History Will Not Absolve Us

By Nat Hentoff in The Village Voice

Tuesday 28 August 2007

Leaked Red Cross report sets up Bush team for international war-crimes trial.

If and when there's the equivalent of an international Nuremberg trial for the American perpetrators of crimes against humanity in Guantánamo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the CIA's secret prisons, there will be mounds of evidence available from documented international reports by human-rights organizations, including an arm of the European parliament-as well as such deeply footnoted books as Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (St. Martin's Press) and Charlie Savage's just-published Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Little, Brown).

While the Democratic Congress has yet to begin a serious investigation into what many European legislators already know about American war crimes, a particularly telling report by the International Committee of the Red Cross has been leaked that would surely figure prominently in such a potential Nuremberg trial. The Red Cross itself is bound to public silence concerning the results of its human-rights probes of prisons around the world-or else governments wouldn't let them in.

But The New Yorker's Jane Mayer has sources who have seen accounts of the Red Cross interviews with inmates formerly held in CIA secret prisons. In "The Black Sites" (August 13, The New Yorker), Mayer also reveals the effect on our torturers of what they do-on the orders of the president-to "protect American values."

She quotes a former CIA officer: "When you cross over that line of darkness, it's hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but . . . you can't go back to that dark a place without it changing you."

Few average Americans have been changed, however, by what the CIA does in our name. Blame that on the tight official secrecy that continues over how the CIA extracts information. On July 20, the Bush administration issued a new executive order authorizing the CIA to continue using these techniques-without disclosing anything about them.

If we, the people, are ultimately condemned by a world court for our complicity and silence in these war crimes, we can always try to echo those Germans who claimed not to know what Hitler and his enforcers were doing. But in Nazi Germany, people had no way of insisting on finding out what happened to their disappeared neighbors.

We, however, have the right and the power to insist that Congress discover and reveal the details of the torture and other brutalities that the CIA has been inflicting in our name on terrorism suspects.

Only one congressman, Oregon's Democratic senator Ron Wyden, has insisted on probing the legality of the CIA's techniques-so much so that Wyden has blocked the appointment of Bush's nominee, John Rizzo, from becoming the CIA's top lawyer. Rizzo, a CIA official since 2002, has said publicly that he didn't object to the Justice Department's 2002 "torture" memos, which allowed the infliction of pain unless it caused such injuries as "organ failure . . . or even death." (Any infliction of pain up to that point was deemed not un-American.) Mr. Rizzo would make a key witness in any future Nuremberg trial.

As Jane Mayer told National Public Radio on August 6, what she found in the leaked Red Cross report, and through her own extensive research on our interrogators (who are cheered on by the commander in chief), is "a top-down-controlled, mechanistic, regimented program of abuse that was signed off on-at the White House, really-and then implemented at the CIA from the top levels all the way down. . . . They would put people naked for up to 40 days in cells where they were deprived of any kind of light. They would cut them off from any sense of what time it was or . . . anything that would give them a sense of where they were."

She also told of the CIA interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was not only waterboarded (a technique in which he was made to feel that he was about to be drowned) but also "kept in . . . a small cage, about one meter [39.7 inches] by one meter, in which he couldn't stand up for a long period of time. [The CIA] called it the dog box."

Whether or not there is another Nuremberg trial-and Congress continues to stay asleep-future historians of the Bush administration will surely also refer to Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality, the July report by Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

The report emphasizes that the president's July executive order on CIA interrogations-which, though it is classified, was widely hailed as banning "torture and cruel and inhuman treatment"-"fails explicitly to rule out the use of the 'enhanced' techniques that the CIA authorized in March, 2002, "with the president's approval (emphasis added).

In 2002, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced the "torture" memos and other interrogation techniques in internal reports that reached the White House. It's a pity he didn't also tell us. But Powell's objections should keep him out of the defendants' dock in any future international trial.

From the Leave No Marks report, here are some of the American statutes that the CIA, the Defense Department, and the Justice Department have utterly violated:

In the 1994 Torture Convention Implementation Act, we put into U.S. law what we had signed in Article 5 of the UN Convention Against Torture, which is defined as "an act 'committed by an [officially authorized] person' . . . specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control."

The 1997 U.S. War Crimes Act "criminalizes . . . specifically enumerated war crimes that the legislation refers to as 'grave breaches' of Common Article 3 [of the Geneva Conventions], including the war crimes of torture and 'cruel or inhuman treatment.'"

The Leave No Marks report very valuably brings the Supreme Court- before Chief Justice John Roberts took over-into the war-crimes record of this administration. I strongly suggest that Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility send their report-with the following section underlined-to every current member of the Supreme Court and Congress:

"The Supreme Court has long considered prisoner treatment to violate substantive due process if the treatment 'shocks the conscience,' is bound to offend even hardened sensibilities, or offends 'a principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.'"

Among those fundamental rights cited by past Supreme Courts, the report continues, are "the rights to bodily integrity [and] the right to have [one's] basic needs met; and the right to basic human dignity" (emphasis added).

If the conscience of a majority on the Roberts Court isn't shocked by what we've done to our prisoners, then it will be up to the next president and the next Congress-and, therefore, up to us-to alter, in some respects, how history will judge us. But do you see any considerable signs, among average Americans, of the conscience being shocked? How about the presidential candidates of both parties?

How the neoliberals stitched up the wealth of nations for themselves

A cabal of intellectuals and elitists hijacked the economic debate, and now we are dealing with the catastrophic effects

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 28, 2007
The Guardian

For the first time the UK's consumer debt exceeds the total of its gross national product: a new report shows that we owe £1.35 trillion. Inspectors in the United States have discovered that 77,000 road bridges are in the same perilous state as the one which collapsed into the Mississippi. Two years after Hurricane Katrina struck, 120,000 people from New Orleans are still living in trailer homes and temporary lodgings. As runaway climate change approaches, governments refuse to take the necessary action. Booming inequality threatens to create the most divided societies the world has seen since before the first world war. Now a financial crisis caused by unregulated lending could turf hundreds of thousands out of their homes and trigger a cascade of economic troubles.

These problems appear unrelated, but they all have something in common. They arise in large part from a meeting that took place 60 years ago in a Swiss spa resort. It laid the foundations for a philosophy of government that is responsible for many, perhaps most, of our contemporary crises.

When the Mont Pelerin Society first met, in 1947, its political project did not have a name. But it knew where it was going. The society's founder, Friedrich von Hayek, remarked that the battle for ideas would take at least a generation to win, but he knew that his intellectual army would attract powerful backers. Its philosophy, which later came to be known as neoliberalism, accorded with the interests of the ultra-rich, so the ultra-rich would pay for it.

Neoliberalism claims that we are best served by maximum market freedom and minimum intervention by the state. The role of government should be confined to creating and defending markets, protecting private property and defending the realm. All other functions are better discharged by private enterprise, which will be prompted by the profit motive to supply essential services. By this means, enterprise is liberated, rational decisions are made and citizens are freed from the dehumanising hand of the state.

This, at any rate, is the theory. But as David Harvey proposes in his book A Brief History of Neoliberalism, wherever the neoliberal programme has been implemented, it has caused a massive shift of wealth not just to the top 1%, but to the top tenth of the top 1%. In the US, for instance, the upper 0.1% has already regained the position it held at the beginning of the 1920s. The conditions that neoliberalism demands in order to free human beings from the slavery of the state - minimal taxes, the dismantling of public services and social security, deregulation, the breaking of the unions - just happen to be the conditions required to make the elite even richer, while leaving everyone else to sink or swim. In practice the philosophy developed at Mont Pelerin is little but an elaborate disguise for a wealth grab.

So the question is this: given that the crises I have listed are predictable effects of the dismantling of public services and the deregulation of business and financial markets, given that it damages the interests of nearly everyone, how has neoliberalism come to dominate public life?

Richard Nixon was once forced to concede that "we are all Keynesians now". Even the Republicans supported the interventionist doctrines of John Maynard Keynes. But we are all neoliberals now. Margaret Thatcher kept telling us that "there is no alternative", and by implementing her programmes Clinton, Blair, Brown and the other leaders of what were once progressive parties appear to prove her right.

The first great advantage the neoliberals possessed was an unceasing fountain of money. US oligarchs and their foundations - Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others - have poured hundreds of millions into setting up thinktanks, founding business schools and transforming university economics departments into bastions of almost totalitarian neoliberal thinking. The Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and many others in the US, the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and the Adam Smith Institute in the UK, were all established to promote this project. Their purpose was to develop the ideas and the language which would mask the real intent of the programme - the restoration of the power of the elite - and package it as a proposal for the betterment of humankind.

Their project was assisted by ideas which arose in a very different quarter. The revolutionary movements of 1968 also sought greater individual liberties, and many of the soixante-huitards saw the state as their oppressor. As Harvey shows, the neoliberals coopted their language and ideas. Some of the anarchists I know still voice notions almost identical to those of the neoliberals: the intent is different, but the consequences very similar.

Hayek's disciples were also able to make use of economic crises. An early experiment took place in New York City, which was hit by budgetary disaster in 1975. Its bankers demanded that the city follow their prescriptions - huge cuts in public services, smashing of the unions, public subsidies for business. In the UK, stagflation, strikes and budgetary breakdown allowed Thatcher, whose ideas were framed by her neoliberal adviser Keith Joseph, to come to the rescue. Her programme worked, but created a new set of crises.

If these opportunities were insufficient, the neoliberals and their backers would use bribery or force. In the US, the Democrats were neutered by new laws on campaign finance. To compete successfully for funding with the Republicans, they would have to give big business what it wanted. The first neoliberal programme of all was implemented in Chile following Pinochet's coup, with the backing of the US government and economists taught by Milton Friedman, one of the founding members of the Mont Pelerin Society. Drumming up support for the project was easy: if you disagreed, you got shot. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank used their power over developing nations to demand the same policies.

But the most powerful promoter of this programme was the media. Most of it is owned by multimillionaires who use it to project the ideas that support their interests. Those ideas which threaten their interests are either ignored or ridiculed. It is through the newspapers and TV channels that the socially destructive notions of a small group of extremists have come to look like common sense. The corporations' tame thinkers sell the project by reframing our political language (for an account of how this happens, see George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant!). Nowadays I hear even my progressive friends using terms like wealth creators, tax relief, big government, consumer democracy, red tape, compensation culture, job seekers and benefit cheats. These terms, all invented or promoted by neoliberals, have become so commonplace that they now seem almost neutral.

Neoliberalism, if unchecked, will catalyse crisis after crisis, all of which can be solved only by greater intervention on the part of the state. In confronting it, we must recognise that we will never be able to mobilise the resources its exponents have been given. But as the disasters they have caused unfold, the public will need ever less persuading that it has been misled.

Monbiot.com

Too Much To Read -- too much Bad News to Read

Here's what kept me up most of last night:

http://armyofdude.blogspot.com/ -- a great blog from a soldier in Iraq

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Study_US_preparing_massive_military_attack_0828.html

http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/pilots.html -- Unbelievably experienced pilots, flight instructors, and air traffic controllers express their doubts about the official 911 story

http://cleveland.indymedia.org/news/2005/01/14509.php -- Dov Zackheim, Pentagon Comptroller, Has Misplaced A Trillion $ -- this is on top of the 2.5 trillion Rumsfeld said was missing

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000995 -- "The War Draws Nearer" by Scott Horton at Harpers
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m35722&hd=&size=1&l=e -- "the Great Iraq Swindle -- How Bush allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the US Treasury"


http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/08/29/gulf_coast/index.html -- "Hurricane recovery, Republican-style --many are still struggling on the Gulf Coast. But casino and real estate investors are living large -- thanks to Republican officials" -- by Tim Shorrock

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8MDEM380&show_article=1 -- God told Pat Robertson that a major terrorist attack will occur soon in the US

http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/ -- a frightening little blog

http://mparent7777-2.blogspot.com/2007/08/hoyer-to-push-iran-law.html -- after a trip to Israel Stenny Hoyer is going to push for a more belligerent and insane stance against Iran

Satire or Reality? You be the Judge!

from the Cosmic Iguana:

GONZALES NAMED TO SUPREME COURT!

(Washington) In a move that surprised many in Washington, President George Bush today named recently resigned Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court.

"I know of no one better to ensure civil liberties are protected and the law is fairly applied than this man," the President said in a prepared statement released today.

"He has served the country and upheld the law," the statement continued.

Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle reacted in shock and dismay, both at his nomination and at its timing, which occurred when there were no vacancies on the court.

Gonzales himself responded to the criticisms at a press conference today, describing them as "quaint" and "antiquated" and "no better than the Geneva conventions".

He added, "I was expecting a Medal of Freedom, but this is much better."

HURRICANE GEORGE: How the White House Drowned New Orleans

Thursday, August 23

Greg Palast:

It's been two years. And America's media is about to have another tear-gasm over New Orleans. Maybe Anderson Cooper will weep again. The big networks will float into the moldering corpse of the city and give you uplifting stories about rebuilding and hope.

Now, let's cut through the cry-baby crap. Here's what happened two years ago - and what's happening now.

This is what an inside source me. And it makes me sick:

"By midnight on Monday, the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody."

The charge is devastating: That, on August 29, 2005, the White House withheld from the state police the information that New Orleans was about to flood. From almost any other source, I would not have believed it. But this was not just any source. The whistle-blower is Dr. Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, the chief technician advising the state on saving lives during Katrina.

I'd come to van Heerden about another matter, but in our talks, it was clear he had something he wanted to say, and it was a big one. He charged that the White House, FEMA and the Army Corp hid, for critical hours, their discovery that the levees surrounding New Orleans were cracking, about to burst and drown the city.

Understand that Katrina never hit New Orleans. The hurricane swung east of the city, so the state evacuation directors assumed New Orleans was now safe - and evacuation could slow while emergency efforts moved east with the storm.

But unknown to the state, in those crucial hours on Monday, the federal government's helicopters had filmed the cracks that would become walls of death by Tuesday.

Van Heerden revealed:

"FEMA knew at 11 o'clock on Monday that the levees had breeched. At 2p.m. they flew over he 17th Street Canal and took video of the breech."

Question: "So the White House wouldn't tell you the levees had breeched?"

Dr. Van Heerden: "They didn't tell anybody."

Question: "And you're at the Emergency Center.'

Dr. Van Heerden: "I mean nobody knew. The Corps of Engineers knew. FEMA knew. None of us knew."

I could not get the White House gang to respond to the charges.

That leaves the big, big question: WHY? Why on earth would the White House not tell the state to get the remaining folks out of there?

The answer: cost. Political and financial cost. A hurricane is an act of God - but a catastrophic failure of the levees is a act of Bush. That is, under law dating back to 1935, a breech of the federal levee system makes the damage - and the deaths - a federal responsibility. That means, as van Heeden points out, that "these people must be compensated."

The federal government, by law, must build and maintain the Mississippi levees to withstand known dangers - or pay the price when they fail.

Indeed, that was the rule applied in the storms that hit Westhampton Dunes, New York, in 1992. There, when federal sea barriers failed, the flood waters wiped away 190 homes. The feds rebuilt them from the public treasury. But these were not just any homes. They are worth an average of $3 million apiece - the summer homes of movie stars and celebrity speculators.

There were no movie stars floating face down in the Lower Ninth Ward nor in Lakeview nor in St. Bernard Parish. For the 'luvvies' of Westhampton Dunes, the federal government even trucked in sand to replace the beaches. But for New Orleans' survivors, there's the aluminum gulag of FEMA trailer parks. Today, two years later, 89,000 families still live in this mobile home Guantanamo - with no plan whatsoever for their return.

And what was the effect of the White House's self-serving delay?

I spoke with van Heerden in his university office. The computer model of the hurricane flashed quietly as I waited for him to answer. Then he said, "Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line."

They could have survived Hurricane Katrina. But they got no mercy from Hurricane George.

The most religious countries seem to be the most dangerous

A fascinating survey of studies of atheism around the world takes great pains to stress the difficulties of surveying such a personal thing as religious beliefs. But even allowing for high levels of uncertainty it finds striking correlations between such beliefs and the cultural health of countries.

In sum, countries marked by high rates of organic atheism are among the most societally healthy on earth, while societies characterized by non-existent rates of organic atheism are among the most destitute. Nations marked by high degrees of organic atheism tend to have among the lowest homicide rates, infant mortality rates, poverty rates, and illiteracy rates, and among the highest levels of wealth, life expectancy, educational attainment, and gender equality in the world. The only indicator of societal health mentioned above in which religious countries fared better than irreligious countries was suicide.

Of course, it is essential to clearly state that I am in no way arguing that high levels of organic atheism cause societal health or that low levels of organic atheism cause societal ills such as poverty or illiteracy. If anything, the opposite argument should be made: societal health causes widespread atheism, and societal insecurity causes widespread belief in God, as discussed by Norris and Inglehart (2004) above.

The causes of the glaring differences in societal well being among the world’s rich and poor nations are numerous (Diamond, 1999; Landes, 1999). Certainly among them include the birth and development of the industrial revolution, the lingering residue of colonialism and international conquests, and international trade policies that heavily favor the interests of wealthy/first world nations and their multi-national corporations over the interests of developing/third world nations. Again, to suggest that widespread belief or non-belief in God is the cause of societal health or societal pathology is not my intention. Rather, I am simply seeking to clearly establish that high degrees of non-belief in God in a given society clearly do not result in societal ruin, and high levels of belief in God do not ensure societal well-being. This is an important fact to stress because politically-active theists often equate atheism with crime, immorality, and societal disintegration. From Muslim fundamentalists in Iran to Christian fundamentalists in Indiana, the argument is loudly trumpeted that belief in God is “good for society” – an ultimate panacea -- while rejection of the belief in God is bad for society. The above discussion reveals that this thesis is baldly incorrect.

Fed Bends Rules to Help Two Big Banks

from Truthout:

By Peter Eavis
Fortune

Friday 24 August 2007

If the Federal Reserve is waiving a fundamental principle in banking regulation, the credit crunch must still be sapping the strength of America's biggest banks. Fortune's Peter Eavis documents an unusual Fed move.

New York - In a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation's largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed this week to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup and Bank of America, according to documents posted Friday on the Fed's web site.

The Aug. 20 letters from the Fed to Citigroup and Bank of America state that the Fed, which regulates large parts of the U.S. financial system, has agreed to exempt both banks from rules that effectively limit the amount of lending that their federally-insured banks can do with their brokerage affiliates. The exemption, which is temporary, means, for example, that Citigroup's Citibank entity can substantially increase funding to Citigroup Global Markets, its brokerage subsidiary. Citigroup and Bank of America requested the exemptions, according to the letters, to provide liquidity to those holding mortgage loans, mortgage-backed securities, and other securities.

This unusual move by the Fed shows that the largest Wall Street firms are continuing to have problems funding operations during the current market difficulties, according to banking industry skeptics. The Fed's move appears to support the view that even the biggest brokerages have been caught off guard by the credit crunch and don't have financing to deal with the resulting dislocation in the markets. The opposing, less negative view is that the Fed has taken this step merely to increase the speed with which the funds recently borrowed at the Fed's discount window can flow through to the bond markets, where the mortgage mess has caused a drying up of liquidity.

On Wednesday, Citibank and Bank of America said that they and two other banks accessed $500 million in 30-day financing at the discount window. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment. Bank of America dismissed the notion that Banc of America Securities is not well positioned to fund operations without help from the federally insured bank. "This is just a technicality to allow us to use our regular channels of business with funds from the Fed's discount window," says Bob Stickler, spokesperson for Bank of America. "We have no current plans to use the discount window beyond the $500 million announced earlier this week."

There is a good chance that other large banks, like J.P. Morgan, have been granted similar exemptions. The Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan didn't immediately comment.

The regulations in question effectively limit a bank's funding exposure to an affiliate to 10% of the bank's capital. But the Fed has allowed Citibank and Bank of America to blow through that level. Citigroup and Bank of America are able to lend up to $25 billion apiece under this exemption, according to the Fed. If Citibank used the full amount, "that represents about 30% of Citibank's total regulatory capital, which is no small exemption," says Charlie Peabody, banks analyst at Portales Partners.

The Fed says that it made the exemption in the public interest, because it allows Citibank to get liquidity to the brokerage in "the most rapid and cost-effective manner possible."

So, how serious is this rule-bending? Very. One of the central tenets of banking regulation is that banks with federally insured deposits should never be over-exposed to brokerage subsidiaries; indeed, for decades financial institutions were legally required to keep the two units completely separate. This move by the Fed eats away at the principle.

Sure, the temporary nature of the move makes it look slightly less serious, but the Fed didn't give a date in the letter for when this exemption will end. In addition, the sheer size of the potential lending capacity at Citigroup and Bank of America - $25 billion each - is a cause for unease.

Indeed, this move to exempt Citigroup casts a whole new light on the discount window borrowing that was revealed earlier this week. At the time, the gloss put on the discount window advances was that they were orderly and almost symbolic in nature. But if that were the case, why the need to use these exemptions to rush the funds to the brokerages?

Expect the discount window borrowings to become a key part of the Fed's recovery strategy for the financial system. The Fed's exemption will almost certainly force its regulatory arm to sharpen its oversight of banks' balance sheets, which means banks will almost certainly have to mark down asset values to appropriate levels a lot faster now. That's because there is no way that the Fed is going to allow easier funding to lead to a further propping up of asset prices.

Don't forget: The Federal Reserve is in crisis management at the moment. However, it doesn't want to show any signs of panic. That means no rushed cuts in interest rates. It also means that it wants banks to quickly take the big charges that will inevitably come from holding toxic debt securities. And it will do all it can behind the scenes to work with the banks to help them get through this upheaval. But waiving one of the most important banking regulations can only add nervousness to the market. And that's what the Fed did Monday in these disturbing letters to the nation's two largest banks.

Healdsburg Guitar Fesival—and life without DSL, part II

A few weeks back, our DSL modem died, and we were without broadband for a week. Now another glitch has come up, and now for another week we are without DSL. With maddening slowness, webpages slowly form, line by line, graphic by graphic.

I suspect my posting will be sparse for the next week.

And so much has been going on. I accepted a spur of the moment invitation from local guitarist, singer and friend Gary Grubb to accompany him to the semi-annual Healdsburg Guitar Festival. We saw hundreds of the most beautiful guitars in the world, as well as their luthiers. I also saw the most amazing display of JAZZ GUITARING I've ever experienced, and I've seen a lot of all-time great jazz guitarists, alone and in duos, including Barney Kessel, Joe Pass, Herb Ellis, and Tuck Andress. But I have to say Bruce Foreman and Julian Lage are now at the top of my list. They displayed more skill and sheer joy in a half hour impromptu performance than I would have thought possible. It felt like a milestone in the history of jazz. Gary and I were in a mind-boggled daze all the way back to Petaluma.

Maybe I just don't get out much and am too easily impressed.

I've also met some more wonderful musicians lately, and had the pleasure of playing with some of them. I am a lucky guy.

Cindy's Report from Amman

I've "bolded" what I think is a key but little-recognized bit of information in the letter below:

Cindy Sheehan from Amman - August 18, 2007

“Inshallah”

"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. - "Chronicle of Young Satan" Mark Twain"

The above quote from Mark Twain is how things have always been throughout the ages and throughout our American experience. These sentiments allowed an entire native population to be virtually wiped out and for black Africans to be enslaved for generations. Who cares if 600,000 Filipinos were wiped out during the Spanish-American War to “liberate” them from Spain, but to really have a coaling station for our Navy, or hundreds of thousands of Japanese slaughtered by the evil h-bomb when those people weren’t even white, Christian Americans? Now this slimy rationale is allowing for the decimation of the Iraqi people and we have killed a million during this war to plant permanent bases there as we have permanent military facilities in Japan and the Philippines to this day.

Our small peace delegation that traveled here to Amman, Jordan to meet with refugees and other prominent Iraqis, like physicians and parliamentarians, have been humbled that these oppressed people would turn to us, their oppressors, for help. That they would trust us enough to know that we will help them says a lot about the Iraqi character and just how desperate they are!

Everyone that we have met stabs me in the heart again. We listen to their stories and we apologize on behalf of our country and they all, without fail, look at us with weary smiles filled with resignation of their fate and say: “inshallah” or “If God wills it.” I wish I had that simple faith, but I can’t believe that any God, except George’s God of hatred, destruction, greed, and murder would “will” what is going on here in the Middle East.

I have already written about Bethena whose body and life were torn apart by an American mortar. When we promised to help her, her response was, “Inshallah.”

I met a woman at a hospital yesterday who was kidnapped, tortured and held for a three hundred thousand dollar ransom. When I told her we were trying to help get a hospital for Iraqi people, run by Iraqis, here in Amman, she quietly said: “inshallah,” through her tears.

We have spent a lot of time with an Iraqi parliamentarian whose 10 cousins were slaughtered after “Hamad” had exposed a secret Shi’a prison that imprisoned, tortured, and killed Sunni. His story is on a documentary called “Death Squads.” When I saw the footage of the carnage where his cousins were killed I looked over at him in shock, and you guessed it, he whispered: “inshallah,” to me.

Our group had a meeting in a Jordanian hospital that is allowing Iraqi doctors to work and help the refugees. The doctors explained to us how, if they had their own 50-bed hospital, they could treat the Iraqi refugees here in Amman at about 40% of the cost of what the Jordanian hospital charges the refugees. The doctors all had horror stories of family members being killed, raped, dismembered, displaced and terrorized. We listened to them vent and explained to them that we were truly sorry and that’s why we are here, to help. “Inshallah.”

The most touching meeting at the hospital was by a prominent Iraqi sheikh who had brought another sheikh of an opposite sect to the hospital after he had survived an assassination attempt. The wounded sheikh lie on the hospital bed while the other sheikh stood guard over him. The doctors brought us into the room to dispel the myth of any prior sectarian strife. The Iraqis wanted to assure us that the violence between Iraqis is caused and encouraged by the Americans who want Iraqis fighting each other to create this chaos that allows America to steal their oil and otherwise destroy their country. The sheikh told me that he was sorry about Casey, but he has lost 8 family members and many more dozens of members of his tribe. He encouraged us Americans to rise up against our country and force our government to end the occupation. I told him that we have been trying very hard, but we will try harder. He looked skeptical, because he knows the will of the American public is not to rise up against our government, and he had that same hopeless look on his face that we have encountered repeatedly, but he bit his tongue and said: “Inshallah.”

As we were leaving the hospital, one of the doctors grabbed my hand and also told me that he was sorry about Casey. In a quiet voice, he told me that even though it is sad for me to have lost a son that it was so that I could lead America towards peace and use my sorrow to help the people of Iraq, “inshallah.” I lost my faith after Casey was killed and it is so profound to witness the faith of the Iraqi people when their country has been decimated for no reason, their national treasures and antiquities destroyed or defiled by barbaric acts, one million people dead, six million people displaced, and so many wounded and ill that can’t access medical care. This trip has been so difficult for us as people with hearts, but it has also reminded me how fortunate we are to live in a country that has been almost virtually free from war on our soil for about 150 years, but also so angry that we allow it to happen to other peoples on their land on an almost continuing basis. Also, to think that anything is going to change if a Democrat gets into office is naïve. Bill Clinton is a Democrat who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis more than George. Throughout US History political parties have interchanged the White House and NOTHING has ever changed. The fascist power elite will always use their puppet in the White House to kill other people for their benefit and profit.

The American military has not been victorious in Iraq and we won’t be as long as we are occupying foreign lands. That is a given. If we allow the occupation to continue for a decade, our way of life, as we know it, will die as the Soviet Union did after their decade long farce in Afghanistan. What we are allowing our government to do in the Middle East dishonors and endangers us all. Like the parliamentarian from the city that was totally shattered by the Marines, Falluja, told me: “You Americans are also being held hostage by your government,” and he is right.

As the sheikh told me: We must rise up. We must assert our need for peace with justice, not only to save our troops who are in harm’s way for Halliburton, et al, but for the dear people of Iraq who never asked for the US to “liberate” them. Our governments don’t care about them, or us, so we must care about each other.

Since this is a piece about faith, I would like to close with a prayer, also from Mark Twain:

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale form of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow
with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen."

—The War Prayer.

Please, God, may it never be this way again.

"Inshallah."

Atlantic Current Apparently is Holding Its Own

and now we know what a Sverdrup is—

from Physorg.com

In March 2004, the scientists deployed an instrument array across the Atlantic at 26°N from the Saharan coast of Africa to the Bahamas. Since then, the instruments have provided a continuous record of the temperature, salinity and density of the ocean. In combination with current measurements of the Gulf Stream in the Straits of Florida (provided by scientists from AOML) and satellite measurements of the wind-driven flow across 26°N, the MOC [Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation] has been calculated on a daily basis.

The publications in Science show that the remarkable instrument array is working effectively and is bringing in some surprising results. The full range of variability measured in the Atlantic MOC is large. It can range from as little as 4 Sverdrups to as much as 35 Sverdrups. (A Sverdrup is a measure of ocean flow, with one Sverdrup equivalent to one million tonnes of water a second.) The year–long average of the MOC calculates at around 19 Sverdrups, in agreement with earlier estimates.
Prof. Marotzke explains, “There is no indication of an MOC slowdown. And the large fluctuations explain why previously it was diagnosed that a slowdown had already happened. By chance, measurements were taken at a time when the MOC happened to be quite weak.”

With the instrument array it is feasible to monitor the annual average MOC to a resolution of about 1.5 Sverdrups, or about 8 percent of the mean value. This would be sufficient to detect any large, abrupt changes in the circulation, critical to planning for future climate change.

Feinstein conflict of intrest story makes Project Censored

from the Bohemian:

The Byrne Report

DiFi Backlash

By Peter Byrne

I am pleased to announce that my national exposé of Sen. Dianne Feinstein's conflict of interest has been selected as one of the 25 most underreported stories in 2006-2007 by Project Censored, headquartered at Sonoma State University. I cherish this award because it means I am doing my job as an investigative reporter. Stories that the mainstream media ignore often reveal truths about our system of governance that editors at corporate daily newspapers work overtime to cover up.

In this case, however, the cover-up was abetted by the editor and publisher of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuval, after The Nation's nonprofit investigative fund had bankrolled my investigation of Feinstein. The story was headed for the cover of that weekly magazine shortly before the 2006 elections when vanden Heuval, a wealthy Democratic Party partisan, spiked it. Subsequently, vanden Heuval wrote an editorial praising women leaders of the newly empowered Democratic Party, mentioning Feinstein on a positive note.

In the kill memo, The Nation's investigative editor, Bob Moser, who had worked closely with me on the project, wrote that I had done a "solid job," but that the magazine liked to have a political "impact," and since Feinstein was "not facing a strong challenge for re-election," they were not going to print the story.

Moser claimed the story had no "smoking gun," which totally amazes me, since I had reported that Michael R. Klein, the vice chairman of Perini Corp., a company owned by Feinstein's husband, Richard C. Blum, regularly gave Feinstein lists of Perini projects impacted by Senate legislation. As chairwoman of the MILCON appropriations subcommittee, Feinstein regularly vetted and approved Perini's military construction projects. That gun wasn't smoking; it was on fire!

Fortunately, the Bohemian and its sister newspapers in San Jose and Santa Cruz had the guts to print the Feinstein story ("Senator Warbucks," Jan. 24). I wrote three follow-ups: a look at her husband Richard C. Blum's war-contracting business partner, Michael R. Klein, and the nonprofit Sunlight Foundation he set up last year with a $3.5 million donation ("Daddy Kleinbucks," Jan. 31); an exposé of Blum's conflict of interest as a regent of the University of California ("Blum Rap," Feb. 28); and a news column on the senator's abrupt resignation from the Appropriations Military Construction subcommittee, where she committed her unethical behavior ("Feinstein Resigns," March 14).

In March, left- and right-wing bloggers by the thousands started calling for a Congressional investigation of Feinstein. Michael Savage and Rush Limbaugh did radio segments on my findings. Because I do not associate with demagogues, I declined to appear on their shows. Fox's Bill O'Reilly invited me to talk about Feinstein on his show, but uninvited me after I promised that the first sentence out of my mouth would cast Feinstein as a neoconservative war profiteer just like him and his boss Rupert Murdoch.

As the storm of conservative outrage intensified, political reporter Joe Conason of the Nation Institute telephoned and asked to have the sentence thanking the Nation Institute for its funding removed from my stories because, he said, vanden Heuval did not want The Nation brand to be positively associated with Limbaugh. I informed Conason that I am required to credit the Nation Institute under the terms of our contract, period.

After the stories appeared, my editors and I received a stream of threatening e-mails from Klein, who until recently was a partner in the powerful WilmerHale law firm. But since Klein could show no errors of fact in my reporting, we declined his request for a retraction. Soon, the story crested a Google wave of bloggers wondering why the mainstream media was ignoring the Feinstein scandal. In April, two dozen daily newspapers throughout the United States ran a McClatchy wire service article about the blogger tempest. The story observed that no one had found any factual faults in my reporting, but it did not report the details of Feinstein's conflict of interest.

Consequently, without calling me for comment or finding any errors in my reportage, the liberal group Media Matters attacked me on its website as being a right-wing pawn. I parried Media Matters' malicious rant with hard facts and the authors were compelled to retract substantial errors of their own.

In April, Code Pink held a demonstration in front of Feinstein's San Francisco mansion, demanding that she return war profits to the Iraqi people. And on April 30, The Hill newspaper in Washington, D.C., ran an op-ed by a conservative pundit quoting from my story and (unfairly) comparing Feinstein to convicted felon and former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Shortly thereafter, without contacting me for comment, an employee of the Sunlight Foundation posted a "critique" of my story on the foundation's website that was loaded with personal insults but contained no factual substance. Not coincidentally, Feinstein's press office distributes, upon request, an almost identically worded "rebuttal," which, while citing no factual errors in my reportage, insults my personal integrity. Such "press" additionally does not address the damning fact that after reviewing the results of my investigation, four nonpartisan D.C.-based ethics experts declared that the senator had a serious conflict of interest.

In my original story, I quoted Jennifer Gore, the spokesperson for the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) in Washington, D.C. For attribution to POGO's executive director, Gore said, "The paper trail showing Sen. Feinstein's conflict of interest is irrefutable." But Gore's comment was made before I found out about Klein's role. It turns out that POGO receives funding from the Sunlight Foundation. After my article appeared with the damning information about Klein, Gore claimed that she had not said "irrefutable."

(I offered to give her a copy of the tape recording of our 90-minute interview in which she indisputably uses "irrefutable" and goes on at great length about the egregiousness of Feinstein's ethics, but she declined my offer.)

On July 1, the Copley News Service reported on the fallout from my story. Seduced by the promise of mainstream coverage for this important story, I walked Copley reporter Marcus Stern through my research document by document. But instead of reporting on Feinstein's failure to recuse herself from acting on matters that substantially affected her personal wealth, Stern framed his piece in accordance with the spin coming out of Feinstein's office: that I had accused the senator of feloniously steering contracts to Perini and URS.

That is not what I reported; that is a straw issue created by public-relations experts to confuse people about what was really reported. Somehow, Stern failed to mention Klein's role in the ethical lapse. Incredibly, Stern concluded that the public record is so "opaque" that "there is little the public can do but trust Feinstein when she denies helping her husband's companies." In fact, the record is anything but opaque.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch, agrees. His national organization, which files lawsuits regarding governmental ethic violations, has mounted its own investigation of Feinstein's conduct using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). It takes time and lawyers to pry FOIA documents out of the federal bureaucracy--it is not generally inclined to open its files to the public. I did not go that route in my investigation, relying on more easily accessible public records.

I have suggested that Fitton's forensic specialists compare the defense contracts that Blum's companies received through the military construction appropriations process with the forms that the defense department submitted to Feinstein's MILCON subcommittee as budget justifications. These documents lay out the details of every Perini and URS project that Feinstein approved as chairperson or ranking member of MILCON, and should leave little doubt about what the senator and her MILCON staffers knew and when they knew it.

But I am not going to wager a penny that the mainstream media will give a damn.

Contact Peter Byrne or send a letter to the editor about this story.

Water, the new Oil

a sobering thought from Physorg.com.

Water for biofuels or for food: it's one or the other

A farmer in Batavia, Illinois plants corn in his fields, May 2007.

Biofuels, hailed by many as the green solution to offset a coming oil shortage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, are not a cure-all solution, experts at a water conference in Stockholm warned this week.

Biofuels, which are made from crops, require huge amounts of water, a resource that is already in short supply in many parts of the world. Bioenergy could thus end up diverting water resources desperately needed for food crops.

"When governments and companies are discussing biofuel solutions, I think water issues are not addressed enough," Johan Kuylenstierna, director of the World Water Week conference, told AFP.

The annual gathering is being attended by some 2,500 water experts from around the world.

In the future "food production will need to increase, water consumption will increase dramatically in the agriculture sector and biofuels will increase. This doesn't add up for the water perspective," Kuylenstierna added.

"Where will the water to grow the food needed to feed a growing population come from if more and more water is diverted to crops for biofuels production?" asked Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) spokesman David Trouba.

According to SIWI, in 2050, the amount of additional water needed for bioenergy production will be equivalent to the amount required by the agricultural sector to feed the world properly.

"Biofuels are not 'the' solution, but one of the solutions," Kuylenstierna stressed.

Meanwhile Sunita Narain, the head of the Centre for Science and Environment in India and a prominent expert at the Stockholm conference, said biofuels were "good as an idea, bad in practice."

The main priority should not be how to develop biofuels, but rather how to put a halt to society's increasing fuel consumption, she insisted.

She said it was "asinine" to believe that the world would be able to continue to consume as much biofuel in the future as it does fossil fuel today.

"If you want to use water for it (biofuel production), you must cut down on the consumption of biofuels," she said, suggesting that ethanol be used for collective transport such as buses to reduce the number of cars on the road.

In addition to the water shortage issue, experts said they also feared that large-scale biofuel production would lead to a sharp rise in the price of food staples.

"Biofuel production could be a great competitor to food production. Global food prices could increase," Kuylenstierna explained.

That thought was echoed by Narain, who criticised price pressure on foodstuffs and cited the case of the recent "tortilla war" in the United States.

An increase in US production of ethanol, made of maize, in early 2007 led to a rise in the price of the crop on the international market, which in turn prompted a surge in the price of tortillas, a corn-based bread that is a staple among Mexicans.

The United States is investing heavily in developing its ethanol production, which now accounts for five percent of fuel volumes sold in the country.

For 95 litres of pure ethanol, some 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of maize are needed, or the equivalent of enough calories to feed a person for an entire year, SIWI noted.

Ravi Batra on Greenspan Economics

I just heard Ravi Batra on Thom Hartmann's show. His 2005 book "Greenspan's Fraud," which I'd never heard of until now, sounds like a good source for an explanations what's going on in the finanacial markets. (Hartmann's review of the book is here, on Buzzflash.) I searched and found this old interview from Southern Methodist University, where Batra is a professor of economics.

Q&A With Ravi Batra

SMU expert talks about Greenspan's Fraud

Additional background:

Greenspan's Fraud by Ravi Batra

Greenspan timeline

People are talking: Reviews

About Ravi Batra

You are highly critical of Greenspan and yet the general impression of Greenspan throughout his career has been generally positive. How has he managed to maintain a golden image for two decades?

After becoming Fed chairman Greenspan deftly handled several economic crises, including the 1987 stock market crash, the Mexican crisis of 1995, the Asian crisis of 1997, and the Russian default crisis of 1998. He applied the same remedy to each case—a grant of IMF loans to the afflicted countries. But people forgot that most of these crises were created by his own monetary and trade policies. In any case, his remedy failed to avert the global stock-market crash of 2000-2001 that started before the 9/11 massacre. Still, investors fondly remember Greenspan for staying calm in turbulent times.

Why do you think Greenspan was under-qualified for his position as chairman of the Federal Reserve and how did he overcome his shortcomings to get the job?

Greenspan had no banking experience when he became Fed chairman. He was not an accomplished economist either. But he did have a lot of influential friends in the White House. In 1974, he became the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers with incomplete knowledge of economics, because he did not even have a Ph.D. at the time. But once in government, he came to know many well-known politicians who made a case for his eventual appointment as the Fed chairman.

What is the most serious charge you make against Greenspan?

He helped raise the payroll tax in 1983 in order to cut the Reagan budget deficit but sold his plan to the public as Social Security reform. No wonder there is no cash in the Social Security Trust Fund today. In the process he generated a regressive tax system which was copied around the world, and which eventually lowered GDP growth in the United States and sharply raised unemployment in Western Europe, including Germany, France and Italy.

What new evidence did you find to make this claim?

There is a lot of new evidence summarized in Table 2.1 of Chapter 2 in Greenspan’s Fraud: How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy.

You say our standard of living is lower than it was before Greenspan’s tenure, and yet he has convinced most people of the opposite. How can this be the case?

Greenspan’s measure of the living standard is real per-capita GDP or income. But this is an average figure, which aggregates the enormous incomes of a small minority of people with the meager ones of working Americans. The truth is that the purchasing power of the wages of production workers, who are as much as 80 percent of the workforce, has declined in the Greenspan era, which starts from 1981, when the income tax rate was reduced sharply.

Why do you think Greenspan is partly to blame for the market euphoria of the 1990s that led to recession?

Greenspan’s fault was his poor understanding of economics. He thought that the productivity jump resulting from the adoption of information technology generated high profits, which lubricate stock markets. But he forgot that when wages fail to keep pace with productivity, then the economy needs explosive debt growth to maintain profit growth. But debt growth cannot increase forever; so a stock market crash was inevitable. That is why all speculative bubbles pop in the end.

What are Greenspan’s motives in supporting Bush’s current proposed reforms of Social Security and how can we expect this major news story to unfold?

He wants to stay on as the Fed’s interim chairman, which all depends on President Bush.

Why would Greenspan create policies that are preferable to big business at the expense of the average citizen and how has he done so?

Greenspan realized early on that keeping Wall Street happy was the key to a Fed chairman’s long tenure. So he did whatever was necessary to please his constituency of big business, and in turn, was rewarded with several reappointments, even when politicians were unhappy with his policies. He even protected the profits of big speculators from their own mistakes by bailing out the crisis-prone countries. His policy of financial deregulation led to the deindustrialization of America. This, in turn, hurt the real wages of the vast majority of working Americans and generated the mushrooming trade deficit. By now things are so bad that the country needs a world subsidy of $2 billion per day to stay afloat.

Think about that for a moment. $2 billion a day. That's about $700 billion a year. And that was 2 years ago—I can't even imagine how much it must be by now.
How much do we spend on foreign aid? Latest estimate I could find was about $80 billion a year in 2004, of which about half was "phantom aid" which didn't really help. So, consider. The net result is that the nations of the world have been financing US follies at home and around the world. At least until now.

Then consider one of those follies—the war in Iraq. It's pretty obvious that one of the main geopolitical reasons for this "war on terror" is to rein in China, by establishing bases near it and controlling its access to oil.

As a result of nearly everything in WalMart being built in China, I've heard that China holds $1.3 trillion in US dollars. Until now all China could do with these dollars is buy US treasuries. How long do you think China will continue to fund US attempts to threaten it?

Ok. On with the interview:

What policy reforms do you recommend that would be more protective of the interests of the average citizen?

In Greenspan’s Fraud I have shown that GDP and employment growth were much higher during the 1950s and the 1960s than between 1981 to 2004.We disregard the 1970s which were distorted by giant oil prices. My recommendation is that we go back to the policies that worked wonders in those earlier decades. These policies called for high income and corporate tax rates, a high minimum wage, but low Social Security tax rates. Creating a surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund through giant payroll taxes was a Greenspan-devised ponzi scheme that worked perfectly for its covert purpose, which was to preserve the pro-wealthy Reagan tax cuts and, subsequently, the Bush tax cuts.

What do you think will happen when Greenspan steps down in 2006 and how should investors prepare?

I am not sure if he will step down in 2006, because if President Bush fails to appoint anyone else as Fed chairman then Greenspan can legally stay on as an interim chairman until 2008. Currently, Greenspan is busy supporting Bush’s ventures to curry favor with the president. This has been the chairman’s modus operandi all along, namely to court those who are crucial to his position as the head of the Fed.

If Greenspan indeed steps down, it will turn out to be a non-event. The stock markets will remain sluggish for the entire decade, unless Greenomics is abandoned and new reforms are introduced.

What might we expect from a new Fed chairman and how could that change our current economy?

He or she is likely to be a Greenspan clone, because the maestro represents a consensus view of popular economics.

Inflation? what inflation?

From Truthout:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its June inflation report that egg prices are 19.5 percent higher than they were in June 2006. Over the same period, according to the department's consumer price index, whole milk was up 13.3 percent; fresh chicken 10 percent; navel oranges 19.8 percent; apples 11.7 percent. Dried beans were up 11.5 percent, and white bread just missed double-digit growth, rising by 9.6 percent.

These numbers get lost in the broader inflation rate for all goods and services, which measured 2.7 for the same 12-month period. Across the economy, rising food prices were offset by falling prices for things bought at the mall: computers, cameras, clothing and shoes.

"All of that stuff is going down in price, but prices for gasoline have gotten higher, and food prices have gone up," said Mark Vitner, a senior economist for Wachovia, a large national bank based in Charlotte, N.C.

People also go to the mall a lot less than they go to the grocery store, so they're constantly reminded that dietary staples are up sharply.

Why are food prices rising?

It's partly because of corn prices, driven up by congressional mandates for ethanol production, which have reduced the amount of corn available for animal feed. It's also because of tougher immigration enforcement and a late spring freeze, which have made farm laborers scarcer and damaged fruit and vegetable crops, respectively. And it's because of higher diesel fuel costs to run tractors and attractive foreign markets that take U.S. production.

1 Gigawatt Mag-Lev Windturbines from China—with a return on investment of 12 months!!??

I can't stop. Here's one more from gizmag.com:

July 31, 2007 — Sustainable generation of electric power is the key to realizing the vision of a world free from dependency on fossil fuels – the challenge is to ramp up the production of electricity to a level that can begin to approach the energy we get from burning coal and oil, without the perceived dangers of going nuclear. The combined threats of Peak Oil and global warming are spurring science into a furious new age of innovation. . . . almost daily breakthroughs in solar energy capture, battery technology and tidal energy harvesting, but the biggest contribution to green power thus far is coming from wind farming. The common windmill design used to capitalize on air currents, while centuries old, operates at around 1% efficiency in terms of the power it harvests from the wind, due to the deflective blade design and friction losses. But a new technology unveiled last year in China seeks to dramatically boost the output of wind-driven generators by using the virtually frictionless advantages of magnetically levitated turbines. Since there’s virtually no touching of moving parts, the MagLev wind turbine requires far less servicing than a traditional windmill – which dramatically lowers the operating costs to under five U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour. If projections are accurate, giant 1-gigawatt versions of these machines could have a 12-month ROI - a scenario sure to catch the eye of investors worldwide.

Magnetic levitation uses the repelling properties of magnets to lift an object off the ground. In this case, the object is a wind-harvesting fan. The benefit of having it floating in midair is that it cuts down on the friction that causes so much inefficiency in the traditional windmill-style wind energy harvester we see dotting our coastlines. Friction is also the key factor necessitating frequent maintenance of windmill turbines, adding considerably to the cost of running them.

Without rotational friction to overcome, a wind turbine generator can begin to harvest power from air speeds as low as 1.5 meters per second.

Chinese researchers unveiled a prototype MagLev wind generator device at the Wind Power Asia exhibition in June 2006. The devices were hailed as a huge breakthrough in a vast and spread-out country that has more than 70 million households with no electricity. One innovative possible use could be to harvest wind energy from passing cars on freeways to power the roadside lighting.

American company Maglev Wind Turbine Technologies believes that scale is the answer and has released plans for a massive-scale installation. Pointing out that the low power outputs of current windmill units render them cost-ineffective to install and repair, the company proposes the building of giant 1-gigawatt units, each the size of an office building.

The company proposes that a one-unit wind farm of such scale would be less than half the price of windmill generatorsof equivalent output - it would last longer, be cheaper to build and run and therefore result in higher profits. In ideal conditions such a plant could have a power output similar to a nuclear power station and a 12-month return on investment.

Finally! The Ion-Propelled, Remotely-Powered Jet Pack!

this and the following item from a site I just discovered, gizmag.com:

Simple ion-propulsion craft, such as those shown in these videos, can be easily built and are thus often a popular science fair project for students.

The PFS patent adds a few key elements to this well-established technology; most importantly a new design for the capacitative thrust plates that emit and receive the electrical charges, and a system that pre-conditions the air between and around the plates to maximize thrust. The company also plan to remove the heavy power pack from the vehicle and "broadcast" pulses of DC power to the vehicle from ground stations based on theories from Nikola Tesla, the famous inventor and physicist responsible for the AC power system in the early 20th century.

PFS claim their ion-propulsion personal flight vehicles will be safer than helicopters or rockets, with their massive moving parts and explosive gases respectively. Ion propulsion, however, carries its own set of risks - particularly an elevated risk of throat and lung cancer if an individual is to breathe in too much ionized air - although this can be mitigated through a number of techniques.

[. . .]

The Inventor PFS is a start-up by Scott Redmond, a San Francisco-based tech executive and self-described "venture solutionist." While nobody talks his abilities and achievements up quite like Redmond's own webpage ("superhero-like ability" is quite a statement!), he is unquestionably an overachiever.

His recent projects have been focused on green, sustainable and new energy, including sustainable and self-powered homes like his NowHouse demo home, various electric vehicles and hydrogen power patents. He's also been active in virtual reality and a host of other areas. Clearly a brilliant man, Redmond suffers from a strange form of dyslexia that leaves him unable to aurally process numbers, sequences, times or time spans. to overcome this obstacle he developed a visual system of mathematics he calls "organic math" which has clearly been more than sufficient for him.

the Spy Phone

Sure, you've heard about it. You've read about it. Well, here it is — software that turns any phone into a Spy Phone. You'll never feel quite so secure about that phone in your pocket again...

from Spy-Phone.com:

Product Description

SpyPhone	Spy Phone allows the user to call the target phone (with the installed software) which will result in the phone answering in ghost mode, i.e. answers at zero ring, without lights, call notifications and log creation. No visual or physical changes can be noticed on the target phone. more...
Call Interceptor	Call Interceptor allows the user to call the target phone (with the installed software) which will result in the phone answering in ghost mode (if no calls are active on the target phone), or listen to the conversations of the incoming or outgoing calls (if calls are active on the target phone). The calls will be answered at zero ring, without lights, call notifications and log creation. No visual or physical changes can be noticed on the target phone. more...
SMS Interceptor	SMS Interceptor instantly catches all incoming and outgoing SMS on the target device (where the software is installed) and forwards them silently to the pre-defined number. SMS forwarder has been built via a special in-built SMS Server Engine which assures reliability of the software. more...
Location by SMS	Location by SMS enables the user from the pre-defined number to send an SMS to the target phone (where the software is installed) and get the of the target phone. more...

Bogus BushCo Econonics

from Counterpunch:

Paul Craig Roberts:August 9, 2007

Twenty-four hours after I reported China’s announcement that China, not the Federal Reserve, controls US interest rates by its decision to purchase, hold, or dump US Treasury bonds, the news of the announcement appeared in sanitized and unthreatening form in a few US news sources.

The Washington Post found an economics professor at the University of Wisconsin to provide reassurances that it was “not really a credible threat” that China would intervene in currency or bond markets in any way that could hurt the dollar’s value or raise US interest rates, because China would hurt its own pocketbook by such actions.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, just back from Beijing, where he gave China orders to raise the value of the Chinese yuan “without delay,” dismissed the Chinese announcement as “frankly absurd.”

Both the professor and the Treasury Secretary are greatly mistaken.

[. . .]

To understand the shortcomings of the statements by the Wisconsin professor and Treasury Secretary Paulson, consider that if China were to increase the value of the yuan by 30 percent, the value of China’s dollar holdings would decline by 30 percent. It would have the same effect on China’s pocketbook as dumping dollars and Treasuries in the markets.

Consider also, that as revaluation causes the yuan to move up in relation to the dollar (the reserve currency), it also causes the yuan to move up against every other traded currency. Thus, the Chinese cannot revalue as Paulson has ordered without making Chinese goods more expensive not merely to Americans but everywhere.

Compare this result with China dumping dollars. With the yuan pegged to the dollar, China can dump dollars without altering the exchange rate between the yuan and the dollar. As the dollar falls, the yuan falls with it. Goods and services produced in China do not become more expensive to Americans, and they become cheaper elsewhere. By dumping dollars, China expands its entry into other markets and accumulates more foreign currencies from trade surpluses.

Now consider the non-financial costs to China’s self-image and rising prestige of permitting the US government to set the value of its currency. America’s problems are of its own making, not China’s. A rising power such as China is likely to prove a reluctant scapegoat for America’s decades of abuse of its reserve currency status.

Economists and government officials believe that a rise in consumer prices by 30 per cent is good if it results from yuan revaluation, but that it would be terrible, even beyond the pale, if the same 30 percent rise in consumer prices resulted from a tariff put on goods made in China. The hard pressed American consumer would be hit equally hard either way. It is paradoxical that Washington is putting pressure on China to raise US consumer prices, while blaming China for harming Americans. As is usually the case, the harm we suffer is inflicted by Washington.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com