opposes Obama’s eagerness to give another major jobs speech before meeting with more constituents.

Full Story Here: Joe Walsh To Skip Obama Jobs Speech, Calls President ‘Idiotic’.

OPS: This clown is pathetic – Which of the brain-dead zombies voted for this asshole?

The Zero Economy

Robert Reich :-:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports today no jobs were created in August. Zero. Nada.

Well, not quite. The strike at Verizon reduced the labor force by 45,000. Minnesota government employees returned to work, adding 22,000. So in reality, America added 23,000 jobs. Almost zero.

In reality, worse than zero. We need 125,000 a month merely to keep up with population growth. So the hole continues to deepen.

Since this Depression began at the end of 2007, America’s potential labor force – working-age people who want jobs – has grown by over 7 million. But since then the number of Americans with jobs has shrunk by more than 300,000

Full Story Here: Robert Reich (The Zero Economy).

U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges

With four times as many oil rigs pumping domestic oil today than eight years ago and declining domestic demand, the United States is awash in oil. In fact, the U.S. exports more oil than it imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration – and has done so for nearly two decades.

The country’s oil industry is primarily interested in who will pay the most on the global marketplace. They call that “energy security” when it suits, but in reality it is “oil company security” through maximizing profits, say energy experts like Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International, an NGO that researches the links between oil, gas and coal companies and governments.

The only reason U.S. citizens may be forced to endure a risky, Canadian-owned oil pipeline called Keystone XL is so oil companies with billion-dollar profits can get the dirty oil from Canada’s tar sands down to the Gulf of Mexico to export to Europe, Latin America or Asia, according to a new report by Oil Change International released Wednesday.

Full Story Here: U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges | Common Dreams.

Feds sue banks over mortgage fraud

The Federal Housing Finance Agency on Friday filed lawsuits seeking billions in compensation against more than a dozen big banks, accusing them of financial misrepresentation in the mortgage market, a significant cause of the American economy’s current state of economic distress.

In lawsuits filed in New York and Connecticut, the federal agency targeted 17 financial institutions including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

The lawsuits argue that the banks, which combined mortgage loans together and marketed them as securities to investors, did not perform the due diligence required under law, allowing some unqualified homebuyers to attain mortgages they could not afford.

Full Story Here: Feds sue banks over mortgage fraud – Tim Mak – POLITICO.com.

Obama Better Give One Hell of a Speech

On the eve of a Labor Day that will mark the unofficial launching place of his 2012 reelection campaign, on he eve of an address to Congress that could be the most important of his presidency, there is no good economic news for Barack Obama.

John Nichols :-:

The US economy has stalled.

A net total of zero jobs were added in the month of July, for which economic data was released Friday morning.

In addition, Friday’s report revealed, the number of hours worked by the average American has begun to decline.

And hourly earnings have dropped.

So even if Americans are employed, they are working less and making less.

“These numbers, with no net job creation at all—and 14 million people officially unemployed—show that the economy is dead in the water.”  says Roger Hickey of the Campaign for America’s Future.

But that’s not the scariest part of the story.

Full Story Here: Obama Better Give One Hell of a Speech | The Nation.

Trumka and AFL-CIO Release Jobs Plan for Labor Day

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is very active in advance of the Labor Day holiday. In addition to releasing the video above (and another video, see below), the organization released it’s “America Wants To Work Action Plan.” The plan (which can be read in detail here) includes six planks:

1. Rebuild America’s schools and transportation and energy systems: The plan argues that reinvesting in this critical, but crumbling, infrastructure will create millions of new jobs.

2. Revive U.S. manufacturing and stop exporting good jobs overseas: A number of policy proposals are included in this section, including strong opposition to free trade deals.

3. Put people to work doing work that needs to be done: This one is largely a repeat of No. 1 above, but also includes other policy options proposed by progressive members of Congress.

4. Help federal, state, and local governments avoid more layoffs and cutbacks of public services: This is an important focus — the bipartisan assault on government workers at all levels is a big problem with the current failure in boosting the job market.

5. Help fill the massive shortfall of consumer demand by extending unemployment benefits and keeping homeowners in their homes: These moves are so obvious, it’s a crime that they haven’t been done yet.

6. Reform Wall Street so that it helps Main Street create jobs: Wall Street used to help Main Street, but they’ve moved away from that. Maybe we should do something about that.

Full Story Here: Trumka and AFL-CIO Release Jobs Plan for Labor Day | Crooks and Liars.

Obama halts controversial EPA regulation

President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration’s controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency — and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers — and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog’s main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month — and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.

Full Story Here: Obama halts controversial EPA regulation – Yahoo! News.

OPS: Obama showing more of his true Republican colors

Petermann Glacier Picture: Before And After Images Show Extent Of 2010 Greenland Ice Break (PHOTOS)

When a 100 mile chunk — an area four times the size of Manhattan — broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in the summer of 2010, scientists knew that it was a historic event. After all, it was the largest known calving in Greenland’s history, and the largest to occur in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

Over the last year, scientists have only been able to view the extent of the breakup via satellite imagery. Until now.

Photographs taken in July and released on Wednesday offer a new perspective on the August 2010 break, showing before and after images of different areas of Petermann Glacier.

(PHOTOS BELOW)

“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless,” Alan Hubbard, the scientist from Aberystwyth University in Wales who took the most recent photograph, said in a statement.

And we can expect more. Hubbard told MSNBC.com that another sheet, about half the size of the 2010 chunk, is poised to break away.

Jason Box, a scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University and photographer of the 2009 image, told HuffPost that the summer of 2010 was Greenland’s warmest on record, and records have been kept since 1873.

“We’re bearing witness to abrupt climate change,” Box told HuffPost. “This isn’t of in the future. It’s very much now.”

Full Story Here: Petermann Glacier Picture: Before And After Images Show Extent Of 2010 Greenland Ice Break (PHOTOS).

Hartmann: Republicans misread the 2010 election

Why is Senator Shuck Grassley lying to his constituents about the GOP’s plan to privatize Social Security? In my Daily Take – I’ll tell you about the drastic measures Republicans are resorting to to keep their constituents in the dark about their radical agenda.

Pentagon Frets Over Wasted Billions (Ignores Missing Trillions)

An investigative committee released a report this week estimating that the US Government has lost as much as $60 billion to waste, fraud and corruption in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.

Full Story Here: Pentagon Frets Over Wasted Billions (Ignores Missing Trillions) – YouTube.

You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story

I don’t believe the official story of 9/11 because I know the official story of 9/11!

During the past 10 years I have not met a single individual who, after doing research on the subjectpen, switched from questioning the official narrative of the events of 9/11/2001 to believing the official narrative of those events..  It is always the other way around. Why do you think that is? There are good reasons for this, and I will try to explain this phenomenon right now.

The term “conspiracy theorist“, perhaps the most misapplied description in our vernacular, is often used to describe 9/11 truthers. Perhaps that term does apply to a segment of the 9/11 truth movement. But in most cases a more accurate description of 9/11 truthers is probably “expert”, or “scholar“, or “researcher.” You see, much of the doubt cast on the official narrative of the events of 9/11 has not come in the form of speculated accusations, or “theories.” In fact, it has come in the form of questions that have been raised after a careful study of the official and undisputed events and details.

Ten years have passed since the infamous events of September 11th, 2001 took place, and the majority of people still don’t know a damn thing about the actual details of that event. They don’t know what was going on in the country with regard to our military that day. They don’t know the history or the activities of key members of our government, defense establishment or intelligence community, on, or during the weeks, and in some cases the years leading up to that day. They don’t know what took place during or immediately following the events of that day. And they don’t know what actions were taken by those key people following that event.

Full Story Here: You Only Believe the Official 9/11 Story Because You Don’t Know the Official 9/11 Story.

Chant of ‘tax the rich’ growing louder in nation

Billionaire Warren Buffett may not seem to have much in common with angry laborers at town hall meetings or armies of California nurses protesting in the streets.

But these days, the executive celebrity in his boardroom and working folks on the front lines have found a common mantra as the economy continues to sputter and the 2012 election approaches: “Tax the rich.”

They are joining Democratic politicians, such as U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer of California, who pounded the issue of making “millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share” nearly a dozen times at a recent event in Oakland.

Full Story Here: Chant of ‘tax the rich’ growing louder in nation.

The audacity of weakness

Another embarrassing fail betrays a White House in a bubble

Here was the headline on Yahoo News tonight: “Obama bows to Boehner on jobs speech.”

By Cenk Uygur :-:

Bows to Boehner: I can tell you what any progressive who has been paying attention thought, “Oh boy, here we go again.”

President Obama has now changed the day of his address to Congress to accommodate the Republicans. They were having a GOP presidential debate on the original date he picked. So, Boehner told him to move his speech. He is the president for Christ’s sake. Of course, they should have accommodated him, not the other way around. But as usual, President Obama bowed.

So, this leads to the eternal question of whether Obama is just weak or if he is a brilliant strategist who has been playing rope-a-dope all along. I am so silly that I still had hope. My hope this morning was that Obama was laying a trap for the Republicans. He picks a day for his speech that is the same as the GOP debate. Then if Boehner says he won’t let him give the speech on that day, he seems so petty and harsh.

Full Story Here: The audacity of weakness – Barack Obama News – Salon.com.

Free Trade Debate With Forbes Magazine, Round One

Ian Fletcher :-: 

A columnist at the business magazine Forbes has agreed to that rarity of rarities: an actual debate on the merits of free trade! As the reader may have noticed, most free traders are so religiously committed to the doctrine that they can’t even imagine the possibility that they might be wrong. (Believe me, as a former free trader, I’m familiar with this mentality.) And the rest? They seem to be well aware that their faith doesn’t stand up very well to cross-examination, so they avoid debate.

My comments here are a response to this article by Tim Worstall.

Worstall is a Briton currently residing in Portugal.  I find this a sublime irony, as economic history records that Britain and Portugal were, in fact, among the earliest and profoundest victims of free trade.

Let’s consult the history.

Britain, prior to her adoption of free trade starting in the 1840s, was the world’s leading economic power, birthplace of the industrial revolution and center of a worldwide empire. But she had attained this position not by practicing free trade, rather under a now-largely-forgotten protectionist policy that has come down to us under the name “mercantilism.”

But after Britain embraced free trade beginning in 1846, this all began to fall apart, and Britain entered her long economic decline that has since reduced her to a minor economy heavily indebted to former colonies. In the words of one commentator,

The industries that formed the core of the British economy in the 19th century, textiles and steel, were developed during the period 1750-1840—before England abandoned mercantilism. Britain’s lead in these fields held for roughly two decades after adopting free trade but eroded as other nations caught up. Britain then fell behind as new industries, using more advanced technology, emerged after 1870. These new industries were fostered by states that still practiced mercantilism, including protectionism.

The rising powers of this era?  Protectionist nations like Germany, the United States, and later, Japan.

Economic history is an amazing solvent of the pretentions of theory. (Later, we can talk about fixing the theory so that it’s actually true.)

Now for Portugal. Portugal’s trade of wine for English textiles is, interestingly, the classic example of free trade given in economics textbooks. And therein lies a very revealing tale.

For in the era of England’s rise to greatness, textiles were produced there with then-state-of-the-art technology, like steam engines. The textile industry thus nurtured a sophisticated machine tool industry to make the parts for these engines, which drove forward the general technological capabilities of the British economy and helped it break into related industries like locomotives and steamships. It was an industry fruitful for growth, a key industry to be in.

Wine, on the other hand, was made by methods that had not changed in centuries. So for hundreds of years, wine production contributed no technological advances to the Portuguese economy, no drivers of growth, no opportunities to raise economy-wide productivity. And its own productivity remained static: it did the same thing over and over again, year after year, decade after decade, century after century, because this was where Portugal’s immediate comparative advantage lay.

Free trade may have been the cheapest move for Portuguese consumers in the short run, but it was a dead end in the long run.  This is why every single ex-Third World nation—a category ranging from England 200 years ago to South Korea today—has been protectionist.

What happened to Portugal?

In 1703, in the Treaty of Methuen, Portugal exempted England from its prohibition on the importation of woolen cloth, while England agreed to admit Portuguese wines at a tariff one-third less than that applied to competitors. This treaty merely switched suppliers for the English, who did not produce wine, but it admitted a deluge of cheap English cloth into Portugal, which wiped out its previously promising textile industry.

English capital eventually took control of Portugal’s vineyards as their owners went into debt to London banks, and English influence sabotaged attempts at state policy that might have pushed Portugal back into textiles or other manufacturing industry.  As textiles were (as they remain today) the first stepping stone to more-sophisticated industries, this all but prevented Portugal’s further industrialization.

Not until the 1960s, under the Salazar dictatorship, did any Portuguese government make a serious attempt to dig itself out of this trap. Even today, Portugal has not yet recovered its 17th-century position relative to other European economies, and it remains the poorest country in Western Europe

Today, free trade is similarly dangerous to poor and undeveloped nations because they tend, like Portugal, to have comparative advantage in industries that are economic dead ends. So despite being nominally free, free trade tends to lock them in place.

Is this just a problem for poor nations?  No, because there’s a flip side to the problem, one which affects the already developed. What if a developed country like the U.S. confronts a developing nation, like China, which has embraced the protectionist policies that made America rich in the first place?  Well, that country had better not practice free trade in the face of this foreign mercantilism, or it will end up getting shoved aside—just as the U.S. itself once did to Britain.

Trade isn’t a zero-sum game, but it certainly has winners and losers.

America right now is being inexorably stripped of its most valuable industries by its naïve embrace of one-sided free trade.  Here’s the Harvard Business Review’s list of industries we have already lost:

Fabless chips; compact fluorescent lighting; LCDs for monitors, TVs and handheld devices like mobile phones; electrophoretic displays; lithium ion, lithium polymer and NiMH batteries; advanced rechargeable batteries for hybrid vehicles; crystalline and polycrystalline silicon solar cells, inverters and power semiconductors for solar panels; desktop, notebook and netbook PCs; low-end servers; hard-disk drives; consumer networking gear such as routers, access points, and home set-top boxes; advanced composite used in sporting goods and other consumer gear; advanced ceramics and integrated circuit packaging.

Note that these are not the “junk” industries, like plastic toys, that free traders fantasize we are shedding to foreign nations that graciously acknowledge our divine right to skim the cream of the world economy while others do the donkey work. These are serious high-tech and thus high-wage industries, industries with a future. Without them, America is going to be increasingly shut out of the most lucrative and job-creating industries in the global economy. We are going to be the new Portugal.

Can a developed nation hang onto key industries in the face of cheap-labor foreign competition? Sure. Neither Japan nor Germany, nor their imitators from Taiwan to Switzerland, have suffered our chronic deindustrialization. Our unemployment rate right now is 9.2 percent; Germany’s is 6.1 and Japan’s is 4.7.  General Motors went bankrupt, not Toyota or Mercedes.

The causes of these nations’ industrial success are complex, but one thing they all have in common is that they do not actually practice free trade (whatever they may say in public to gull Uncle Sam).  They practice managed trade by a dozen different means, starting with currency manipulation and deeply embedded in the behind-the-scenes understandings their corporations have with their banks, governments, and unions. Many of their trade barriers are not actual laws, and thus lurk below the surface to casual examination. For example, in the words of commentator William Greider:

In the European Union, supposedly liberalized by unifying fifteen national markets, the countries had more than seven hundred national restrictions on import quantities, many of which were converted to so-called voluntary restraints. The UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders maintained a long-standing ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ with the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association that effectively limited Japanese cars to 11 percent of the British market. France and Italy had tougher restrictions. The EU periodically proclaimed its intention to eliminate such informal barriers but, meanwhile, it was tightening them. During the recessionary conditions in late 1993, Japanese auto imports to Europe were arbitrarily reduced by 18 percent.

This is the way the world of international trade really works.

America doesn’t need to cut itself off from the world entirely, but it does need to get wise to the fact that the rest of the world views trade (correctly) as an arena of national rivalry, and start playing the game. We don’t have to play it quite the same way they do—there are plenty of ways to skin this cat—but our own protectionist history from Independence to the start of the Cold War gives plenty of precedents for rational protectionism.

It’s either that, or continuation of the inexorable national economic decline that anyone with eyes can see has already begun.

Ian Fletcher is Senior Economist of the Coalition for a Prosperous America, a nationwide grass-roots organization dedicated to fixing America’s trade policies and comprising representatives from business, agriculture, and labor. He was previously Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council, a Washington think tank, and before that, an economist in private practice serving mainly hedge funds and private equity firms. Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago, he lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace It and Why.

Feds Begin To Clamp Down On Health Insurance Rates

Health insurance rates for the individual and small group markets will face stricter scrutiny to determine whether they are reasonable under new rules required by last year’s healthcare reform law, known as the Affordable Care Act.

Starting Thursday, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will review rates in nine states that lack the authority to adequately review rates. The remaining 41 states will conduct their own reviews.

“These new rules combined with the funding states are receiving under the Affordable Care Act will trigger much closer scrutiny of health insurance rate hikes,” says DeAnn Friedholm, the director of Consumers Union’s health reform campaign. “But ultimately, it will be up to the states to protect consumers when rate increases are found to be unreasonable. States need to make sure they have the tools necessary to prevent unreasonable rate increases from going into effect. And some states that have the authority to curb rate hikes need to act more aggressively to prevent insurers from gouging consumers.”

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Feds Begin To Clamp Down On Health Insurance Rates.