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Sunday, August 31st, 2008
Volume 7, No. 15
5 Articles, 19 Pages
1. A Master-Slave Society
2. Bush Has No Right To Lecture About Human Rights
3. The Outrage in Your Credit Card's Fine Print
4. Musharraf Out, Like Nixon; Bush Still in, Like Flynn
5. The Real State of The Economy
1. A MASTER-SLAVE SOCIETY
(Democrats in Denver Should Skip One of Their Parties and Read the American Monetary Act)
BY
RICHARD C. COOK
How are things going at the Democratic Party National Convention in Denver this week?
Are they talking about the fact that the Western world is run by an international financial elite headquartered in London, the financial capitals of mainland Europe (such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Paris, and Milan), and, of course, New York City?
Are they mentioning at their cocktail parties that the financial elite exert control over the world’s population through the cartels that make up the world’s producing economies and through the civilian and military bureaucracies who work for the governments that kow-tow to them?
Of course they know that the most important cartels are those which control energy resources. And that of these, the commodity of central importance is oil. But is any of this helping them draw conclusions regarding the doubling of oil prices during the last year or about the largest oil company profits in history?
Also, they should be drawing the right conclusions from the fact that every private and pubic enterprise operates on the basis of a money economy, though it would be more accurate to call it a credit economy. This means that whoever controls the issuance of money and credit controls the world. And the world’s monetary systems function on the basis of money and credit being introduced into circulation through loans from the banking system, loans for which interest is charged. So what should that tell them?
In fact, they should be pointing out to each other and their TV viewers that the charging of interest for the use of money is a chain around the neck of everyone on earth. Further, that these cumulative interest charges are built into the price of every product that is manufactured or consumed. And that growth of debt means price increases too.
They should be honest in making it clear that the world is a master-slave society, that the slaves are those who borrow and pay interest, that the masters are those who collect the interest, and that this unjust system has existed in one form or another for thousands of years.
The candidates and delegates are talking about the aspirations of the American people and how everyone should have an opportunity to achieve their dreams. But if the United States were a free nation, they would also be talking about a financial system that destroys people’s dreams.
Unfortunately, the highest rung the candidates and delegates have been able to reach on the ladder of modern-day slavery is the need for more jobs—but they fail to note that jobs are not only the means by which people live, but also the instruments for them to pay the heavy burden of interest the masters of finance require.
What they won’t say is that the world economy is based on usury, something religions used to consider a crime (and which Islam still does). Usury is the charging of interest for the use of money. As the religions backed off from their prohibitions of interest, usury became just excess interest. But that’s not what the word really means.
So what have over two centuries of usury done to the United States?
The best answer ever given to that question was contained in a paper entitled “Revisiting U.S. Public and Private Debt” published in January 2005 by Dr. Bob Blain, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University. The paper updated an earlier study by Dr. Blain published for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in the International Social Science Journal, November, 1987, Paris, pages 577-591.
In his paper, Dr. Blain examined the growth of total public and private debt in the U.S. Total debt includes “the debts of governments (federal, state, and local), corporations, farmers, home mortgages, and consumer, commercial, and financial debts.”
In his analysis, Dr. Blain began with data from the Bureau of Economic Analyses of the United States Department of Commerce which covered the years 1916-1976. After that year the Bureau stopped publishing the data.
The figures showed that from 1916-1976, total U.S. debt grew from $82 billion to $3,800 billion ($3.8 trillion). But most of that growth was during the last 21 years, from 1955-1976, when it began to grow exponentially. Dr. Blain wrote, “The consistency of the pattern suggests that some imperative is at work, something that requires debt to increase.”
Dr. Blain found the answer by researching American history. He wrote: “Then I read G.R. Taylor’s 1950 book, Hamilton and the National Debt, which described the debate over Alexander Hamilton’s plan to fund the new economy with borrowed money.” He continued:
“The most revealing account was a speech by the first congressman from Georgia, James Jackson, on February 9, 1790, in which he predicted that adoption of Hamilton’s funding plan would lead to the explosive growth of debt. Jackson said, ‘Though our present debt be but a few millions, in the course of a single century it may be multiplied to an extent we dare not think of.’” (Annals of Congress, Vol. I, February 1790, pp. 1141-2)
From the very beginning, the U.S. had a monetary system based on borrowing and debt. First came the thousands of state chartered banks that began operating late in the Revolutionary War period and continued in one form or another until today. Then there were the two early central banks: the First Bank of the United States (1791-1811) and the Second Bank of the United States (1816-1836). Today’s national banking system began during the Civil War with the National Banking Acts of 1863-64. Then there is the system we are living under today, the Federal Reserve, chartered by Congress in 1913. Even during the times when the government has sold its debt directly to the public, as with war bonds, savings bonds, and Treasury notes and bills, that too has been money borrowed at interest.
Although there have been times in history when money entered into circulation other than through debt, such as with coinage and the Civil War greenbacks, those were exceptions and today are of little importance.
Dr. Blain estimated that from the time Alexander Hamilton placed the U.S. under a debt-based monetary system until today, the debt has compounded at 5.8 percent annually. The big problem with this system, he said, was “that no money was created to pay interest.” He continued:
“Loans created only the principal. Interest had to be paid out of principal. So payment of interest reduced the money supply and slowed economic activity. Recovery could come only when new loans were taken out at least equal to interest paid.”
Dr. Blain concluded, “As long as the money supply of a nation is created as debt costing interest, debt must grow by compound interest.” From a longer-range view, it’s a system that is constantly collapsing and that must constantly be bailed out.
Dr. Blain next sought to update his figures past the 1976 data from the Bureau of Economic Analyses. Turning to the Federal Reserve’s series on “Total Credit Market Debt Outstanding,” he found remarkably similar indicators.
He found that adding data from the Federal Reserve from 1945 to 2003 showed the “debt explosion” continuing. In 1945 total debt was $463.4 billion. In 2003 it was $44,967.7 billion ($45.0 trillion). When he projected the debt level for 2010, he arrived at a figure of $74.9 trillion. By this time the debt curve was climbing so steeply there would be almost a doubling of the amount of total debt in only nine years.
It might be argued that these figures do not take into account inflation. This is because lending at interest is the cause of inflation. The dollars still have to be repaid with interest. The problem occurs when economic growth, measured by GDP, does not keep up.
Looking at the growth of GDP from 1945 to 2003, the increase was from $223.1 billion to $10,987.9 billion, a factor of 49. But the debt ($463.4 billion vs. $44,967.7 billion) grew by a factor of 97, almost twice the rate of GDP growth. Thus the total debt burden on the economy has doubled from a ratio of 2:1 to more than 4:1 (though it was much less than that during the early days of the nation).
But with continued compound growth of debt and a slow- or no-growth state of the economy as we head into a recession, we are starting to see what Dr. Blain called an “acceleration to meltdown.” He wrote:
“We are buying more and more in the same amount of time. Witness the efforts of people to get rid of their excess through yard sales, storage units, and big trash pickup days, and the massive size of what are euphemistically called landfills. While two billion people in the world lack basics such as clean water, food, and shelter, Americans throw away their microwave ovens, televisions, computers, refrigerators, furniture, and cars. Meanwhile, acceleration is applauded as increasing productivity. It’s like arguing that cancer is good because it grows.”
These are the things the Democrats in Denver should be talking about, instead of going to so many parties. They should be making note that the U.S., to quote economists close to the Federal Reserve, is “functionally bankrupt.”
In fact, the debt this nation owes to the banks, to foreign creditors, and to each other can never be paid off. Further, one big reason for all of our fruitless military endeavors overseas may simply be to escape unpleasant economic realities at home. But this is pointless. Nothing creates more debt than war, as the bankers have always known.
The only solution is to adopt a monetary system that is not based on debt. Dr. Blain makes a couple of specific recommendations: 1) “Stop using percentage rates to calculate charges for the use of money”; and 2) “Congress must supply the economy with a money base that is debt-free and interest-free.”
The second point is a call for a new monetary system, not one based solely on lending by the banks or on government borrowing. One organization that has developed a blueprint for such a system is the American Monetary Institute (AMI), headquartered in Chicago. The director of the AMI is Stephen Zarlenga, author of a massive, groundbreaking work: The Lost Science of Money (AMI, 2002). Zarlenga’s assistant is Jamie Walton, a monetary reformer from New Zealand.
AMI will be holding its fourth annual conference in Chicago on September 25-28. Expected as keynote speaker is Congressman Dennis Kucinich, whose wife Elizabeth once worked as an intern at AMI. Dr. Bob Blain will be a featured speaker.
On the AMI website at www.monetary.org is a remarkable document, the American Monetary Act. The product of several years of work by Zarlenga and his network, which now includes a number of local chapters around the country, the American Monetary Act would replace today’s debt-based monetary system with one where the government spends or loans money directly into circulation.
Under the Act, the Federal Reserve would be retained as a national financial clearinghouse but would no longer be a bank of issue. The system would be overseen by a Monetary Control Board within the U.S. Treasury Department. The Act also includes a provision for a citizens’ dividend, similar in some respects to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which would inject desperately needed purchasing power into the economy without additional government debt or taxation.
Also promoting a citizens’ dividend, by the way, is Stephen Shafarman in his important new book, Peaceful, Positive Revolution. (Tendril Press, 2008)
It’s the American Monetary Act the candidates and delegates in Denver should skip one of their parties to read, because it’s the only way any of their hopes for America can ever be realized. Says AMI’s Jamie Walton:
“This is a crucial time. Things are happening. We have got some key media people talking and writing about our kind of reforms. The inertia is starting to yield. Things are starting to roll. The worsening conditions in 2009 will give us a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be heard above the propaganda.”
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2. BUSH HAS NO RIGHT TO LECTURE ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS
BY
RAMSEY CLARK
A price the American people are paying for the failure of the House of Representatives to impeach Bush, Cheney and their cabal for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity -- the greatest assaults on peace and human rights of this century -- is the Bush Administration’s bellicose drum beat for war against a widening circle of chosen enemies.
Imagine George Bush with the blood of a million Afghans and Iraqis on his hands, the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo hanging around his neck, having trashed the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, lecturing China for violating human rights at the World Olympics in Beijing, a hopeful symbol of international cooperation through the peaceful competition of athletes in friendship.
Imagine George Bush lecturing Russia on human rights after insisting on putting U.S. (not NATO) Star War missile sites on the Russian border in Poland and the Czech Republic despite the tragic lessons of the Cold War, all told the greatest crime in history. Among its costs are expenditures that could have provided food for all, vastly reduced poverty on the planet, progressed toward quality universal health care, education and housing for everyone. Instead it took more lives by military violence on five continents and greater military expenditures than World War II and released the genie of nuclear weapons to a status beyond control. Can the planet survive another arms race? And what was George Bush planning when he urged immediate admission of Georgia to NATO just months before Georgia invaded South Ossetia?
Imagine George Bush who committed wars of aggression, the “Supreme International Crime,” against Afghanistan and Iraq, invading and occupying both, judging Russia’s conduct as” unacceptable," and demanding withdrawal of Russian forces because it sent troops into Georgia to protect the population of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from an invasion by Georgia that killed citizens and peace keepers alike, destroyed property and had driven tens of thousands from their homes.
Nor was Georgia a stranger to Russia. It had been a part of Russia since 1801 for nearly all the last two centuries. It had great power within the USSR. Joseph Stalin was from Georgia, as were L. P. Beria, longtime head of the NKVD and many others, Edward Shevardnadze, the Soviet Union’s last Foreign Minister and the first President of the Government of the independent Georgia that separated from the Soviet Union in 1990.
George Bush took a keen interest in Georgia, which is on Russia’s southern border, but on the opposite side of the planet from the U.S., early in his Presidency and in Mikhail Saakashvili. Under Bush’s direction the U.S. provided major military arms and training for Georgia. It persuaded, or paid Georgia which had no interest in Iraq to send 2000 troops to there, a number exceeded only by the U.S. and U.K. It trained and supported the Georgian troops for duty in Iraq. Saakashvili, a U.S. law school graduate, to quote the New York Times “...positioned himself to become one of the world’s most strident critics of the Kremlin” and with the strong support from the U.S. he was elected President of Georgia.
The U.S. helped them militarize what had been a weak Georgian state. The Pentagon helped overhaul Georgia’s military forces, train its commanders and staff officers. U.S. marines trained Georgian soldiers in the fundamentals of battle. The forces were equipped with Israeli and U.S. firearms, reconnaissance drones and other sophisticated equipment, including anti aircraft weaponry. That the U.S. trained and equipped Georgian forces fled in the face of Russian forces should have told us something about the U.S. training and equipping of foreign militaries.
All this U.S. support and manipulation was with the public goal, urged by George Bush, of making remote Georgia, though a thousand miles from Europe across the Black Sea and Russia, member of NATO and placing Abkhazia and South Ossetia under Georgian control by force.
As in most matters in which George Bush takes aggressive action, oil is a factor in some form. Georgia has made itself available for a pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Azerbaijan then across Georgia to the Black Sea, a major Bush goal, carrying oil from Azerbaijan and former Soviet Republics in Central Asia, produced in large part by U.S. oil companies, to Western markets by-passing Russia. Western Europe shared this U.S. interest.
President Bush visited Georgia in 2005, the first U.S. President to do so. Condoleezza Rice visited while National Security Advisor to Bush and since. Saakashvili has been a frequent guest at the White House and in the Washington corridors of power.
It is George Bush’s enticement and incitement of Georgia that created the present crisis. We have not been told what has been paid Georgia for it.
Suppose NATO had agreed to Georgia membership before Georgia invaded South Ossetia, as the U.S. urged. NATO would have been bound by mutual defense pact to defend Georgia as a Member. NATO, a Cold War creation, which includes all the former colonial powers, should be abolished. The U.S. persuaded NATO to share blame for its assaults that balkanized Yugoslavia which was created to end centuries of violence in the Balkans through unity. It tried to persuade NATO to join in its wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. It nearly succeeded in Georgia.
The U.S. has a major military airbase in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet Republic to Russia’s south and more than 1500 miles east of Georgia which is used to bomb Afghanistan. The U.S. has surrounded Russia with military bases from the Baltic states south across its western border with Europe then east for more than 2500 miles to its borders with Xinjiang Province in western China and Mongolia.
Now we can see the hypocrisy of the U.S. calling NATO into emergency session to address the Georgia crisis with false claims made repeatedly about the ceasefire and withdrawal terms negotiated by President Sarkozy of France, only to back down from all its threats and demands for action after fomenting international friction on false pretenses. The world cannot be made safe for hypocrisy, or mendacity.
It is noteworthy that Georgia is within one hundred miles of the border of Iran across Armenia. While George Bush vigorously protests Russian confrontation with Georgian troops which invaded South Ossetia, he has continued his threatening of Iran with a war of aggression for its alleged but unproven efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability while he engages in a huge U.S. expenditure for new nuclear weapons. The U.S. now has its largest Naval presence in the Gulf region since the Gulf war, pointed toward Iran. The probability that President Bush will cause Israel and the U.S. to attack Iranian nuclear facilities plants during his remaining months in office remains high. Such an attack would violate the Nuremberg Charter and Article 56 of Protocol 1 Additional to the Geneva Convention 1979, which protects “Works and Installations Containing Dangerous Forces,” including nuclear facilities, from attack, because of the “consequent severe losses among the civilian population” from the blast and radiation.
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3. THE OUTRAGE IN YOUR CREDIT CARD'S FINE PRINT
(Penalty fees make up nearly half of industry revenues.)
BY
MARK LANGE
Monitor Opinion editor Josh Burek talks with former presidential speechwriter Mark Lange about credit-card industry practices.
Blue Ridge Summit, PA. - Would you sign a contract that says, "Any term can be changed at any time for any reason, including no reason"? Anyone who uses a credit card already has.
Such are the absurd terms of the consumer credit-card industry, which is poised to be the next big crisis (after housing) that banks have aided and abetted in US households.
Americans have now racked up nearly $1 trillion in credit-card debt. As housing equity shrinks and costs rise, agencies such as Moody's report swelling numbers of accounts with balances three or more payments past due. Reinforced by abusive industry practices, the plastic safety net is becoming a permanent cage.
But here's the good news: If you've ever been steamed by surprise fees on your credit-card statement or had your interest rate cranked up without warning, the Federal Reserve Board wants to help you. The Fed? That oracular secret society whose chairmen say Yoda-like things about interest rates? Well, actually, yes.
Ever since its remarkable "oversight" of junk lending led to the mortgage melt-down, the Fed seems determined not to let credit-card defaults drive the American banking system any closer to Third World standards.
There's plenty to reform. During the housing bubble, credit-card vendors inflated interest rates – even as the Fed slashed them – and found increasingly sneaky ways to usher their customers into perpetually indebted servitude. Such as:
•Raising rates as high as 32 percent on existing balances, with no notice, even when they've always been paid on time.
•Compressing the time between statement mailings and due dates.
•Charging interest on debt already repaid.
•Posting on-time payments after their due date – and then charging late fees.
•Neglecting to disclose how much interest and time it will take to pay off a balance with minimum payments (if ever).
Banks in the card game are raising rates and fees to limit their losses on mortgage loans they made. This is doubly ironic, since their delusional lending and exotic mortgage cocktails gave the housing bubble its irrational effervescence to begin with. So now millions of American households are being dragged under even further.
This year, card companies will break all records for late fees, over-limit charges, and other penalties, pulling in more than $19 billion. Not to mention extra charges for paying by mail or by phone (try $14.99). Credit card is the only industry where customers pay extra to be allowed to pay. Where agreements can be changed without notice. Where nearly half of industry revenues come from penalty fees.
You can't just dismiss these predatory practices as a tax on stupidity. Borrower beware? A quaint notion, when bankers play misleading and retroactively abusive games with other people's lives.
Competition? Five card vendors control nearly 80 percent of the market. State regulation? Enforcement has been rendered toothless. Recourse to the courts? This industry, given mandatory binding arbitration, is shielded from any class action. Meanwhile, the average mailbox is stuffed with 24 credit card offers each year. I'm looking at one from First Premier Bank, at an attractive 9.9 percent rate, whose fine print cost in first year fees and interest is $256. For a $250 credit line. Provided I pay on time.
Enter the Fed. Randall Kroszner, a Chicago economist hotly averse to regulation, is pushing to regulate the most misleading and predatory practices. The card vendors will tie this up in court, in an endless argument about jurisdiction. That's why legislation is needed, to make new rules stick – and why every e-mail or phone call to Congress will be another good reason to fix this.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D) of New York recently got the House lined up for a floor vote. Similar bills have floated and died before. The Senate "may" hold hearings in September. Got debt? Before you get your next statement – or right now, if you're online – contact your senator at www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm and share your own credit-card horror story. If you want the card companies to play fair, your senator needs to hear from you.
Banks should manage risk by reflecting it in their rates and credit limits up front – not through the back door, with sneaky fees and phantom interest rates. It's time for card vendors to let consumers work down debt, on terms that make it possible to do so.
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4. MUSHARRAF OUT, LIKE NIXON; BUSH STILL IN, LIKE FLYNN
BY
RAY MACGOVERN
Most of the fawning corporate media (FCM) coverage of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's resignation Monday was even more bereft of context than usual.
It was as if Musharraf looked out the window and said, "It's a beautiful day. I think I'll resign and go fishing." Thus, the lead in Tuesday's editorial in the New York Times, once known as the newspaper of record: "In the end, President Pervez Musharraf went, if not quietly, with remarkably little strife."
Certain words seem to be automatically deleted from the computers of those writing for the Times. Atop the forbidden wordlist sits "impeachment." And other FCM – the Washington Post, for example – generally follow that lead, still.
Very few newspapers carried the Associated Press item that put the real story up front; i.e., that Musharraf resigned "just days ahead of almost certain impeachment." In other words, he pulled a Nixon.
How short our memories! Three articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee on July 27, 1974; Nixon resigned less than two weeks later. But what were those charges, and how do they relate to George W. Bush today? Among the charges were these:
-- Without lawful cause or excuse [Richard M. Nixon] "failed to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House…and willfully disobeyed such subpoenas…thereby assuming to himself functions and judgments necessary to the exercise of the sole power of impeachment vested in the Constitution in the House of Representatives."
-- "Endeavoring to cause prospective defendants…to expect favored treatment and consideration in return for their silence or false testimony."
-- "Endeavoring to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency."
The New John Conyers
Fortunately, John Conyers, who now chairs the House Judiciary Committee, was among those approving those three articles of impeachment.
Unfortunately, he seems to have long- as well as short-term memory loss.
On subpoenas, he has let the Bush administration diddle him and the committee.
What about favored treatment in return for silence or false testimony? What did Conyers do when President George W. Bush commuted Libby's sentence, in a transparent effort to prevent Libby from squealing on his bosses?
Conyers moved manfully to do what he always does: he expressed "frustration," wrote a letter to the president, held a hearing, and then – nothing. This, despite special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's parting admonition, "There is a cloud over the vice president…And that cloud remains because the defendant [Libby] obstructed justice."
Misuse of the CIA
What about this serious charge? Here too Conyers' behavior has been nothing short of bizarre, even though he has been repeatedly briefed on how the Bush administration played games with intelligence to "justify" an unnecessary war.
If further proof of the misuse of intelligence were needed, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller provided it in early June, when he released the findings of his committee's investigation of administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence. Rockefeller summed it up succinctly:
"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."
Despite all this, Conyers has not ventured beyond flaccid rhetoric. White House minions no doubt poke fun at the talking-shirt-cum-fancy-tie to which Conyers has reduced himself. He has given them – and the rest of us – little reason to take him, or his committee, seriously.
But now…now with the wide attention drawn by the serious revelations in Ron Suskind's latest book regarding White House misuse of the CIA, John Conyers wants us to believe he is really serious this time. It brings to mind the image of Lucy setting up the football for another try by Charlie Brown.
On Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" on Aug. 14, he said he was "the third day into the most critical investigation of the entire Bush administration." And in order to demonstrate his seriousness of purpose Conyers said, "We're starting our work, and then we're doing it in a period where Congress is in recess. I'm calling everybody back."
Many of those listening to Conyers assumed he meant Committee members. Not so. Others thought he must have meant key staff. Not so, either. There must be something in the water here in Washington that prevents people – even formerly honest people – from distinguishing between exaggeration and a lie.
As if to prepare us beforehand for still more timidity and ineptitude, Conyers rang changes on an all too familiar theme. He complained that he is "maybe the most frustrated person attempting to exercise the oversight responsibilities that I have on Judiciary" – a clear reference to how he has let himself be diddled by the White House…and an equally clear sign that he is likely to remain diddle-able.
If the Constitution Is Good Enough For Pakistan…
Tell us, John: if Pakistan can move forward to impeach a sitting president and force his resignation, why can't you? You must recall voting for those three articles of impeachment on that momentous day, July 27, 1974, and how on August 9 Nixon waved goodbye from his helicopter to the few remaining friends lined up on the White House lawn. You were proud to be part of the triumph of our Constitution in 1974. Is being chairman of Judiciary simply too demanding at your age – many years beyond what lawyers used to call the age of "statutory senility."
Without any apparent tongue in cheek, Tuesday's New York Times editorial pointed a sanctimonious finger at Musharraf's abuse of power, noting that "the presidency must also be stripped of the special dictatorial powers that Mr. Musharraf seized for himself, including the power to suspend civil liberties." The Times noted, "President Bush underwrote Mr. Musharraf's dictatorship, but it said nothing of the example Bush himself has set in such matters – including rigging elections, as Musharraf did.
It seems the height of irony that the relatively young and fragile democracy of Pakistan has been able to successfully exercise the power of impeachment inherited from the framers of the U.S. Constitution, while a constipated Conyers-captained congressional committee cannot.
Under Pakistan's constitution, the country has a bicameral legislature with 100 senators and over 300 representatives in the National Assembly. The president is head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. Sound familiar?
The difference is that, even though impeachment of a Pakistani president requires a two-thirds majority in the legislature, Pakistani lawmakers summoned the courage to check Musharraf's unconstitutional accretion of power by exercising their constitutional power to impeach. And, facing almost certain impeachment, Musharraf resigned.
In sorry contrast to your Pakistani counterparts, John, you have chickened out. At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
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5. THE REAL STATE OF THE US ECONOMY
(Henry Paulson Has Lost Control Over US Finance)
BY
WILLIAM F. ENGDAHL
When Henry Paulson agreed to leave his job as chairman of the powerful Wall Street investment bank, Goldman Sachs to go to Washington as Treasury Secretary in 2006 he demanded extraordinary powers as de facto economic czar. He got it. Paulson is also head of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets -- the secretary of the treasury and the chairmen of the Federal Reserve Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The Working Group is the financial world's equivalent of the Pentagon war room. Paulson, not Fed chairman Bernanke, is the person running the Administration’s crisis management. And his recent actions indicate he has lost control as the snowballing problems from the semi-government mortgage companies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to the collapse of the multi-trillion dollar market in Asset Backed Securities (ABS) to the real economy are compounding into the worst crisis since the 1930’s Great Depression.
‘The US banking system is sound…’
In an eerie echo of President Herbert Hoover in 1930, during a Presidential campaign against Roosevelt, following the stock market crash and collapse of numerous smaller banks, Paulson recently appeared on national TV to declare "our banking system is a safe and sound one." He added that the list of "troubled" banks "is a very manageable situation." In fact what he did not say was that the US bank deposit insurance fund, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has a list of problem banks that numbers 90. Not included on that list are banks such as Citigroup, until recently the largest bank in the world.
The statement is hardly reassuring. The California savings bank, IndyMac Bank which was declared insolvent a month ago was not on the FDIC list a week before it collapsed. The reality is the crisis created by "securitizing" millions of home mortgages into new financial instruments and selling the packages to pension funds and investors is unfolding like a snowball rolling down the Swiss Alps.
Indication of the lack of control is the statement just weeks ago by Paulson that "financial institutions must be allowed to fail." That was two weeks before Paulson went to Congress to ask for "Congressional authority to buy unlimited stakes in and lend to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." As I noted in my recent piece, Financial Tsunami: The Next Big Wave is Breaking: Fannie Mae Freddie Mac and US Mortgage Debt , those two private companies insured some $6 trillion worth of home mortgages, half the entire US mortgage debt. Paulson defended the request by calling Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae "the only functioning part of the home loan market."
That comes back to the statement about a "sound banking system". Can we have a sound banking system where the only functioning part is literally insolvent—its debts greater than its assets?
It is well known on Wall Street that some of the largest financial institutions have huge undeclared problems with Asset Backed Securities they have valued far above their worth to make their books look better than they are. The names Citigroup, Lehman Bros., Morgan Stanley, even Paulson’s old firm, Goldman Sachs and of course the inventor of sub-prime mortgage securitization, Merrill Lynch, all hold a huge percentage of what are called Level Three assets, these being assets where no one is willing to buy but the bank declares their worth based on "fantasy." In short the value of those core financial institutions of the US financial system is massively overvalued compared with their value were they forced to sell into the open market today. In a sobering aside, readers should not expect any serious economic remedies for the crisis from a President Barack Obama. Obama’s National Campaign Finance Chairman is Chicago real estate billionaire, Penny Pritzker, who is heir to among other things the Hyatt Hotels. It was Pritzker together with Merrill Lynch ten years ago who first developed the model for securitizing "sub-prime" real estate, the trigger for the current Financial Tsunami crisis.
Already Citigroup has been forced to go to Dubai hat in hand and ask for billions in cash. After it announced it would not need more capital. Now Citigroup just announced plans to sell some $500 billion more assets to raise funds. Is Citigroup really solvent is the question sober investors are asking. Similarly Merrill Lynch raised $6.6 billion from Kuwait Mizuho, stated it was fine and weeks later had to raise still more capital. Morgan Stanley sold a 10% share of the company to China International Corp.
The real economy is contracting rapidly
Behind the reassuring statements from Paulson and others that the "worst is over" the reality of the credit collapse since August 2007 is a deepening economic contraction which I have said several times in this space will surpass the Great Depression of the 1929-1938 period. A goof friend who is an unemployed homebuilder in a prosperous part of Arizona just sent me the following list of US department retail store closures. It is worth noting that over 70% of the US GDP is consumer spending and that the entire Federal Reserve strategy of Alan Greenspan after the March 2000 collapse of the stock market bubble, was to bring US interest rates to their lowest levels since the 1930’s in order to stimulate consumer spending on credit, i.e. debt, to avoid "recession." Note the scale of the following store closings across America in recent weeks:
Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide.
Eddie Bauer to close more stores after closing 27 stores in the first quarter.
Cache, a women’s retailer is closing 20 to 23 stores this year.
Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherines closing 150 stores nationwide
Talbots, J. Jill closing stores. Talbots will close all 78 of its kids and men's stores plus another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J. Jill.
Gap Inc. closing 85 stores
Foot Locker to close 140 stores
Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. The 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
Levitz - the furniture retailer, announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910.
Zales, Piercing Pagoda plans to close 82 stores by July 31 followed by closing another 23 underperforming stores.
Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores.
Home Depot store closings 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store.
CompUSA (CLOSED).
Macy's - 9 stores closed
Movie Gallery – video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery
and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental
chain closed last fall as part of bankruptcy.
Pacific Sunwear - 153 Demo stores closing
Pep Boys - 33 stores of auto parts supplier closing
Sprint Nextel - 125 retail locations to close with 4,000 employees following 5,000 layoffs last year.
J. C. Penney, Lowe's and Office Depot are all scaling back
Ethan Allen Interiors: plans to close 12 of 300 stores to cut costs.
Wilsons the Leather Experts – closing 158 stores
Bombay Company: to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores.
KB Toys closing 356 stores around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization.
Dillard's Inc. will close another six stores this year.
For anyone familiar with American shopping malls and retailing, this represents a staggering part of the daily economic life of the nation, from furniture stores to clothing to video rentals to leather. The process has only begun and neither major party Presidential candidate has dared to mention this on the ground economic reality, because they evidently have no solutions to offer that would not jeopardize their campaign finances. Obama is tied to not only Pritzker but also to Omaha billionaire, Warren Buffett and George Soros. McCain depends on the traditional money contributions of the Republican Party which demand permanent tax reform for highest income earners and a pro-bank laissez faire treatment of millions of homeowners facing home foreclosure and asset seizure by banks.
Banks across the country have severely cut back on loans, fearful of bad debts. That has aggravated the consumer collapse documented above. Hundreds of thousands of real estate brokers, small and large bankers, furniture workers and salespeople, and construction workers are unable to find work. Jobs are being cut wholesale and those working are often on reduced hours. Car sales in June plunged by 28% for Ford, 18% for General Motors and even 21% for Toyota which will mean more layoffs in coming weeks. This will be the next wave of unemployment.
The economic reality is not reflected in official US Commerce Department or Labor Department statistics. There the data is constantly being "revised" to hide the grim reality in an election year.
My good friend, economist John Williams of California, has meticulously tracked such "data revisions" for more than 25 years and found the manipulation of reality so alarming that he founded an independent subscriber service titled "Shadow Government Statistics" (http://www.shadowstats.com/ ), where he makes best estimate calculations of the reality not the official mythology.
By Williams’ calculations the US economy first entered recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth, at the end of 2006. Ever since, the recession has deepened, dramatically so in the past 12 months. Little known is the fact that the Labor Department also publishes six different unemployment statistics from U1, U2 through to U6 being the most comprehensive. The reported "official unemployment" is the very narrowly defined U3 which stands at 5.5%. However, as Williams notes, U6 is the real measure and that officially shows 9.7% unemployed. His calculations put the figure at 13.7% actually unemployed and seeking work.
A personal account
The unemployed homebuilder from Arizona I mentioned above recently sent me the following personal note on the situation:
"Here is how it looks to people like me: Real estate dealings fuelled the economy in most areas of the country for the past decade or more. We’ve been in a market downturn for three years. We have seen the cost of doing business increase for builders, along with a big drop in buyers as everyone tightens their belts, or can’t sell existing homes. Many employers have gone under ending thousands of jobs. If they have a job people are worried about losing it. Driving long distances to work is not possible with gasoline costs double that of 2006. There has been a 40% drop in most peoples’ home equity worth. Many people are "underwater" on their homes, meaning they owe more than the market price is worth today. So many under-employed don’t show up in government unemployed statistics. Self employed like me never get counted."
The Arizona homebuilder continued, "Today nobody is building. Unsold home inventories are triple that of 2003. Banks no longer give easy credit for home buyers. Many realtors I know have gone two years without selling a home. Empty storefronts are becoming common. In many areas unemployment among construction trades people is 50% or more. Tens of thousands of illegal Mexicans who did most of the manual labor have returned to Mexico to find work. What now? Well, I do handyman projects of all sorts, big or small and make about 70-90% of what it takes to survive with a family of a wife and three young children. My savings make up the rest. That can’t go on for too much longer. We went from affluent and comfortable to nervous and broke with diminished opportunities in just three years. We used to be the middle class."
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Friday, August 29, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
The JvL Bi-Weekly for 081508
I can be most easily reached through the following email address for suggesting new additions to the subscription list or to cancel your subscription to the Bi-Weekly:
The Blog Address for the Bi-Weekly is: http://jvlbiweekly.blogspot.com
Please forward the Blog address for the Bi-Weekly to any who might be interested
Friday, August 15th, 2008
Volume 7, No. 14
(Editor's note: According to information compiled by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, an organization devoted to monitoring the status of the nuclear threat worldwide, nine countries had nukes by April 2004. The nine countries are listed below. Each figure includes the approximate number of both tactical and strategic bombs (nuclear and thermonuclear, or "big" and "really gigantic").
| Country | Warheads |
| United States | 10,455 |
| Russia | 8,400 |
| China | 400 |
| France | 350 |
| Israel* | 250 |
| United Kingdom | 200 |
| India | 65 |
| Pakistan | 40 |
| North Korea | 8 |
| TOTAL | 20,168 |
6 Articles
1. USDA Report Indicates that Organic Labeling Fraud is Increasing
2. Why TV News in the US is Utter Rubbish
4. Cell Phone Cancer Risk Debated
5. The Lies of Hiroshima Live On, Props in the War Crimes of the 20th Century
6. Making Nuclear Extermination Respectable
1. USDA REPORT INDICATES THAT ORGANIC LABELING FRAUD IS INCREASING
BY
RONNIE CUMMINS
The U.S. Department of Agriculture National Organic Program (NOP) announced August 5 that 15 of the 30 accredited organic certifiers they recently inspected failed the USDA audit and will have 12 months to make corrections or lose their accreditation with the NOP. Although the USDA euphemistically calls their enforcement actions “renewal pending subsequent audit,” it is clear that there are numerous violations of organic standards taking place in the U.S. and across the world. A number of the violations noted in the several hundred page audit related to Chinese imports certified by the French-based organic certifier Ecocert and other certifiers.
Strangely enough, Quality Assurance International (QAI), the largest organic certifier in the world, is not cited by the USDA, even though the Organic Consumers Association OCA has recently reviewed documents that indicate that QAI is indeed under investigation by the NOP. QAI has recently been in the news for sourcing ginger, contaminated with a dangerous and banned pesticide, Aldicarb, from its Chinese certification sub-contractors and then labeling it as “USDA Organic.” QAI is also under public fire, along with other certifiers, for certifying factory farm feedlot dairies supplying milk to Horizon and Aurora Organic Dairy, who in turn supply Wal-Mart, Costco, Safeway, and other organic private label organic milk brands.
For over six years the OCA, Cornucopia Institute, the Center for Food Safety and others in the organic community have called upon the USDA to implement a “Peer Review Panel” system, as required by law in the National Organic Standards, so that respected members of the organic community can monitor the USDA National Organic Program and police violations of organic standards on the part of producers, importers, and certifiers. A 2005 ANSI (American National Standards Institute) audit of the USDA’s National Organic Program found numerous problems and irregularities, according to Jim Riddle, former chair of the National Organic Standards Board.
As the USDA themselves have admitted “The National Organic Standards call for the Administrator of AMS (USDA Agricultural Marketing Service) to appoint members of a Peer Review Panel to evaluate the NOP¹s adherence to its accreditation procedures and its accreditation decisions.” It’s time for the USDA to stop dragging their heels and begin the public process to set up an organic community “Peer Review Panel,” so can we can start policing organic standards ourselves.
To Sign the Petition to the USDA for a Peer Review Panel go here.
Ronnie Cummins is the National Director of Organic Consumers Association.
(Editor's second note: On the same points is the following by DaSparky)
“USDA proposed in it’s initial standards to allow sewage sludge to be an organic soil amendment and that radiation of food be certifiable as an organic process. That was under the Clinton Administration! USDA has long been an advocate of industrial agribusiness under the guise of support for family farming.”
That is true, but it is also true that popular resistance STOPPED the USDA from calling irradiation and sewage sludge “organic”.
What do folks think we should do about our food supply? Mr. Hollow (organic gardener) says: “ONLY TRUST what your own hands put in the ground and pull out.” and Thomas More (organic retailer) says: “Absolutely agreed. You could never be sure unless you know the grower.”
So everyone here agrees, you literally cannot trust anything you eat unless you grow it yourself or get it directly from a grower you know personally, AND it is ENTIRELY POINTLESS to attempt to regulate markets to protect consumers by upholding standards?
Mr. More disagrees disagree. The original NOP of the USDA was created because activists fought long and hard for it. And there are still lots of great activists, like the author of this piece Ronnie Cummins and his pals at the OCA and Cornucopia, who have continued to fight hard for years to resist the dilution of organic standards and uphold the right of people to know what the practices of their farmers are.
So for everyone here who is reflexively trashing the NOP and the entire concept of organic standards: you seriously believe in tossing out the regulation, and leave all consumers to seek out and find personally trusted sources of food? What about all other forms of product regulation? Don’t buy an appliance unless you know the person who installed the electronic elements and welded the parts?
Again, i disagree. We need to FIGHT to uphold organic standards, not give up in hopeless cynicism and return to - what? An entirely unregulated market for food?
Seriously, what is the implication of all the comments here? And what are you saying to people like the author Ronnie Cummins, who has spent his life fighting this fight, and who wrote this article not to eliminate regulation and standards, but because he continues to FIGHT LIKE HELL to uphold them?
To clarify, I work in the retail end of the organic food trade, at a co-op grocery that has been certified organic for years, and we stay engaged in this fight. Please, if you propose to dump the NOP, do you seriously propose that everyone only eat what they grow themselves? Can I see a serious alternative proposed? If not, I will remain engaged in the fight for organic standards, and encourage you to do so too.
2. WHY TV NEWS IN THE US IS UTTER RUBBISH
(It's not just that world events are ignored in favour of celebrity gossip. News anchors skew the facts to provoke debate.)
BY
KIEREN McCARTHY
For years it has been a joke that news in the United States is terrible: obsessed with trivia and celebrity; fronted by Botox bimbos; forever interviewing citizens about some artifact of small-town life when a major news story is breaking elsewhere.
Well, the truth is that it's far, far worse than that. There are a multitude of news channels - CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox. But after an hour of flipping between them during lunchtime last week, this was the sum total of information gleaned: there are two US presidential candidates; they have produced campaign ads; people have made video parodies and posted them on the internet; a US TV news host appeared on a US TV chat show last night; and someone said something controversial (read ignorant) on a different TV show the day before.
In the meantime, one of the most sought-after war criminals in the world had been arrested and sent for trial; several new scientific breakthroughs had been announced; Zimbabwe edged carefully toward shared government; the Indian government dealt with votes of no-confidence and terrorist attacks; and countless other real stories came and went. For millions of Americans, these events appeared as 15-word tickertapes at the bottom of their 36-inch widescreen TVs.
It's not the absolute dearth of real news that is the problem, however. It's the fact that the news that is presented isn't news but mindless, misleading gossip. The clearest example of this is when one of the (between two and six) commentators on any given story provides their "analysis".
This comprises of showing a video clip and then talking with the assumed voice of the person in the clip. So, for example, Barack Obama gave a press conference. A clip of around four or five seconds of what he said is shown and then the TV studio people take over.
News anchor: "So what he's saying is 'Hey, I'm the guy in charge here - I'm the person who decides what to do, not you.' Is that right?"
Commentator: "I think what he was saying was: 'If I become president, then I'll be the person that calls the shots.'"
Commentator Two: "I don't agree. He's saying: 'I am going to listen to others – that's what I'll do – but make no mistake I'll be the person who makes the final decision.'"
This goes on and on with people making up dialogue and pretending to be Obama (or John McCain or anyone else that comes to mind) rather than broadcasting what was actually said.
But it gets worse:
• Unfair comment: The analysis of what someone has said is clearly bent by the reporters themselves along ideological lines. Unrelated facts and events are attached and then attacked, and the original news point ends up as little more than a launching pad for the experts' own political perspectives. So a sober report on, say, house prices ends up as a criticism of the Republican party's fiscal policy (without any details of that policy being provided). In the worst cases, something with no news value at all is introduced in order to score political points – such as McCain eating at a German restaurant, or Obama knocking fists with his wife.
• Tail-chasing and navel gazing: The media reports constantly on itself. And that really does mean constantly. Anything reported on the TV news instantly becomes something to be reported on. For an entire day the lead on most TV networks was whether the media was giving Obama too much coverage. The second day comprised of whether the coverage given to Obama was too uncritical. By the third day, much of the coverage was about the previous two days' coverage, complete with clips of how rival networks were covering the "news". News hosts also regularly appear on other news hosts' shows, and then feature that appearance on their own show.
• Never let the story get in the way: The focus is entirely on the back story, and the actual news is given lip-service. So you'll hear more about how a decision was arrived at than what the actual decision was, or what impact it might have. The idea is that you are getting the real juice. The reality is you are forced to drink a pint of conjecture concentrate. Presidential campaign ads have become lead stories. A one-second image flash of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in a recent ad implied that Obama was no more than a celebrity. It led to hours of primetime news speculation, while the ad's central claim that Obama would raise taxes if elected was ignored.
• The Jerry Springer school of journalism: There is never a neutral statement - it is always an extreme perspective. If you are the news anchor, you can speak in a third-party voice and add a question mark on the end to suggest impartiality. But otherwise, wild claims are balanced with an equally wild claim at the other end. If someone attempts to point out logical inconsistencies, they are almost always faced with personal mockery by the other commentators. Just one example of this bizarre, school-bully behaviour: When one commentator, speaking from Las Vegas, tried to point out why an offshore drilling bill (which had been misrepresented as a reason why the Democrats were responsible for high petrol prices), had not been passed by Congress, he was told by the anchor that he had clearly spent too much time at the craps tables. He was told soon after by another commentator he had spent too much time at the bar. The substance of his argument did not of course merit discussion.
• The gold(fish) rush: There is absolutely no effort to provide historical context. The news is paced so frenetically that anything beyond soundbites is not tolerated. News anchors consistently talk over the top of anyone that doesn't provide a punchy point every 10 seconds. Swooshing graphics and dance music add to the general level of pace – which effectively masks the fact that almost nothing is being provided beyond personal opinion.
• When did you stop beating your wife? Coverage is deeply cynical in the sense that people are assumed to have a hidden and planned agenda even when the connection drawn would have been impossible to predict as it doesn't follow logical reasoning. Speculation with no foundation in logic or fact is opened up as a serious news item with the simple inclusion of the phrase "Did [insert name of person] know about [insert event]?" The answer – if there was ever any attempt to actually arrive at it – will always be "No".
• Fight! Fight! Fight! There is no effort to reach a greater understanding. Instead, the sole intent is to provoke disagreement and partisan perspective - with the anchor used solely to egg on disagreement. Nearly every segment ends with the anchor shutting off argument and promoting the idea that they will have to agree to disagree.
So where do you get your news while living in the US? News-starved Americans usually hold up National Public Radio, NPR, as the best option. But with interlude music fresh from the 1920s and a twee, kitchen-table-chat approach, this is news wrapped in a tea cosy.
Two comedy programmes, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, fill a peculiar niche of serious analysis with gags and are possibly the main news source for people under 30. They both viciously lampoon the news media, which pretends not to notice and runs clips from them on their own shows.
There is hope however. The non-news cycle is increasingly being broken by the internet. Thanks to cheap digital technology and fast net connections, online video is a simple prospect and means it is possible to get your fix of moving images with real news thrown in.
Not that TV news is concerned. The internet, and YouTube in particular, is a network's dream: an Aladdin's Cave of uninformed, one-sided and aggressive gossip and commentary, all of it searchable and requiring minimal expenditure of time or money. And so every day you can find news anchors running short clips of the very best the internet can offer before turning to the experts to give their views.
(The truth about the cell-phone–cancer link and what it means for you and your kids.)
BY
JULIE A. EVANS
When Vini Khurana, PhD, an Australian (and Mayo Clinic–trained) neurosurgeon, announced that the link between cell-phone use and cancer was irrefutable--the result of his analysis of more than 100 studies--it set off alarm bells around the world. Use a cell phone, he said, and you increase your risk of developing a malignant brain tumor by two to four times. Until recently, the majority of research indicated little or no link between cell phones and cancer (the World Health Organization and the American Cancer Society maintain that cell phones pose no threat), but several new long-term studies have cast doubt about their safety. Given that cell phones and PDAs serve as lifelines for so many people--24 percent of 10- and 11-year-olds carry them--it raises urgent questions. To find out what precautions you should take when using your cell phone, we dialed the nation's leading experts.
Do cell phones cause cancer?
Maybe…with extended use. Mobile-phone users are twice as likely to develop malignant, difficult-to-treat brain tumors called gilomas, according to a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed the effects of cell-phone use over 10 years or more and was published last year in the journal Occupational Environmental Medicine. The Bioinitiative Working Group, an international coalition of scientists and public-health experts, recently published a hefty report detailing the link between the nonionizing radiation caused by a cell phone's electromagnetic fields (EMFs) and cancer, DNA damage, Alzheimer's, and other diseases. "The cells in the body react to EMFs in cell phones just like they do to other environmental toxins, including heavy metals and chemicals," says Martin Blank, PhD, a professor in bioelectromagnetics at Columbia University and one of the report's authors. The study found that risk from cell-phone use starts at 260 lifetime hours.
Do cell phones emit radiation only when you are talking?
No. "Cell phones give off radiation any time they're turned on so that they can communicate with base stations," says Lou Bloomfield, PhD, professor of physics at the University of Virginia and author of How Everything Works: Making Physics Out of the Ordinary. "The radiation emitted, however, is stronger and more frequent when you're talking or messaging." Also, the greater distance you are from a base station, the more radiation your phone must emit in order to get a signal, which is why your phone feels hot when you have low reception. That heat you feel is radiation. The Bioinitiative study found that adverse effects to DNA can also occur before the phone heats up. To reduce your exposure, make calls only when you have strong reception, hang up before your phone heats up, and store your phone away from your body when it's not in use.
What is a phone's SAR value and why does it matter?
SAR stands for Specific Absorption Rate, and it refers to the rate of radiation exposure from radio frequency and microwaves measured in watts per kilogram of tissue, says Bloomfield. The FCC limit on any cell phone sold in this country is 1.6 watts per kilogram. To find the SAR value for your phone, go to fcc.gov/cgb/sar/. At press time, the phone with the lowest radiation was the LG KG800, at 0.135 w/kg. The highest: Motorola V195s, at 1.6 w/kg. The Apple iPhone is in the middle, at 0.974 w/kg.
What is the range of the radiation?
Exposure to radiation from your cell phone drops off slowly for the first three to four inches from your body, and then it falls dramatically, says Bloomfield. To reduce your exposure, invest in a hands-free headset and limit the amount of time you spend talking on the phone. Khurana recommends using the speaker mode and holding the phone about eight inches away from you. Also, limit your use of Bluetooth devices. While it's true that they emit the least amount of radiation (one study found they can operate as low as 0.001 watts per kilogram), even that can add up fast.
Is it risky to carry a cell phone in your pants pocket?
Maybe. One 2006 study found no link to testicular cancer, but other researchers suspect a link to male infertility. Ashok Agarwal, PhD, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, recently completed a study in which cell phones were set down for one hour in talk mode, next to sperm samples in test tubes. He found that the sperm's motility and viability were significantly reduced, and levels of harmful free radicals increased after exposure. Agarwal suggests storing the phone in your jacket pocket to reduce exposure to cell-phone radiation. Pregnant women need to take precautions too, because a recent study found that cell-phone use while pregnant is linked to behavioral problems in children.
Are kids more at risk?
"Yes, since children's nervous systems are still developing, and they have thinner scalps and skulls than adults, they should use cell phones only in emergencies," says Gene Barnett, MD, professor and director of the Brain Tumor and Neuro-Oncology Center at the Cleveland Clinic. The association between childhood leukemia and exposure to EMFs like those from cell phones has led the International Agency for Research on Cancer to classify them as a "possible human carcinogen." The medical establishments in Germany, France, and the United Kingdom all recommend severe restrictions on children's cell-phone use, with some experts going so far as to say that children under 16 shouldn't use cell phones at all. Make sure your kids opt for landlines when they're at home, and if you must buy them a cell phone for emergencies, get one with a low SAR number.
What about texting?
It's actually a safer way to communicate, says David O. Carpenter, MD, director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany. Since kids hold phones away from their bodies when texting, they're exposed to less radiation than when they have the phones to their ears. "We are very concerned about teen cell-phone use, fearing that we face an epidemic of brain tumors 10 to 20 years from now, and there are so few who are raising warning flags," says Dr. Carpenter. Make sure your teen keeps his cell phone turned off and stored in his backpack when it isn't in use, which will dramatically reduce exposure.
The 10 worst cell phones according to their SAR numbers:
1. Motorola V195s 1.6
2. Motorola Slvr L6 1.58
3. Motorola Slvr L2 1.54
4. Motorola W385 1.54
5. Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Sprint) 1.54
6. Rim BlackBerry Curve 8330 (Verizon) 1.54
7. Motorola Deluxe ic902 1.53
8. T-Mobile Shadow 1.53
9. Motorola i335 1.53
10. Samsung Sync SGH-C417 1.51
The 10 best cell phones according to their SAR numbers:
1. LG KG800 0.135
2. Motorola Razr V3x 0.14
3. Nokia 9300 0.21
4. Nokia N90 0.22
5. Samsung SGH-G800 0.23
6. Samsung Sync SGH-A707 0.236
7. Nokia 7390 0.26
8. Samsung SGH-T809 0.32
9. Bang & Olufsen Serene 0.33
10. Motorola Razr2 V8 0.36
Source: CNET.com, current as of May 22, 2008
4. CELL PHONE CANCER RISK DEBATED
(UW researcher sees vindication)
BY
TOM PAULSON
More than a decade ago, the University of Washington's Henry Lai and his colleague Narenda "N.P." Singh reported that cell phones appear to emit enough electromagnetic radiation to cause the kind of DNA damage to brain cells that can lead to cancer.
Few paid much attention, and mobile phone use exploded. But the UW scientists said they became targets of an industry strategy aimed at discrediting and suppressing studies raising health concerns about cell phone radiation.
"They even wrote letters to the UW trying to get me fired," said Lai, a gentle man who laughs easily despite being on the losing side in a war between business and science.
The latest skirmish to shine a spotlight on this battle – which has moved mostly to Europe because of lack of research funding for it in the U.S. – came last week when a prominent cancer researcher, Dr. Ronald Herberman at the University of Pittsburgh, warned parents against letting young children ever use cell phones.
"Recently, I have become aware of the growing body of literature linking long-term cell phone use to possible adverse health effects, including cancer," Herberman wrote in an advisory that included brain imaging scans showing how radiation from cell phones penetrates much deeper into the heads of children compared with adults.
Herberman suggested that the electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phones should be of concern to adults as well, citing "unpublished data" from large studies done in Europe that – though not yet definitive – link cell phone use and brain cancers.
Lai, for his part, chuckled at the media frenzy Herberman caused.
"I guess it's only newsworthy when a cancer doctor, who hasn't done any of the research himself, discovers it," Lai said, grinning widely. "We've been saying this for more than a decade."
The UW bioengineering professor emphasized that there is no direct evidence showing that cell phone use causes cancer.
But in the decade since he was attacked by the cell phone industry – Motorola, to be specific – Lai said further epidemiological studies done in Europe show some indication of a cancer link.
Not everyone agrees.
"I consider it alarmist, premature and without any scientific basis," said Dr. Marc Chamberlain, a neuro-oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
The most alarming studies aren't that credible, Chamberlain said, and the more credible studies done on the potential risk of cancer from cell phone use have failed to document any link.
Herberman's warnings, Chamberlain said, are basically hearsay and border on irresponsible. Brain cancer does appear to be on the increase, Chamberlain said, so it's important not to alarm the public without concrete scientific facts.
John Walls, a spokesman for the cell phone industry trade association CTIA, agreed and noted that numerous studies reviewed by the American Cancer Society, the Food and Drug Administration and other scientific organizations agree that the majority of research shows no convincing evidence of increased cancer rates among cell phone users.
"That may be due to the fact that so many of these studies have been done by scientists funded by the industry," countered Louis Slesin, editor of Microwave News, a newsletter devoted to getting the word out on evidence of harm from various kinds of electromagnetic radiation.
Given the hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in the cell phone market, Slesin said, the industry is also trying to discredit or redirect the independent science in Europe.
Herberman, he said, was referring to the so-called Interphone study – a 13-country, $15 million European epidemiological study of tumor rates among cell phone users – which was completed in 2005 but remains unpublished because of disagreement among the scientists (some of them funded by industry) on how to interpret the results.
"Industry doesn't like the data," said Slesin, who has quoted some scientists who say the study clearly shows increased cancer rates among cell phone users. "The problem is that we still don't know and the science has been heavily politicized. Henry (Lai) was never alarmist. He just presented his findings and refused to budge from them."
That was in the mid-1990s. Lai and Singh published their findings of DNA damage in rats exposed to relatively low levels of the kind of radiation cell phone users get. At the time, the UW researchers had been working with Motorola, sharing findings and meeting the company's scientists.
"We thought they were collaborating and interested in the science," Singh said.
"We were naive," Lai said.
As they later discovered when an industry memo was leaked to Slesin, and published in 1997 in Microwave News, Motorola had secretly drafted a "war games" memo that aimed to use media relations, industry-paid scientists and any other means possible to discredit and suppress the scientists' findings.
One industry-sponsored scientist even wrote a letter to then-UW President Richard McCormick asking that Lai and Singh be fired, according to a UW spokesperson.
Motorola spokeswoman Paula Thornton Greear, in an e-mail to the Seattle P-I, denied that the company ever sought to suppress Lai's research but rather sought out independent review of the UW's findings.
She said: "It is noteworthy that, despite numerous attempts, other scientists have not been able to confirm Dr. Lai's claims of DNA breaks. In fact, recent scientific reviews have concluded that the weight of scientific evidence demonstrates that RF (radio frequency) exposure does not induce DNA breaks."
Lai noted with a chuckle that if you subtract from the literature all of the industry-funded scientific studies, most research shows evidence of health effects from cell phone use.
Scientists at other institutions they worked with lost funding and university positions as a result of this industry campaign. Lai said the UW, however, supported them despite the industry attacks, but the campaign succeeded in effectively eliminating independent studies of electromagnetism and health in the U.S.
"It's all being done in Europe now," he said.
Well, maybe not all of it. Dr. Sam Milham, a retired Washington state epidemiologist who has for many years studied the health effects of electromagnetic radiation, continues to pursue this question on his own time.
Milham, Lai and other international scientists have formed the BioInitiative Working Group dedicated to improving safety standards for exposure to electromagnetic radiation.
Milham has long believed that even household or office exposures to electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous. But it remains a hard sell, and a hard case to make scientifically.
"Look, people love their cell phones and microwave ovens," Milham said. "Nobody wants to hear this. And even though the corporations have cut off all the research money for this in the U.S., there's plenty of new data supporting this coming out of Europe."
Lai, however, emphasized that scientists still can't say with any certainty that using cell phones causes cancer. But he won't use a cell phone or a wireless headset, which he said puts out just as much radiation.
What the professor said he does know for certain, from personal experience, is the cell phone industry has worked hard to prevent science from resolving the uncertainty.
5. THE LIES OF HIROSHIMA LIVE ON, PROPS IN THE WAR CRIMES OF THE 20TH CENTURY
(The 1945 attack was murder on an epic scale. In its victims’ names, we must not allow a nuclear repeat in the Middle East)
BY
JOHN PILGER
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, “a bluish light, something like an electrical short”, after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. “I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead.” Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb’s blast. It was the first big lie. “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin” said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. “I write this as a warning to the world,” reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called “an atomic plague”. For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate “good war”, whose “ethical bath”, as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. “Even without the atomic bombing attacks,” concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, “air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that … Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including “capitulation even if the terms were hard”. Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was “fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager “to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: “There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the experiment”.
Since 1945, the United States is believed to have been on the brink of using nuclear weapons at least three times. In waging their bogus “war on terror”, the present governments in Washington and London have declared they are prepared to make “pre-emptive” nuclear strikes against non-nuclear states. With each stroke toward the midnight of a nuclear Armageddon, the lies of justification grow more outrageous. Iran is the current “threat”. But Iran has no nuclear weapons and the disinformation that it is planning a nuclear arsenal comes largely from a discredited CIA-sponsored Iranian opposition group, the MEK - just as the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction originated with the Iraqi National Congress, set up by Washington.
The role of western journalism in erecting this straw man is critical. That America’s Defence Intelligence Estimate says “with high confidence” that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons programme in 2003 has been consigned to the memory hole. That Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never threatened to “wipe Israel off the map” is of no interest. But such has been the mantra of this media “fact” that in his recent, obsequious performance before the Israeli parliament, Gordon Brown alluded to it as he threatened Iran, yet again.
This progression of lies has brought us to one of the most dangerous nuclear crises since 1945, because the real threat remains almost unmentionable in western establishment circles and therefore in the media. There is only one rampant nuclear power in the Middle East and that is Israel. The heroic Mordechai Vanunu tried to warn the world in 1986 when he smuggled out evidence that Israel was building as many as 200 nuclear warheads. In defiance of UN resolutions, Israel is today clearly itching to attack Iran, fearful that a new American administration might, just might, conduct genuine negotiations with a nation the west has defiled since Britain and America overthrew Iranian democracy in 1953.
In the New York Times on July 18, the Israeli historian Benny Morris, once considered a liberal and now a consultant to his country’s political and military establishment, threatened “an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland”. This would be mass murder. For a Jew, the irony cries out.
The question begs: are the rest of us to be mere bystanders, claiming, as good Germans did, that “we did not know”? Do we hide ever more behind what Richard Falk has called “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence”? Catching war criminals is fashionable again. Radovan Karadzic stands in the dock, but Sharon and Olmert, Bush and Blair do not. Why not? The memory of Hiroshima requires an answer.
6. MAKING NUCLEAR EXTERMINATION RESPECTABLE
BY
JAMES PETRAS
On July 18, 2008 The New York Times published an article by Israeli-Jewish historian, Professor Benny Morris, advocating an Israeli nuclear-genocidal attack on Iran with the likelihood of killing 70 million Iranians – 12 times the number of Jewish victims in the Nazi holocaust:
“Iran’s leaders would do well to rethink their gamble and suspend their nuclear program. Barring this, the best they could hope for is that Israel’s conventional air assault will destroy their nuclear facilities. To be sure, this would mean thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation. But the alternative is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”
Morris is a frequent lecturer and consultant to the Israeli political and military establishment and has unique access to Israeli strategic military planners. Morris’ advocacy and public support of the massive, brutal expulsion of all Palestinians is on public record. Yet his genocidal views have not precluded his receiving numerous academic awards. His writings and views are published in Israel’s leading newspapers and journals. Morris’ views are not the idle ranting of a marginal psychopath, as witnessed by the recent publication of his latest op-ed article in the New York Times.
What does the publication by the New York Times of an article, which calls for the nuclear incineration of 70 million Iranians and the contamination of the better part of a billion people in the Middle East, Asia and Europe, tell us about US politics and culture? For it is the NYT, which informs the ‘educated classes’ in the US, its Sunday supplements, literary and editorial pages and which serves as the ‘moral conscience’ of important sectors of the cultural, economic and political elite.
The New York Times provides a certain respectability to mass murder, which Morris’ views otherwise would not possess if say, they were published in the neo-conservative weeklies or monthlies. The fact that the NYT considers the prospect of an Israeli mass extermination of millions of Iranians part of the policy debate in the Middle East reveals the degree to which Zionofascism has infected the ‘higher’ cultural and journalist circles of the United States. Truth to say, this is the logical outgrowth of the Times public endorsement of Israel’s economic blockade to starve 1.4 million Palestinians in Gaza; the Times’ cover-up of Israeli-Zionist-AIPAC influence in launching the US invasion of Iraq leading to over one million murdered Iraqi citizens.
The Times sets the tone for the entire New York cultural scene, which privileges Israeli interests, to the point of assimilating into the US political discourse not only its routine violations of international law, but its threats, indeed promises, to scorch vast areas of the earth in pursuit of its regional supremacy. The willingness of the NYT to publish an Israeli genocide-ethnocide advocate tells us about the strength of the ties between a purportedly ‘liberal establishment’ pro-Israel publication and the totalitarian Israeli right: It is as if to say that for the liberal pro-Israel establishment, the nonJewish Nazis are off limits, but the views and policies of Judeo-fascists need careful consideration and possible implementation.
Morris’ New York Times ‘nuclear-extermination’ article did not provoke any opposition from the 52 Presidents of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO) because, in its daily information bulletin, Daily Alert, it has frequently published articles by Israeli and US Zionists advocating an Israeli and/or US nuclear attack on Iran. In other words, Morris’ totalitarian views are part of the cultural matrix deeply embedded in the Zionist organizational networks and its extensive ‘reach’ in US cultural and political circles. What the Times did in publishing Morris’ lunacy has taken genocidal discourse out of the limited circulation of Zionist influentials and into the mainstream of millions of American readers.
Apart from a handful of writers (Gentile and Jewish) publishing in marginal web sites, there was no political or moral condemnation from the entire literary, political and journalistic world of this affront to our humanity. No attempt was made to link Morris’ totalitarian genocidal policies to Israel’s public official threats and preparations for nuclear war. There is no anti-nuclear campaign led by our most influential public intellectuals to repudiate the state (Israel) and its public intellectuals who prepare a nuclear war with the potential to exterminate more than ten times the number of Jews slaughtered by the Nazis.
A nuclear incineration of the nation of Iran is the Israeli counterpart of Hitler’s gas chambers and ovens writ large. Extermination is the last stage of Zionism: Informed by the doctrine of rule the Middle East or ruin the air and land of the world. That is the explicit message of Benny Morris (and his official Israeli sponsors), who like Hitler, issues ultimatums to the Iranians, ‘surrender or be destroyed’ and who threatens the US, join us in bombing Iran or face a world ecological and economic catastrophe.
That Morris is utterly, starkly and clinically insane is beyond question. That the New York Times in publishing his genocidal ravings provides new signs of how power and wealth has contributed to the degeneration of Jewish intellectual and cultural life in the US. To comprehend the dimensions of this decay we need only compare the brilliant tragic-romantic German-Jewish writer, Walter Benjamin, desperately fleeing the advance of totalitarian Nazi terror to the Israeli-Jewish writer, Benny Morris’ criminal advocacy of Zionist nuclear terror published in the New York Times.
The question of Zionist power in America is not merely a question of a ‘lobby’ influencing Congressional and White House decisions concerning foreign aid to Israel. What is at stake today are the related questions of the advocacy of a nuclear war in which 70 million Iranians face extermination and the complicity of the US mass media in providing a platform, nay a certain political respectability for mass murder and global contamination. Unlike the Nazi past, we cannot claim, as the good Germans did, that ‘we did not know’ or ‘we weren’t notified’, because it was written by an eminent Israeli academic and was published in the New York Times.
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