Author's posts
Jan 10 2011
Permanent Bases U.S. Objective in Afghanistan?
Rahimullah Yusufzai is a Senior Analyst with the Pakistani TV channel Geo TV, and the Resident Editor of The News International in Peshawar, an English newspaper from Pakistan. He’s worked as a correspondent for Time Magazine, BBC World Service, BBC Pashto, BBC Urdu, Geo TV, and ABC News. Mr. Yusufzai has interviewed Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and a range of other militants across the tribal areas of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Here Yusufzai talks from Peshawar, Pakistan with Real News Network’s Paul Jay about the real U.S. objectives in Afghanistan, and notes that the U.S. now has more than 100,000 troops in AfPak fighting at the most a couple of hundred Al Qaeda members, with only 50 of them in Afghanistan.
Real News Network – January 10, 2011
Permanent Bases Objective in Afghan War?
Sen. Lindsay Graham may have revealed the real objective
with an open call for permanent bases in Afghanistan
…transcript follows…
Jan 09 2011
No Job, Broke, Worn Out, Sick, Tired, Fed Up, Hungry?
Economy looking dismal? You’re running low on hope? Motivation next to non-existent? Job market worse? Bills piling up on you? Collection agents hounding you? They repo’d your car and wall street took your house? You’ve had it with sleeping on the sidewalk? Your dealer won’t front you anymore?
You know in your heart that your impoverishment is all your own fault for being too lazy and shiftless to even pick up the phone, don’t you? Ask any television anchor or politician or any other self help guru and they’ll all tell you that.
But there is one solution left you haven’t tried yet, or you wouldn’t be wallowing in that pit of self pity.
Before you jump, try out your last resort, the one option that has been time and time again historically proven to always work, every time! Without fail!
Bend over, pull up your socks, grab your bootstraps, and get yourself some…
It’s the American Dream!
Jan 08 2011
Dem Rep Shot (to death?) in Arizona
RawStory: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords among ‘at least 12’ shot outside Tucson grocery store
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and six others died after a gunman opened fire at a public event on Saturday, the Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s office confirms.
The 40-year-old Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.
At least three other people, including members of her staff, were injured. Giffords was transported to University Medical Center in Tucson. Her condition was not immediately known.
Giffords was talking to a couple when the suspect ran up and fired indiscriminately from about four feet away, Michaels said.
[snip]
The suspect was described by witnesses as a young man in his late teens or early 20s. He has been taken into custody.The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said that up to 12 people were injured in the incident, and a witness told CNN they heard up to 20 gunshots.
NPR: Congresswoman, 6 Others, Killed By Gunman
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and six others died after a gunman opened fire at a public event on Saturday, the Pima County, Ariz., sheriff’s office confirms.
The 40-year-old Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting a “Congress on Your Corner” event at a Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.
At least three other people, including members of her staff, were injured. Giffords was transported to University Medical Center in Tucson. Her condition was not immediately known.
Giffords was talking to a couple when the suspect ran up and fired indiscriminately from about four feet away, Michaels said.
Jan 06 2011
“Guilty”
White House’s ‘insider threat’ program targets federal employees for surveillance
RawStory this morning…
In an effort to prevent another Bradley Manning, the Obama administration is urging all federal government agencies to watch its employees for signs they may be leaking classified information.
In a memo dated Monday, Jacob J. Lew, the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, directed government agencies that deal with classified information to ensure that they are in compliance with secrecy rules brought in after WikiLeaks’ release of classified material.
The document (PDF), which was leaked to NBC less than 48 hours after it was written, urges agencies to develop an “insider threat program” that would monitor employees for “behavioral changes” indicating they may be leaking classified documents or be willing to do so.
The document calls on agencies to hire psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the “despondence or grumpiness” of federal employees in order to “gauge trustworthiness.” It also urges the use of polygraph machines, and the monitoring of computer activities and signs of “high occurrences of foreign travel.”
Agencies are urged to “capture evidence of pre-employment and/or post-employment activities or participation in on-line media data mining sites like WikiLeaks or Open Leaks,” indicating that the administration wants to see personnel monitored even after they stop working for the federal government.
[snip]
As NBC noted, the White House may be [once again folding like a cheap suit] under pressure to show to the new Republican-dominated House that they are reacting swiftly and concretely to the WikiLeaks releases.
Jan 06 2011
One For Buhdy
Floatin’ down that old river boy, all my worries far behind,
Floatin’ down that old river boy, leave old memories way behind,
Yesterday is slowly fadin’,
All my life, I’ve been waitin’, for this time.
Floatin’ down that old river boy, leaves me feelin’ good inside,
Floatin’ down that old river boy, tryin’ to get to the other side,
Yesterday is slowly fadin’,
I been waitin’, now forever, for this ride.
Ride the river in this boat, ride the river.
Ride the river in this boat, ride the river.
Ride the river in this boat, ride the river.
Ride the river in this boat, ride the river.
Floatin’ down that old river boy, all my worries far behind,
Floatin’ down that old river boy, leave old memories way behind,
Yesterday is slowly fadin’,
I been waitin’, now forever, for this ride
Jan 05 2011
Social Security: Beyond Red and Blue
George Carlin said it bluntly a few years ago, and it was dismissed as comedy by more than a few who saw that it wasn’t – who saw that he he was using the comedic stage as a platform to deliver a serious warning, to pass on the truth as he saw it clearly:
They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying. Lobbying to get what they want. Well we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I’ll tell you what they don’t want. They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they’re getting f*cked by a system that threw them overboard 30 f*ckin’ years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers – obedient workers – people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paper work, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime, and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it.
And now they’re coming for your social security money.
They want your f*ckin’ retirement money. They want it back. So they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street.
Carlin was a unique talent – he had a stage presence that was fun to listen to and he had a way with phrasing and delivery that made the depressing message he had to pass on a little easier to swallow than dry facts would have.
Jan 02 2011
“The World Hates Us” says Government Website
‘Anonymous’ topples, defaces Zimbabwe government websites
RawStory, December 31, 2010
The Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu-PF) website, Zimbabwean government website and Zimbabwean Finance Ministry website were the target of cyber attacks on Thursday by a loose-knit group of online hacktivists known as “Anonymous.”
The websites were hit with distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks after Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s wife, Grace Mugabe, sued a newspaper for publishing a WikiLeaks cable that alleged she was connected with illicit diamond trade.
All three websites targeted by “Anonymous” were knocked offline and the Finance Ministry website was also defaced with messages saying “We are Anonymous” and “The world hates us, we kill our own people, we have no control of the economy, we repress free speech, we kill and rape for fun, we are Zanu-PF.”
The website AnonNews announced that the group was “targeting Mugabe and his regime in the ZanuPF who have outlawed the free press and threaten to sue anyone publishing Wikileaks.”
Jan 01 2011
The Free Lunch Economy vs. The Progressive Era
Under the first U.S. income tax law that was passed in 1913, only 1 percent of Americans were required to file income tax returns, and to be liable to file you would have had to be earning an annual income of about $120,000 in todays dollars. It was passed during a period called the Progressive Era: “a period of social activism and reform that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s” during which there were widespread “efforts to reform local government, education, medicine, finance, insurance, industry, railroads, churches, and many other areas” of American life.
It was a period of steady economic growth in the U.S. and produced a since unparalleled level of prosperity that lasted for decades. The politics of the era included the concept of an economy of high wages and the idea that American labor could undersell foreign labor by being highly paid, well clothed, well educated, healthier labor with high productivity. The concept of “free market” during the period was an entirely different concept than it is today.
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and is the author of “Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire” (1968 & 2003), “Trade, Development and Foreign Debt” (1992 & 2009) and of “The Myth of Aid” (1971).
ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Hudson acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide, including Iceland, Latvia and China, on finance and tax law.
As an advisor to the White House, the State Department and the Department of Defense at the Hudson Institute, and subsequently to the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Hudson has been one of the best known specialists in international finance. He also has consulted for the governments of Canada, Mexico and Russia, most recently for the Duma opposition to the Yeltsin regime.
Yesterday we heard Assistant Research Professor at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) Jeannette Wicks-Lim explain how currently most minimum wage earners in the U.S. can no longer the afford the basic necessities of life, and outline a proposal to combine minimum wage and earned income tax credit policies to guarantee a decent living wage for all.
Hudson here today talks with The Real News Networks’ Paul Jay and concludes that the the U.S economy can again outperform foreign economies with high wages, increased living standards, and with high top tier tax rates producing higher productivity – a progressive concept, like Wicks-Lim’s ideas, that is nearly the exact opposite of the free lunch economic ‘theories’ so widespread today that are behind wall street’s pillaging of the U.S. economy with the support of both major political parties.
Real News Network – January 1, 2011
Higher Taxes on Top 1% Equals Higher Productivity
Michael Hudson: The history of US shows that the economy grows
when top tier tax rates and workers wages are high
Jan 01 2011
It’s After Midnight… It’s All Over!
That sad excuse for a decade is gone. Over and done. History…. It’s After Midnight….
After midnight, we’re gonna chug-a-lug and shout
We’re gonna stimulate some action
We’re gonna get some satisfaction
We’re gonna find out what it is all about
After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang down
After midnight, we’re gonna shake your tambourine
After midnight, it’s all gonna be peaches and cream
We’re gonna cause talk and suspicion
We’re gonna give an exhibition
We’re gonna find out what it is all about
After midnight, we’re gonna let it all hang down
After Midnight
Dec 31 2010
Most Minimum Wage Earners Can’t Afford Necessities of Life
Jeannette Wicks-Lim completed her Ph.D. in economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2005, and now specializes in labor economics with an emphasis on the low-wage labor market and has an overlapping interest in the political economy of race, and is now Assistant Research Professor at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). She is author of a paper produced at PERI entitled Creating Decent Jobs in the United States (.PDF), in which she concludes that “collective bargaining presents a powerful way to turn the tide on the declining workers’ pay and benefits we have seen for decades“, finds that “a union worker has a 20 percent greater chance of having a decent job than a similar non-union worker“, and shows that “that there is no strong evidence that higher unionization rates lead to higher unemployment rates“.
Her dissertation: Mandated wage floors and the wage structure: Analyzing the ripple effects of minimum and prevailing wage laws (.PDF), is a study of the overall impact of mandated wage floors on wages.
In her dissertation Wicks-Lim provides empirical estimates of the extent to which mandated wage floors cause wage changes beyond those required by law, either through wage effects that ripple across the wage distribution or spillover to workers that are not covered by mandated wage floors.
When asked in an interview published at PERI “Though living wage laws may increase pay for some workers, by raising costs for employers might these laws have perverse effects on other workers? From a policy perspective, how do you reconcile the income benefits from living wages with their disemployment effects?“, Wicks-Lim replied with:
I think it is important to first consider whether an employer will actually need to reduce his/her workforce. Whether an employer will actually need to reduce his/her workforce has a lot to do with whether the law increases the costs of doing business significantly or not. The increased costs to employers are typically quite small – on the order of two percent or less of their sales revenues. For employers in the restaurant and hotel industry who are more affected by these laws, increased costs are typically on the order of three to four percent of their sales revenue. So, the fact that most employers face modest cost increases raises the question of whether there are other ways that these costs may be offset-perhaps through increased productivity and lower turnover rates of their now better-paid employees, or perhaps through modest price increases or small reductions in their profit margins. In fact, past research has indicated that minimum wage laws, for example, have not had large disemployment effects, suggesting that employers may react differently to these types of laws from what standard economic theory predicts.
Even for those employers that face more substantial cost increases, it’s important to consider their possible range of responses and then evaluate whether there is still a way to avoid disemployment effects, and if not, see if there is a way to minimize them so that the income benefits more than offset those negative effects.
Here Jeannette talks with Real News Network’s Paul Jay and makes a proposal to combine minimum wage and earned income tax credit policies to guarantee a decent living wage for all.
Real News Network – December 31, 2010
…transcript follows…
Dec 30 2010
Pentagon ‘War Games’ U.S. Economic Meltdown
‘Unified Quest 2011’: Pentagon ‘War Games’ U.S. Economic Meltdown
Hat Tip to MilitaryTracy for pointing me to this video…
Dec 29 2010
The Facade Is Crumbling
2011: A Brave New Dystopia
Chris Hedges, December 27, 2010
Orwell warned of a world where books were banned. Huxley warned of a world where no one wanted to read books. Orwell warned of a state of permanent war and fear. Huxley warned of a culture diverted by mindless pleasure. Orwell warned of a state where every conversation and thought was monitored and dissent was brutally punished. Huxley warned of a state where a population, preoccupied by trivia and gossip, no longer cared about truth or information. Orwell saw us frightened into submission. Huxley saw us seduced into submission. But Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Huxley understood the process by which we would be complicit in our own enslavement. Orwell understood the enslavement. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew, that unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse.
[snip]Our manufacturing base has been dismantled. Speculators and swindlers have looted the U.S. Treasury and stolen billions from small shareholders who had set aside money for retirement or college. Civil liberties, including habeas corpus and protection from warrantless wiretapping, have been taken away. Basic services, including public education and health care, have been handed over to the corporations to exploit for profit. The few who raise voices of dissent, who refuse to engage in the corporate happy talk, are derided by the corporate establishment as freaks.
And the hopeful and cheerful truth is: