More Site News and a Post

The new CSS is nearly done, and I'll be plugging it in tomorrow.

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Brad DeLong was cited on Salon.com yesterday. Part of his post here was picked up by Salon.

"Is George W. Bush responsible for the fact that the employment situation is lousy? No. The economy is an ocean liner, but the president is not its captain. Presidents influence the economy. They don't control it."

"But are he and his administration responsible for the fact that the employment situation is as lousy as it is? Yes. He sold his tax cuts as employment-generating stimulus programs, while in fact they got only about half as much employment bang for the deficit buck as a reasonable program would have. Think of it this way: Suppose your insurance agent tells you you ought to get homeowner's insurance. You give your insurance agent $4,000 to buy homeowner's insurance. You then have a small fire. And your insurance agent then tells you that you're only getting half of the damage covered--that he only used half the money to buy insurance, and spent the rest buying his friends large flat-screen TVs. That's the situation were in: sold as jobs programs, the Bush tax cuts got us only about half as much insurance against a lousy labor market as a real job-promoting stimulus that cost the same in deficit terms would have generated."

That's how it's now shaping up - the 'recovery' has been great for corporate profits, while creating far fewer jobs than other 'recoveries,' and wages are losing ground to inflation.

The wage issue isn't likely to go away. Corporate America has but one goal: to increase shareholder value. All the rest is way down the list.

When the Fortune 500 can dangle the carrot of jobs here at third-world wages versus the stick of moving those jobs to an already third-world country, you bite the bullet. Neither prospect is palatable. It's almost a stick and stick approach. And that's if you're even given the option.

Then, once your job is 'outsourced' the same unaccountable corporate power will use the same techniques to further their profits and produce a whole series of labor forces vying for ever depressed wages.

Here's a snippet from the linked article:

It's unlikely that employees will get raises that outpace inflation over the next five to 10 years, said William A. Niskanen, former acting chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors during the Ronald Reagan administration.

"I don't see any substantial increase in average real wages for some time," said Niskanen, who is now chairman of the Cato Institute, a Washington research group. Niskanen and other economists cite global competition, which forces companies to keep costs down, shrinking union clout and continuing slack in a labor market with an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent, up from 4.2 percent when the last recession began in March 2001.

The disparity between pay and prices may keep President Bush from fully capitalizing on the economy's addition of 1.2 million jobs this year, the best five months of job growth since 2000, as he runs for re-election, said political analysts including Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution in Washington.

"The stagnation in wages leaves open a big target" for Democratic challenger John Kerry, Mann said. In terms of pay, "a lot of Americans have been left behind," he said. "Kerry now has an opportunity to ask, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago?' "

After accounting for inflation, wages and salaries have been growing less than a third as fast as they did after previous recessions, Stephen Roach, chief economist for Morgan Stanley & Co. in New York, said in a note to clients this week. The rise in pay this time is "far short of the nearly 10 percent gains that occurred in the first 29 months of the preceding six cyclical recoveries," Roach wrote. "This translates into a shortfall of $280 billion in 'missing' real personal income."

If you want to find out what's really going on, read the business press(that was from a Bloomberg piece).

Sure, there are cheerleaders in the business press, but you're far more likely to get at least some reporters with integrity. Remember, their constituency is doing very, very well.

Krugman on Pundits, Moore

I haven't been reading Paul Krugman lately.

In today's NYT, he states the obvious about the Punditocracy's fawning over Bush, and the other standard used to criticize Moore over his latest.

...There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?...

Why indeed? It's abundantly clear that the pundits are echoing the sentiments of their paymasters.

The various sets of standards that pundits ascribe to their wide range of interests simply add more credence to the now all too obvious fact that the 'liberal media' is at best a myth. Pundits are - with a few notable exceptions - owned wholly by corporate giants. Thus, we consumers of media are fed a steady diet of opinion ranging from far-right to a sort of chewy-centered, smarmy moderate-right that is supposed to represent the loyal opposition.

I should point out that I'm not a fan of Michael Moore's. I am however, less a fan of those applying differing standards if 'circumstances' dictate.

Poland Claims WMD Buy Thwarted

Oddly, the U.S. claims the warheads impotent.

Not every U.S. citizen makes shit up to justify their actions after the fact.

..."the US military said that while two of the rockets tested positive for sarin, traces of the agent were so small and deteriorated as to be virtually harmless."

The U.S. military gets the pure bs Truthteller of the Day award.

Site stuff

Copygodd left a comment about "peak oil" after reading this entry.

His comment has moved me to make what is turning into a long entry. An expanded version of the linked-to-entry will be up either tomorrow or Sunday.

In addition, I am reworking the site's CSS. I have the right hand column finished, and am working on the LH column.

Again, expect that to be posted by no later than Sunday.

If you have any ideas as to how to make the site more user friendly, leave a comment.

New GYWO

*SPECIAL* Post-Sovereignty Edition!

Iraq, and The Cost of War

What are the two metrics that people traditionally use to tally the cost of war?

They're axiomatic, I think.

1) Casualties - the military's euphemism for deaths.

2) Raw dollars - at least here in the U.S. where the masses worship at the temple of the greenback(I am amongst the masses, although I'd like to believe that I am not so inured to the amassing of wealth - evidence supporting this belief are few indeed).

The Washington based Institute for Policy Studies along with Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of IPS and the Interhemispheric Resource Center have compiled a more realistic picture of the true costs of the Iraq war. The IPS has been called a 'liberal' think tank by the corporatist press corps elites. I have yet to see anyone refute their conclusions, and a web search turns up nothing substantive.

Paying the Price: The Mounting Costs of the Iraq War

Key findings:

I. Costs to the United States

A. Human Costs

U.S. Military Deaths: Between the start of war on March 19, 2003 and June 16, 2004, 952 coalition forces were killed, including 836 U.S. military. Of the total, 693 were killed after President Bush declared the end of combat operations on May 1, 2003. Over 5,134 U.S. troops have been wounded since the war began, including 4,593 since May 1, 2003.

Contractor Deaths: Estimates range from 50 to 90 civilian contractors, missionaries, and civilian worker deaths. Of these, 36 were identified as Americans.

Journalist Deaths: Thirty international media workers have been killed in Iraq, including 21 since President Bush declared the end of combat operations. Eight of the dead worked for U.S. companies.

B. Security Costs

Terrorist Recruitment and Action: According to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, al Qaeda's membership is now at 18,000, with 1,000 active in Iraq. A former CIA analyst and State Department official has documented 390 deaths and 1,892 injuries due to terrorist attacks in 2003. In addition, there were 98 suicide attacks around the world in 2003, more than any year in contemporary history.

Low U.S. Credibility: Polls reveal that the war has damaged the U.S. government's standing and credibility in the world. Surveys in eight European and Arab countries demonstrated broad public agreement that the war has hurt, rather than helped, the war on terrorism. At home, 54 percent of Americans polled by the Annenberg Election Survey felt that the "the situation in Iraq was not worth going to war over."

Military Mistakes: A number of former military officials have criticized the war, including retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, who has charged that by manufacturing a false rationale for war, abandoning traditional allies, propping up and trusting Iraqi exiles, and failing to plan for post-war Iraq, the Bush Administration made the United States less secure.

Low Troop Morale and Lack of Equipment: A March 2004 army survey found 52 percent of soldiers reporting low morale, and three-fourths reporting they were poorly led by their officers. Lack of equipment has been an ongoing problem. The Army did not fully equip soldiers with bullet-proof vests until June 2004, forcing many families to purchase them out of their own pockets.

Loss of First Responders: National Guard troops make up almost one-third of the U.S. Army troops now in Iraq. Their deployment puts a particularly heavy burden on their home communities because many are "first responders," including police, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel. For example, 44 percent of the country's police forces have lost officers to Iraq. In some states, the absence of so many Guard troops has raised concerns about the ability to handle natural disasters.

Use of Private Contractors: An estimated 20,000 private contractors are carrying out work in Iraq traditionally done by the military, despite the fact that they often lack sufficient training and are not accountable to the same guidelines and reviews as military personnel.

C. Economic Costs

The Bill So Far: Congress has already approved of $126.1 billion for Iraq and an additional $25 billion is heading towards Congressional approval, for a total of $151.1 billion through this year. Congressional leaders have promised an additional supplemental appropriation after the election.

Long-term Impact on U.S. Economy: Economist Doug Henwood has estimated that the war bill will add up to an average of at least $3,415 for every U.S. household. Another economist, James Galbraith of the University of Texas, predicts that while war spending may boost the economy initially, over the long term it is likely to bring a decade of economic troubles, including an expanded trade deficit and high inflation.

Oil Prices: Gas prices topped $2 a gallon in May 2004, a development that most analysts attribute at least in part to the deteriorating situation in Iraq. According to a mid-May CBS survey, 85 percent of Americans said they had been affected measurably by higher gas prices. According to one estimate, if crude oil prices stay around $40 a barrel for a year, U.S. gross domestic product will decline by more than $50 billion.

Economic Impact on Military Families: Since the beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 364,000 reserve troops and National Guard soldiers have been called for military service, serving tours of duty that often last 20 months. Studies show that between 30 and 40 percent of reservists and National Guard members earn a lower salary when they leave civilian employment for military deployment. Army Emergency Relief has reported that requests from military families for food stamps and subsidized meals increased "several hundred percent" between 2002 and 2003.

D. Social Costs

U.S. Budget and Social Programs: The Bush administration's combination of massive spending on the war and tax cuts for the wealthy means less money for social spending. The $151.1 billion expenditure for the war through this year could have paid for: close to 23 million housing vouchers; health care for over 27 million uninsured Americans; salaries for nearly 3 million elementary school teachers; 678,200 new fire engines; over 20 million Head Start slots for children; or health care coverage for 82 million children. Instead, the administration's FY 2005 budget request proposes deep cuts in critical domestic programs and virtually freezes funding for domestic discretionary programs other than homeland security. Federal spending cuts will deepen the budget crises for local and state governments, which are expected to suffer a $6 billion shortfall in 2005.

Social Costs to the Military: Thus far, the Army has extended the tours of duty of 20,000 soldiers. These extensions have been particularly difficult for reservists, many of whom never expected to face such long separations from their jobs and families. According to military policy, reservists are not supposed to be on assignment for more than 12 months every 5-6 years. To date, the average tour of duty for all soldiers in Iraq has been 320 days. A recent Army survey revealed that more than half of soldiers said they would not re-enlist.

Costs to Veteran Health Care: About 64 percent of the more than 5,000 U.S. soldiers injured in Iraq received wounds that prevented them from returning to duty. One trend has been an increase in amputees, the result of improved body armor that protects vital organs but not extremities. As in previous wars, many soldiers are likely to have received ailments that will not be detected for years to come. The Veterans Administration healthcare system is not prepared for the swelling number of claims. In May, the House of Representatives approved funding for FY 2005 that is $2.6 billion less than needed, according to veterans' groups.

Mental Health Costs: A December 2003 Army report was sharply critical of the military's handling of mental health issues. It found that more than 15 percent of soldiers in Iraq screened positive for traumatic stress, 7.3 percent for anxiety, and 6.9 percent for depression. The suicide rate among soldiers increased from an eight-year average of 11.9 per 100,000 to 15.6 per 100,000 in 2003. Almost half of soldiers surveyed reported not knowing how to obtain mental health services.

II. Costs to Iraq

A. Human Costs

Iraqi Deaths and Injuries: As of June 16, 2004, between 9,436 and 11,317 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a result of the U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation, while an estimated 40,000 Iraqis have been injured. During "major combat" operations, between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents were killed.

Effects of Depleted Uranium: The health impacts of the use of depleted uranium weaponry in Iraq are yet to be known. The Pentagon estimates that U.S. and British forces used 1,100 to 2,200 tons of weaponry made from the toxic and radioactive metal during the March 2003 bombing campaign. Many scientists blame the far smaller amount of DU weapons used in the Persian Gulf War for illnesses among U.S. soldiers, as well as a sevenfold increase in child birth defects in Basra in Southern Iraq.

B. Security Costs

Rise in Crime: Murder, rape, and kidnapping have skyrocketed since March 2003, forcing Iraqi children to stay home from school and women to stay off the streets at night. Violent deaths rose from an average of 14 per month in 2002 to 357 per month in 2003.

Psychological Impact: Living under occupation without the most basic security has devastated the Iraqi population. A poll by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in May 2004 found that 80 percent of Iraqis say they have "no confidence" in either the U.S. civilian authorities or in the coalition forces, and 55 percent would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign troops left the country immediately.

C. The Economic Costs

Unemployment: Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30 percent before the war to 60 percent in the summer of 2003. While the Bush administration now claims that unemployment has dropped, only 1 percent of Iraq's workforce of 7 million is involved in reconstruction projects.

Corporate War Profiteering: Most of Iraq's reconstruction has been contracted out to U.S. companies, rather than experienced Iraqi firms. Top contractor Halliburton is being investigated for charging $160 million for meals that were never served to troops and $61 million in cost overruns on fuel deliveries. Halliburton employees also took $6 million in kickbacks from subcontractors, while other employees have reported extensive waste, including the abandonment of $85,000 trucks because they had flat tires.

Iraq's Oil Economy: Anti-occupation violence has prevented Iraq from capitalizing on its oil assets. There have been an estimated 130 attacks on Iraq's oil infrastructure. In 2003, Iraq's oil production dropped to 1.33 million barrels per day, down from 2.04 million in 2002.

Health Infrastructure: After more than a decade of crippling sanctions, Iraq's health facilities were further damaged during the war and post-invasion looting. Iraq's hospitals continue to suffer from lack of supplies and an overwhelming number of patients.

Education: UNICEF estimates that more than 200 schools were destroyed in the conflict and thousands more were looted in the chaos following the fall of Saddam Hussein. Largely because of security concerns, school attendance in April 2004 was well below pre-war levels.

Environment: The U.S-led attack damaged water and sewage systems and the country's fragile desert ecosystem. It also resulted in oil well fires that spewed smoke across the country and left unexposed ordnance that continues to endanger the Iraqi people and environment. Mines and unexploded ordnance cause an estimated 20 casualties per month.

Human Rights Costs: Even with Saddam Hussein overthrown, Iraqis continue to face human rights violations from occupying forces. In addition to the widely publicized humiliation and abuse of prisoners, the U.S. military is investigating the deaths of 34 detainees as a result of interrogation techniques.

Sovereignty Costs: Despite the proclaimed "transfer of sovereignty" to Iraq, the country will continue to be occupied by U.S. and coalition troops and have severely limited political and economic independence. The interim government will not have the authority to reverse the nearly 100 orders by CPA head Paul Bremer that, among other things, allow for the privatization of Iraq's state-owned enterprises and prohibit preferences for domestic firms in reconstruction.

III. Costs to the World

Human Costs: While Americans make up the vast majority of military and contractor personnel in Iraq, other U.S.-allied "coalition" troops have suffered 116 war casualties in Iraq. In addition, the focus on Iraq has diverted international resources and attention away from humanitarian crises such as in Sudan.

International Law: The unilateral U.S. decision to go to war in Iraq violated the United Nations Charter, setting a dangerous precedent for other countries to seize any opportunity to respond militarily to claimed threats, whether real or contrived, that must be "pre-empted." The U.S. military has also violated the Geneva Convention, making it more likely that in the future, other nations will ignore these protections in their treatment of civilian populations and detainees.

The United Nations: At every turn, the Bush administration has attacked the legitimacy and credibility of the UN, undermining the institution's capacity to act in the future as the centerpiece of global disarmament and conflict resolution. The recent efforts of the Bush administration to gain UN acceptance of an Iraqi government that was not elected but rather installed by occupying forces undermines the entire notion of national sovereignty as the basis for the UN Charter.

Coalitions: Faced with opposition in the UN Security Council, the U.S. government attempted to create the illusion of multilateral support for the war by pressuring other governments to join a so-called "Coalition of the Willing." This not only circumvented UN authority, but also undermined democracy in many coalition countries, where public opposition to the war was as high as 90 percent.

Global Economy: The $151.1 billion spent by the U.S. government on the war could have cut world hunger in half and covered HIV/AIDS medicine, childhood immunization and clean water and sanitation needs of the developing world for more than two years. As a factor in the oil price hike, the war has created concerns of a return to the "stagflation" of the 1970s. Already, the world's major airlines are expecting an increase in costs of $1 billion or more per month.

Global Security: The U.S.-led war and occupation have galvanized international terrorist organizations, placing people not only in Iraq but around the world at greater risk of attack. The State Department's annual report on international terrorism reported that in 2003 there was the highest level of terror-related incidents deemed "significant" than at any time since the U.S. began issuing these figures.

Global Environment: U.S.-fired depleted uranium weapons have contributed to pollution of Iraq's land and water, with inevitable spillover effects in other countries. The heavily polluted Tigris River, for example, flows through Iraq, Iran and Kuwait.

Human Rights: The Justice Department memo assuring the White House that torture was legal stands in stark violation of the International Convention Against Torture (of which the United States is a signatory). This, combined with the widely publicized mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. intelligence officials, gave new license for torture and mistreatment by governments around the world.

Well, there you have it.

Additionally, Phyllis Bennis of the IPS moderated a discussion with WaPo readers on 29 June 2004.

How accurate is this portrayal of the "mounting costs of the Iraq War?" I do not know. I do know that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon don't seem willing to address the cost issue. "Too many unknowns". True enough, but not even providing the citizenry with a broad range of cost estimates is disingenuous.

I think that the above cost picture is pretty accurate at this juncture. There is no way to know with certainty where the costs will go from here, but 'up' is historically the good bet during wartime.

Saddam in Court

List of Major Charges:

• Killing of religious figures in 1974.


• Killing the Kurdish Barzani clan in 1983.


• Gassing of Kurds in Halabja in 1988.


• Killing members of political parties over the last 30 years.


• The 1986-1988 "Anfal" campaign of displacing Kurds.


• The 1990 invasion of Kuwait.


• The suppression of the 1991 uprisings by Kurds and Shiites.

More specific charges to be filed later.

Let's see..How many of these actions did the U.S. offer tacit or direct support for, or turn a blind eye toward? A case can be made for all of them. Yes. Even Kuwait¹.

"This is a theater, the real criminal is Bush." - S. Hussein 7-1-2004

Saddam was, and is, a very bad guy. He is also largely a U.S. creation.

Let's not create any more monsters.

¹April Glaspie of the U.S. State Department told Saddam Hussein, "I have a direct instruction from the President to seek better relations with Iraq.. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait."

Source: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/glaspie.html

Anonymous/Moneyed Arabs

Well, the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror is anonymous no longer.

The Phoenix is reporting that Anonymous is one Michael Scheuer - an overt CIA employee. Scheuer is reportedly 'a 22-year CIA veteran who ran the Counterterrorist Center’s bin Laden station (code-named "Alec") from 1996 to 1999.'

A snippet from The Phoenix piece:

Public interest in the book itself isn't at all hard to understand: it's not every day that an active US intelligence officer publishes a work that disputes the Bush administration's assertions, holding that, among other things, bin Laden is not on the run; the invasion of Iraq has not made the United States safer; and that Islamists are in a campaign of insurgency, not terrorism, against the US because of US policies, not out of hatred for American values.

The book confirms the findings of a survey of "moneyed Arabs" conducted by the Wall Street Journal in the days following 11 Sept. 2001.

Immediately after the attacks, the WSJ had correspondents ask these "moneyed Arabs" - the WSJ's essentially two questions.

The first was, "do you have a favorable or unfavorable view of the U.S.?

Now remember, these aren't destitute, militant religious fundamentalists, these are the WSJ's constituency - people with lots of wealth. Approximately 70% of respondents had an unfavorable view of the U.S.

The other question was a follow-up. Why do you harbor animosity towards the U.S. The answers were essentially three, and widely held by those harboring 'unfavorable views' of the U.S.

The Arabs were most troubled that the U.S. supported repressive, undemocratic regimes in the middle-east.

They were also angry about the difference of policies regarding the Israelis and Palestinians. They were also frustrated that the U.S. wasn't able to help solve the Israeli/Palestinian issue.

Lastly, they were angry over the decade of sanctions against Iraq which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths(remember, this was well before the Gulf War redux).

These were most often cited reasons for their unfavorable views of the U.S.

This is almost 'line and verse' the steady message bin Laden has broadcasting over the years.

There is no link, as this was only in the print version, and I can find no mention of the piece online. I have some audio that makes reference to the survey, but I cannot find it at the moment(I have over 800 hours of talks on disk, but I have it indexed rather poorly). You can trust me on this. The numbers and reasons for Arab concern are accurate. If I can find the audio, I'll upload it, and link to it.

Go ahead and read The Phoenix article. There is a lot of factual material that isn't widely distributed, as well as speculation about motives.

'They' don't hate us because of our freedoms. 'They' hate our foreign policy positions.

Update: I'm sorry that I didn't refer to "The Phoenix" as "The Boston Phoenix." It's a habit.

Chavez Has Our Oil

Hugo can't be allowed be saying things like:

"Iraqi oil should be handled by the Iraqi people. Otherwise it would be going back 200 years, and I don't want to think that the new century is beginning with colonialism."

The Venezuelan president is already(still?) being demonized in Washington and it's not impossible that Chavez might receive an acute, fatal case of lead poisoning courtesy of the U.S. national security state.

I like the following: "if things do not develop in a positive way ... you are going to see the United States taking a more proactive role." So said an unnamed diplomat regarding Chavez's alleged refusal to hold elections.

More proactive role? I'll ask Don Vito Corleone for a translation.

Chavez is a real problem for the U.S. He was democratically elected, is pro-Castro and of course, Venezuela has oil. Talk about a dilemma.

His reforms seem to be helping the poor. Egads! A monster!

The Bush administration has already supported a short-lived coup d'etat against Chavez, and the recycled Reaganites in the administration purportedly support democracy - yet there is precious little evidence to support that policy declaration.

We know what this gang did in Latin America during the Reagan years. That didn't strike me as what I would call democratic reform.

The U.S. is willing to accept open markets sans democracy, but does not appear to be willing to allow democracy without markets open to U.S. corporate interests.

He'll likely be okay as long as the oil tap remains open.

Should the crude stop flowing out of Venezuela, I fear that the U.S. may do something crude - and all too familiar - to Chavez.

Another Day in the Empire

Bombings, explosions, killings and hostage taking - just another day in the empire.

Convoy attacked, marines dead

Iraq remains treacherous after handover

Some conservatives say they hope U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely as a permanent presences in the Middle East.

"Even if we're successful with the internal struggle in Iraq, this will be a Shia dominated proto-democracy in the Arab heartland. It's going to have repercussions and we have to make sure this thing's protected," said Thomas Donnelly, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

This is how we continue to build American Empire. Neo-conservatism and neo-imperialism are like hand and glove. Of course the policy wonks at the neo-conservative AEI want troope to remain in Iraq. A permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq provides Israel some additional protection - which is paramount to the neo-cons at the AEI, and as an added bonus gives the U.S. effective control of Iraqi material assets. Having the second largest deposits of oil sitting within your(our?) borders is too powerful a resource to be left to those that rightly own it. I'm sure we'll prove good stewards of Iraq's petrochemical wealth.

U.S. Still Failing to meet Iraq's electricity needs

Billions of reconstruction dollars given to U.S. corporate interests in Iraq, while millions of Iraqis remain jobless.

This is no way to run an empire. I think it's past time that we continue trying.

The Post Carbon World

This is amongst the most important post you may ever read. I'm not kidding.

"Saudi oil finance ministers and their U.S. counterparts... lined up to say that the industrial world has nothing to worry about on the oil front for decades. That so many high-ranking Saudi and US officials should gather in public to tell us not to worry should be quite worrisome." - Julian Darley

Oil. How much is really left? What are the viable alternatives? What can we do?

Can industrial society survive or is the "party" over?

I have resources.

Audio interview courtesy of Unwelcome Guests

Hour 1 Hour 2

Julian Darley's Post Carbon Institute website.

Global Public Media's multimedia archive of talks and discussions regarding energy.

At the very least, spend the two hours and listen to the audio interviews. It'll inspire you and or frighten you. Maybe a little fright is just what we need to awake from our collective slumber.

Get out there and stir it up!

Bush Numbers at New Low

A new NYT/CBS Poll finds Bush at the lowest numbers of his presidency.

Lots of interesting stuff here.

I think that there is little doubt that Bush will get a short term bounce due to the Iraqi 'transfer of sovereignty.'

As has been the case in recent polls, Kerry doesn't appear to be benefiting from Bush's ground-scraping numbers.

A telling item from the poll is this:

In Mr. Kerry's case, 36 percent said they had no opinion of him, despite the campaign's record-setting expenditure on television advertisements. That figure is fairly typical for challengers at this point in the campaign; in June 1992, 44 percent of the public did not have an opinion of Bill Clinton.

The electorate is truly asleep.

If you want to view the NYT poll data without registering, just paste the following URL into your address box: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/politics/campaign/29POLL.html?ex=1089086400&en=bf69cb72a2827a2e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

You really should read the piece.

My favorite bit is "Americans were more likely to believe that Mr. Bush would do a better job than Mr. Kerry would in steering the nation through a foreign crisis," and I think it likely more people that think that Bush would be the most likely to foment the "foreign crisis." :)

Read, Learn. Know stuff. Be cool.

CAFTA

Your CAFTA Audio Primer

Listen and learn.

Handoff

Via Reuters

Interestingly, the move was allegedly made two days early in an effort to thwart attacks believed planned for 30 June. Of course, it's U.S. doctrine to never negotiate with terrorists. Pragmatism trumps doctrine.

Conditional sovereignty

The ruling Iraqis do not have authority to:

1) Retake the assets that have been sold and or controlled by allied corporate interests

2) Make "long-term" policy decisions

3) Control the ~160,000 foreign troops still in Iraq

I wish the Iraqis well. I also hope that the U.S. does the right things regarding what are rightfully Iraqi assets.

So ends one chapter in Operation Iraqi Liberation(OIL).

Another New Book

Former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich has a book out. The title of which is: Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America.

As a friend of mine loves to point out, any book with a colon in the title is a popular work masquerading as an academic work. I have found that there is more than a bit of truth in his observation.

Nevertheless, this book is going on my reading list. I have listened to Reich a lot since his stint in the Clinton administration, and he is always engaging and never condescending - Reich is a regular on NPR's weekly Marketplace.

I read a review of the book that gives much of it away, but that's okay.

Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America

pbs forecast: Expect "Radcon" to achieve some popular usage. It's Reich's term for the 'slash and burn' economic policies that Gingrich/Limbaugh/Reagan/Bush have endorsed. If you can't eliminate it, as in Social Security, privatize it. This rewards their big donors. In place of the "social contract", the same group of "Radcons" has delivered crippling blows to our future with deficit spending, and a seriously out of control expansion of the DoD budget while almost eliminating taxation on the extremely wealthy.

From what I've read about the book, it offers a pretty convincing case, and Riech is a really effective communicator.

One added bonus is the title, I'm sure it was aimed at Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery..blah.

At this rate, I'm going to have to start a pure bs money raising campaign. Nah. I can afford it.

If you've read the book, or have alternate information about it, leave a comment.

Serbia to be Privatized?

Yoo-Essay Today is reporting that "pro-democracy" candidate Boris Tadic has won the Serbian presidential race.

Here's a tiny bit:

The presidential vote was seen crucial to whether Serbia moves closer to the European Union and NATO or sinks back into the nationalist isolation reminiscent of Milosevic's autocratic regime.

Three previous attempts to elect a president since 2002 failed because too few voters showed up at the polls. This vote was certain to produce a president regardless of the turnout, after Parliament earlier this year scrapped a 50% turnout requirement.

Articles like this are fun. They don't tell the reader anything..Or do they?

U.S. Americans equate democracy with capitalism. Pro-democracy means opening up of Serbian markets to multi-national corporate interests. Yes, this is a very wrong way to define democracy, but it is the one that U.S. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe.

Real democracy isn't something that is in the interest of the ruling class. In privatized America, we are conditioned that the "social contract" is a bad thing, and that the Fortune 500's interests are our interests.

30 years of corporatist propaganda has been so effective that legions of people vote for candidates that stand for a platform that is in direct opposition to their own best interests. In fact, if you ask them about American propaganda, they'll either deny its existence, or claim that they're not affected by it.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive.

Democracy does not equate to capitalism in practice. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.

The 'free-marketers' in this country, and around the world, have concentrated wealth and power for themselves while increasing levels of poverty for virtually everyone else. This is capitalism in practice. Is this democracy?

If you believe it to be so, then it follows that your vote is given equal weight to that of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. If you believe this, then I have a series of experienced bridges that you might be interested in...Have a look. :)

No, this is not a Democrat versus Republican issue. Bill Clinton mined silicon valley for money like no other before him, and W..Well, there is hardly need for comment.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive, and it irritates me like few things.