american cities starting to fail in droves...,

DailyCensored | Due to the theft by Wall Street and powerful elites of the public largess, governments now must contend with painfully depreciated tax revenues due to falling revenue as the rich avoid taxation. This of course threatens to ruin city budgets along with pension funds and the like. In the wake of financial theft, cities and states are told they now must severely cut back on their spending, even as more working people and the poor need governmental services. Vallejo, California has had to declare bankruptcy as a recent example of the potential for exploding bankrupt cities. More might follow and if they do, this would mean ‘failed states’ both locally and nationally.

Take the following as a clue as to what might be lying in wait on the horizon:

• In Detroit, the problem has gotten so bad that a new proposal would deprive a fifth of the city of basic municipal services, like trash collection and police protection.
• Neighboring Hamtramck has run out of services to cut, and expects to spend its last dollar early this year.
• Prichard, Alabama, in a desperate response to depleted coffers, has illegally stopped paying pensions through contributions. Without pension checks, 11 retirees have died, according to the NYT. Others have declared personal bankruptcy. The rest of the 150 retired workers are struggling to get by.
• Newark has cut 13 percent of its police force.
• Camden, N.J., one of the nation’s most dangerous cities, has begun a process of cutting about half of its police department.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. For under capitalism, a system that puts profit before people in very aspect of life, the bond market tends to punish the weakest cities for this is how Wall Street works. As bond ratings agencies downgrade municipalities, and as investors become anxious, yields on municipal bonds rise, meaning it’s more expensive for cities to borrow money. “It’s a downward spiral,” George Rusnak, national director of fixed income for Wells Fargo, told the Wall Street Journal. A downward spiral indeed! One that promises to bring American working people down with it; or at least those, other than the elites, who have not funneled their money into secret foreign banks.

More and more America is eerily resembling a ‘banana Republic’ and one thing is for certain: if the policies of the International Monetary Fund applied to the US, the country would be told that it must privatize its institutions, cut social services and open up its economy to more neo-liberal policies. But the World Bank and the IMF policies do not apply to hypocritical America where asset stripping is done in plain daylight while a disconnected public munches on reality TV and Bread and Circus. Therefore the austerity program is carried out by the bankster’s and their coin operated representatives themselves. It is clearer each day that Rosa Luxembourg, the great German economist was right: “It is either socialism or barbarism.”

the financial crisis, the recession, and the american political economy: a systemic perspective

Video - Charles Ferguson is not sanguine about prospects for political hope or change.

mitworld | Charles Ferguson shows how useful a varied background in math, political science and business can be, as he dissects the complexities and recent crisis of the U.S. financial system. In a lecture that distills many of the arguments of his recent film, Inside Job, Ferguson conveys dispassionately yet persuasively the reasons we all should feel profound anxiety not only about the nation’s financial institutions, but about our economic and political future as well.

Ferguson details the “securitization food chain,” a system of investing (and gambling) with debt that U.S. financial institutions enthusiastically adopted around 15 years ago. Encouraged by friendly government policies, a handful of investment behemoths such as JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers began transforming the banking landscape, buying up mortgages and other forms of debt worth countless billions of dollars, and packaging these securities for buyers worldwide. Allied financial institutions became adept at selling cheap mortgages to ordinary people, creating an inflated housing market. Insurance and ratings companies bought in. The speed of growth and scale of this securities chain was unprecedented, recounts Ferguson -- as was its impact on the nation’s economy, both at the market’s peak, and after its collapse.

Ferguson provides a very detailed and pointed sidebar on industry incentives that underlay the wild growth years. These included allowing investment banks to bet on the failure of their own securities; and linking rating agencies’ income to their approval of risky securities. Individuals inside big institutions made out like bandits, because they could. Senior executives in places like Bear Stearns took out over $1 billion in cash each in the years prior to the 2008 collapse. The head of Countrywide Mortgage saw the end coming, and cashed out over $100 million in stock. Asks Ferguson, “Why was such extreme behavior permitted? I have to conclude there was a complete abdication on the part of the regulatory system.”

Ferguson finds galling both government apathy in regulating and in prosecuting high-end white collar crime, but perceives the reason: a financial services industry that “as it rapidly consolidated and concentrated became the dominant source not only of corporate profits but campaign contributions and political funding in the U.S.” Evidence for unrestrained financial power lies in the fact that the government response to the crisis has been engineered by Wall Street insiders intent on shoring up firms too big to fail. Ferguson cites as well “corruption of the economics discipline,” the rising role of money in politics, and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.

The dominance of a single industry constitutes a deep change and danger for America, believes Ferguson. The nation “has evolved a political duopoly where two political parties agree on things related to finance and money.” Without a political structure immune to such influence, Ferguson sees little likelihood of challenging the interests of the financial giants.

executing the "dispersal" algorithm...,

aljazeera | Islamophobes in and outside Congress are claiming that a mass 'radicalisation' of American Muslims is taking place. New York City's former mayor, Ed Koch, has taken time off from his new career as a film critic to offer a valentine to Rep. Peter King (R-NY), the new chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, for scheduling hearings on the dangers posed by Muslim Americans.

Koch's support for King is not surprising. Koch has always been open about his contempt for Arabs and Muslims and his belief that a war of civilisations is now in progress between Muslims and everyone else. He recently wrote:

For me, the question is this: will the secular Western civilisation shared by America and Europe, which allows us to enjoy life and its creature comforts, still be standing at the end of that war? Or will radical Islam, with an aggressive culture that treasures martyrdom and death over life, prevail.... [italics mine]

For years, Koch, King and others who share their anti-Muslim views hid behind that word: "radical". They said that they have no problem with Muslims as people or Islam as a religion. It is only "radical Islam" or "Islamists" that they can't abide.

Lately that caveat has been thrown to the winds. It is now clear that for Islamophobes (actually Islamohaters), "radical" Islam is just Islam. And "radical" Muslims are just Muslims.

A powerful example was recently offered by HBO commentator Bill Maher. Maher said in October that he was "alarmed" after reading that the most common name among newborns in the United Kingdom in 2009 was Muhammad.

Am I a racist to feel that I'm alarmed by that? Because I am. And it's not because of the race, it's 'cause of the religion. I don't have to apologise, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?

He then added: "I should be alarmed and I don't apologise for it." (After all, those baby Muhammads will grow up to be adult Muhammads).

Marty Peretz, former editor of The New Republic, did apologise, in a half-hearted way, for writing during the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy that American Muslims should not be protected by the Constitution.

He had written that Muslims simply are not "worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

His subsequent apology was so weak, and his record of race-baiting was so long and vitriolic that Peretz was forced out by The New Republic and quickly hotfooted it out of the United States for Israel where he told New York magazine last month that he could not possibly be a bigot.

[H]e mentioned two close, personal black friends, one who is "so fucking smart," and then a third, a black student whom he had plucked from Harvard and made the circulation director of The New Republic. "I hired Muslims - I hired Fareed Zakaria," he added.

Well, okay then.

collective blame is for muslims, not uhmurkans

Video - Young Turks breaks down the Palindrone.

Slate | Sarah Palin opposes collective blame for monstrous crimes, unless they're committed by Muslims. In today's Facebook post, Palin writes: "Recall how the events of 9-11 challenged our values and we had to fight the tendency to trade our freedoms for perceived security. And so it is today." Indeed. But when the events of 9/11 challenged our values, Palin surrendered. A decade later, she remains willing to trade freedom, not for security, but for "sensitivity" to her supporters' anger at Muslims generally. She's willing to issue blood libels and sacrifice people's freedoms. She just doesn't want the same done to her.

Sarah Palin is outraged. In a Facebook post this morning, she responds to critics who have suggested that her target map of Democrats, which put a crosshairs-like symbol over the district of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., may have contributed to the Tucson shooting. Palin writes:

After this shocking tragedy, I listened at first puzzled, then with concern, and now with sadness, to the irresponsible statements from people attempting to apportion blame for this terrible event. President Reagan said, "We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions." Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them, not collectively with all the citizens of a state, not with those who listen to talk radio, not with maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle, not with law-abiding citizens who respectfully exercise their First Amendment rights at campaign rallies … journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible

That's what Palin believes. Each person is solely accountable for his actions. Acts of monstrous criminality "begin and end with the criminals who commit them." It's wrong to hold others of the same nationality, ethnicity, or religion "collectively" responsible for mass murders.

Unless, of course, you're talking about Muslims. In that case, Palin is fine with collective blame. In fact, she's enthusiastic about it. Palin was the first national politician to join the jihad against what she called the "planned mosque at Ground Zero" (which wasn't a mosque and wasn't at Ground Zero, but let's cut her some slack). In her statement, issued six months ago on the same Facebook page where she now denounces collective blame, she wrote this

To build a mosque at Ground Zero is a stab in the heart of the families of the innocent victims of those horrific attacks. … I agree with the sister of one of the 9/11 victims (and a New York resident) who said: "This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists. I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened."

The last bit is a falsehood—proximity wasn't the motive for choosing the site—but again, let's cut Palin some slack. They key phrase to focus on is "a mosque." Palin used it twice—once in the quote, and once in her own words—so it can't be passed off as inadvertent. Her objection wasn't just to a specific imam or sect, much less to an identifiable terrorist. It was to any Islamic house of worship near Ground Zero.

Palin has never retracted this position. Indeed, she has persisted in her opposition to any mosque near Ground Zero. Her position is that the act of monstrous criminality on 9/11 doesn't end with the criminals who committed it. Its stigma extends to any mosque near the site. All Muslims should yield to that stigma. All Muslims are responsible.

notseeism...,

Video - claymation short version of Mysterious Stranger

LATimes | Sarah Palin's remarks Wednesday in which she accused critics who would tie her political tone to the Arizona shootings of committing a "blood libel" against her have prompted an instant and pronounced backlash from some in America's Jewish community.

The term dates to the Middle Ages and refers to a prejudice that Jewish people used Christian blood in religious rituals.

"Instead of dialing down the rhetoric at this difficult moment, Sarah Palin chose to accuse others trying to sort out the meaning of this tragedy of somehow engaging in a 'blood libel' against her and others," said David Harris, president of the National Democratic Jewish Council, in a statement. "This is of course a particularly heinous term for American Jews, given that the repeated fiction of blood libels are directly responsible for the murder of so many Jews across centuries -- and given that blood libels are so directly intertwined with deeply ingrained anti-Semitism around the globe, even today."

"The term 'blood libel' is not a synonym for 'false accusation,' " said Simon Greer, president of Jewish Funds for Justice. "It refers to a specific falsehood perpetuated by Christians about Jews for centuries, a falsehood that motivated a good deal of anti-Jewish violence and discrimination. Unless someone has been accusing Ms. Palin of killing Christian babies and making matzoh from their blood, her use of the term is totally out of line."

U.S. Rep Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head Saturday and remained in critical condition in a Tucson hospital, is Jewish.

predictable, preventable, just not in uhmurkah...,

Video - Raygun ropa-doping on the closure of mental hospitals.

WSJ | In Arizona, public mental-health services are among the worst in the nation. In a 2008 survey by the Treatment Advocacy Center, Arizona ranked next to last among all states in the number of psychiatric hospital beds per capita. If you don't have hospital beds and outpatient clinics to treat mentally ill people, those people don't get treated. Thus the tragedy was somewhat more likely to happen in Arizona because mentally ill individuals are less likely to receive treatment there. Although Arizona is the worst state, except for Nevada, in psychiatric-bed availability, there is no state that currently has enough beds for its mentally ill population, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center study. This tragedy occurred in Arizona, but it could easily have happened in any state.

The big picture is even scarier. Based on Arizona's 2010 population and on estimates by the National Institute of Mental Health of the number of individuals with untreated schizophrenia at any given time, there are today in Arizona over 21,000 individuals with untreated schizophrenia. Most of them, thankfully, are not violent. But a small number of them—about 10% according to my meta-analysis of relevant studies—do become violent, usually because of their delusional thoughts and what their voices (auditory hallucinations) are telling them. This situation holds in every state. It is thus not a question of if such tragedies will occur but rather when and how often.

Mr. Loughner's delusions fixated on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, one of 12 seriously injured in the shooting. Some have speculated on the possible relationship of our acrimonious political climate to the incident. It is, however, unlikely that there is any such relationship, since similar tragedies occur in politically harmonious times as well.

The motivation for such killings is usually based on psychotic thinking, not political thinking. Dennis Sweeney killed Allard Lowenstein because he believed that Lowenstein had implanted a transmitter in his teeth that was sending messages to him. Russell Weston stormed the Capitol because he believed the government had hidden a machine there that could reverse time.

wikileaks chief: charge palin and huckabee with incitement to murder

Video - Jullian Assange of Wikileaks. Should those calling for his murder should be held to account?

rawstory | The editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks called on US authorities to seek charges against high-profile Republicans Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee for "incitements to kill" by the use of "violent rhetoric" against the anti- secrecy outlet.

Julian Assange's plea came in a press release Monday night in the aftermath of the Tucson murders Saturday that left 6 dead and 14 others wounded, the victims of which included Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) and federal judge John Roll.

"No organisation anywhere in the world is a more devoted advocate of free speech than WikiLeaks but when senior politicians and attention seeking media commentators call for specific individuals or groups of people to be killed they should be charged with incitement -- to murder," Assange said, mentioning comments made by, among others, Palin and Huckabee, two likely contenders for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

In recent months, as WikiLeaks has engaged in the unauthorized leaks of embarrassing state secrets about the US and other countries, Huckabee has called for the "execution" of Assange, while Palin has urged authorities to pursue him "with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders."

"Those who call for an act of murder deserve as significant share of the guilt as those raising a gun to pull the trigger," said Assange, who is presently under house arrest in England and faces a court trial for alleged sex crimes.

WikiLeaks has likewise become the target of a criminal investigation by the Obama administration and has been cast as a villain by top Republicans, Democrats, and media figures, several of whom have likened him to a terrorist.

Assange cited commentators at Fox News and the conservative website TownHall.com for inflammatory language against his group, heeding the Arizona murders as a warning sign that violent rhetoric can perhaps lead to violence.

"WikiLeaks has many young staff, volunteers and supporters in the same geographic vicinity as these the broadcast or circulation of these incitements to kill," he said, adding: "We call on US authorities and others to protect the rule of law by aggressively prosecuting these and similar incitements to kill."

european politicos protest doj wikileaks-twitter probe

CNET | On Friday, Twitter notified a handful of its subscribers with ties to Wikileaks that the U.S. Justice Department had obtained a court order for their "subscriber account information." The order covers accounts linked to Wikileaks including those of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private accused of leaking classified documents; Seattle-based Wikileaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum; Dutch hacker and XS4ALL Internet provider co-founder Rop Gonggrijp; and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic parliament.

The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe hosted Assange and Jónsdóttir at an event in July 2010 devoted to protecting free speech. (Iceland enjoys close economic ties with the EU and has applied for full membership.)

We defend "the right to offend which is an essential part of freedom of expression, and we will stand with those who come under pressure to freely express their views," Alexander Lambsdorff, a member of the European Parliament from Germany, said at the event.

Around the same time, the U.S. government began a criminal investigation of Wikileaks and Assange after the Web site began releasing what would become a deluge of confidential military and State Department files. In November, Attorney General Eric Holder said that the probe is "ongoing," and a few weeks later an attorney for Assange said he had been told that a grand jury had been empaneled in Alexandria, Va.

The court order to Twitter (PDF), signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan in Alexandria, Va., is the first public evidence of this investigation. The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, CNET previously reported, will represent Jónsdóttir (but not the other account holders) and oppose the court order sought by prosecutors.

"It sort of feels to me as if they've become quite desperate," Jónsdóttir said at an conference in Canada today, referring to the Justice Department. She said prosecutors shouldn't expect to obtain much from accounts used by such a security-conscious, encryption-savvy cadre of activists: "None of us would ever use Twitter messaging to say anything sensitive."

Prosecutors send subpoenas to and serve other legal process on Web sites and Internet service providers every day. But because Jónsdóttir is one of 63 members of Iceland's national parliament who serves on the foreign affairs committee, the order appears to have caused an international diplomatic incident outside of Europe as well: last weekend, the Icelandic government summoned U.S. ambassador Luis Arreaga to a meeting.

Earlier today, P.J. Crowley, the U.S. State Department's spokesman, gave a speech in Washington, D.C. that defended the Obama administration's legal pursuit of Wikileaks:

WikiLeaks is about the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. It is not an exercise in Internet freedom. It is about the legitimate investigation of a crime. It is about the need to continue to protect sensitive information while enabling the free flow of public information...

We remain arguably the most transparent society in the world. The American people, through innovations including C-SPAN, are a well-informed citizenry, which is crucial to a functioning democracy. We can have a discussion about how well our democracy is functioning, and whether political figures are spending more time pandering or posturing on television than actually governing.

We are a nation of laws, and the laws of our country have been violated. Since we function under the rule of law, it is appropriate and necessary that we investigate and prosecute those who have violated U.S law. Some have suggested that the ongoing investigation marks a retreat from our commitment to freedom of expression, freedom of the press and Internet freedom. Nonsense. These are universal principles and our commitment is unwavering.

A preliminary legal brief (PDF) that Assange's lawyers filed with the London court today takes issue with that characterization of the U.S. legal system, arguing: "If Mr. Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well-known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr. Assange should be executed."

have wikileaks msm "collaborators" edited cable contents?

IsraelShamir | Although the net tightens around Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, the contents of the US embassy cables have been doled out to us in spoonfuls. Worse, The Guardian edits and distorts the cables in order to protect their readers from unflattering remarks about how their corporations behave overseas. This is not a conjecture but a fact: The Guardian has deliberately excised portions of published cables to hide evidence of corruption.

A year ago, on the 25th of January, 2010, the US Embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan sent out the secret cable ASTANA 000072, entitled KAZAKHSTAN: MONEY AND POWER. The cable chronicled the US Ambassador’s private dinner with a senior Kazakh government official named Maksat Idenov. At the time, Idenov headed the Kazakh state oil and gas company and represented the state in its dealings with foreign oil companies, including British Gas and ENI. A redacted version of the cable has been published, and so we have been given the rare privilege of viewing The Guardian’s editing process in action. It looks like nothing so much as political self-censorship.

Here is the relevant portion of the Astana cable; the words removed by The Guardian are printed in bold:

“… market economy means capitalism, which means big money, which means large bribes for the best connected.”

Why does The Guardian wish to conceal evidence of corruption in Kazakhstan? Are there Blairites ensconced in The Guardian’s editing room? It does seem like someone at The Guardian wants to save us from becoming disillusioned about free markets. Is the free market incompatible with free speech? The Guardian is not shy about revealing to their readers that capitalism means “big money”, but a discussion of what big money can do to a foreign government is strictly verboten. Idenov is not some discontented outsider; he is a power player in the heart of the machine. He knows of which he speaks. The readers of The Guardian may never get to hear it, but the “big money” of capitalism does in reality result in “large bribes for the best connected”.

Just before dinner, Idenov was overheard “barking into his cell phone” at British Gas (BG) Country Director Mark Rawlings “who is ‘still playing games with Mercator's James Giffin,’ the notorious AmCit fixer indicted for large-scale bribery on oil deals in the 1990s, whose case drags on in the Southern District Court of New York. Idenov tells him: ‘Mark, stop being an idiot! Stop tempting fate! Stop communicating with an indicted criminal!’ ”

Again, the bold and very relevant information of the Astana cable has been removed from publication so that British taxpayers might not learn that the regional director of a prominent British company insists on dealing with an indicted grafter. The readers of The Guardian may never know that the case of American citizen (“AmCit”) James Giffen (spelled incorrectly in the cable) was dismissed by US District Judge William H. Pauley III because the bribes he gave to the Kazakh officials were authorized by the CIA. The judge publicly lauded the “notorious fixer” as a Cold War warrior who helped the Jewish cause (always an exonerating feature within the US justice system) and stated for the record that “his business dealings were CIA-authorized operations”.

“Mr. Giffen was a significant source of information for the U.S. government and a conduit for secret communications to the Soviet Union and its leadership during the Cold War,” Pauley said. In Kazakhstan, Giffen was advancing US interests, including corporate interests. “He acted as a conduit for communications on issues vital to America’s national interest in the region,” the judge said.

“Oil industry middleman James H. Giffen, once accused of funneling $84 million in bribes to the president of Kazakhstan and other officials” walked away a free and rich man. Perhaps our man Rawlings knew a little more about Giffen’s CIA connections than did the Ambassador and Mr. Idenov.

The Guardian’s final cut takes the proverbial cake. Idenov goes on to say that both BG and Italy's ENI are corrupt, and that bribe-hungry Kazakh officials are itching to work with them. This portion of the cable was completely excised.

The only portion of the cable that The Guardian felt worthy of highlight was that the currently favoured presidential son-in-law was “on the Forbes 500 list of billionaires (as is his wife separately)”. Furthermore, the redacted cable was dropped onto the pages of The Guardian without any background information or further comment. Kazakhstan is not next-door, and Guardian readers deserve better. Here is what they left out of the story: Idenov left the state’s service in May 2010 and in July he re-emerged as –surprise, surprise - the Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning of ENI. Yes, none other than that selfsame “corrupt” ENI he dealt with from his ministerial desk.

The Astana cable is a microcosm of the robbery of the ex-Soviet space by Western corporations. From it we learn that bribes are authorized by the CIA and that the grafters are exonerated by the US courts. We learn that Harvard-trained lawyers like Mr. Idenov take full advantage of the revolving door between positions of state and the Western corporations that rob it. In short, we learn that “capitalism means large bribes for the best connected.” The readers of The Guardian, of course, missed out on all this.

is free will simply a myth?

Independent | The uncomfortable truth about mind control. In the Sixties, a groundbreaking series of experiments found that 65 per cent of us would kill if ordered to do so. We have vain brains; we see ourselves as better than we really are. We like to think that we exercise free will, that put into a situation where we were challenged to do something we thought unacceptable then we'd refuse. But, if you believe that, then you are probably deluded.

I make this claim, based partly on the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram devised and carried out ingenious experiments that exposed the frailty and self-delusion that are central to our lives. He showed how easy it is to make ordinary people do terrible things, that "evil" often happens for the most mundane of reasons.

I first read about Milgram's work when I was a banker in the Seventies, working in the City. I was so fascinated by his ideas that I re-trained as a doctor, with the intention of becoming a psychiatrist. Instead I became a science journalist. Recently I got the chance to make The Brain: A Secret History
, a television series which reveals how much we have learnt about ourselves through the work of some of the 20th century's most influential, and deeply flawed, psychologists.

In the course of making the series we found rare archive and first-hand accounts of the many inventive and sometimes sinister ways in which experimental psychology has been used to probe, tease, control and manipulate human behaviour. High on the list of psychologists I wanted to learn more about was Stanley Milgram.

Milgram once wrote that we are "puppets controlled by the strings of society". Yet what is also true is that not all puppets jump when their strings are pulled. Many of the fast-food managers who were rung up the "policeman" refused to follow his orders. In Milgram's own experiment, although 65 per cent of the volunteers were prepared to give apparently lethal electric shocks, that still left 35 per cent who would not.

What no experimenter has yet been able to predict are the characteristics that mark out those who will rebel from the rest. The only way you will ever know how you measure up is when you find yourself tested. You have a one in three chance of passing.

they can't get away from themselves fast enough now...,

hate encoded in conservative cultural DNA...,

Guardian | In the US, where hate rules at the ballot box, this tragedy has been coming for a long time. The shooting of Gabrielle Giffords may lead to the temporary hibernation of rightwing rage, but it is encoded in conservative DNA.

It was instructive to read elected Republicans' official statements in response to the Gabrielle Giffords shooting for what they did not say. The House Speaker, John Boehner, said: "An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve. Acts and threats of violence against public officials have no place in our society. Our prayers are with congresswoman Giffords, her staff, all who were injured and their families. This is a sad day for our country." Arizona Senator John McCain issued the following: "I am horrified by the violent attack on representative Gabrielle Giffords and many other innocent people by a wicked person who has no sense of justice or compassion. I pray for Gabby and the other victims, and for the repose of the souls of the dead and comfort for their families. Whoever did this, whatever their reason, they are a disgrace to Arizona, this country and the human race."

All well and good, and I have no doubt every word is sincere. But you'll note that they are silent on the question of the violent rhetoric that emanates from the rightwing of American society. You don't have to believe that alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, is a card-carrying Tea Party member (he evidently is not) to see some kind of connection between that violent rhetoric and what happened in Arizona on Saturday.

Is he a nut? Of course he's a nut. By definition, anyone who shoots innocent people like that has a screw loose. But nuts come in many varieties. There are some who think Dick Cheney planned 9/11, others who believe the CIA has installed eavesdropping devices in their fillings, and still others who insist they're the reincarnation of Mary Queen of Scots. So what particular type of nut is Loughner? We don't have a full picture yet. But we have enough of one. His coherent ravings included the conviction that the constitution assured him that "you don't have to accept the federalist laws". He called a female classmate who had an abortion a "terrorist".

In sum, he had political ideas, which not everyone does. Many of them (not all, but most) were right wing. He went to considerable expense and trouble to shoot a high-profile Democrat, at point-blank range right through the brain. What else does one need to know? For anyone to attempt to insist that the violent rhetoric so regularly heard in this country had no likely effect on this young man is to enshroud oneself in dishonesty and denial.

the rightwing's murky landscape...,

NYTimes | When John F. Kennedy visited Dallas in November of 1963, Texas was awash in right-wing anger — over perceived cold-war betrayals, over desegregation, over the perfidies of liberalism in general. Adlai Stevenson, then ambassador to the U.N., had been spit on during his visit to the city earlier that fall. The week of Kennedy’s arrival, leaflets circulated in Dallas bearing the president’s photograph and the words “Wanted For Treason.”

But Lee Harvey Oswald was not a right-winger, not a John Bircher, not a segregationist. Instead, he was a Marxist of sorts (albeit one disillusioned by his experiences in Soviet Russia), an activist on behalf of Castro’s Cuba, and a man whose previous plot had been aimed at a far-right ex-general named Edwin Walker. The anti-Kennedy excesses of Texas conservatives were real enough, but the president’s assassin acted on a far more obscure set of motivations.

Nine years after Kennedy was killed, George Wallace embarked on his second campaign for the presidency. This was the early 1970s, the high tide of far-left violence — the era of the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, the Symbionese Liberation Army — and Wallace’s race-baiting politics made him an obvious target for protests. On his final, fateful day of campaigning, he faced a barrage of coins, oranges, rocks and tomatoes, amid shouts of “remember Selma!” and “Hitler for vice president!”

But Arthur Bremer, who shot Wallace that afternoon, paralyzing him from the waist down, had only a tenuous connection to left-wing politics. He didn’t care much about Wallace’s views on race: he just wanted to assassinate somebody (Richard Nixon had been his original target), as “a statement of my manhood for the world to see.”

It’s possible that Jared Lee Loughner, the young man behind Saturday’s rampage in Tucson, will have a more direct connection to partisan politics than an earlier generation’s gunmen did. Indeed, many observers seem to be taking a kind of comfort from that possibility: there’s been a rush to declare this tragedy a teachable moment — an opportunity for people to cool their rhetoric, abandon their anger, and renounce the kind of martial imagery that inspired Sarah Palin’s PAC to place a target over Gabrielle Giffords’s district just months before Loughner gunned down the Arizona congresswoman.

But chances are that Loughner’s motives will prove as irreducibly complex as those of most of his predecessors in assassination. Violence in American politics tends to bubble up from a world that’s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue — a murky landscape where worldviews get cobbled together from a host of baroque conspiracy theories, and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast.

the iron heel

Video - Excerpt from Jack London's 1908 Classic The Iron Heel

Wikipedia | The Iron Heel is a dystopian novel by American writer Jack London, first published in 1907.

Generally considered to be "the earliest of the modern Dystopian," it chronicles the rise of an oligarchic tyranny in the United States. It is arguably the novel in which Jack London's socialist views are most explicitly on display. A forerunner of soft science fiction novels and stories of the 1960s and 1970s, the book stresses future changes in society and politics while paying much less attention to technological changes.[citation needed]

The book is uncommon among London's writings (and in the literature of the time in general) in being a first-person narrative of a woman protagonist written by a man.

Video - Books of 1908.

capital's war against wikileaks

Video - What is the Matrix?

Al-Jazeera | As a political theorist, Assange leaves something to be desired. "Neocorporatism" describes a system in which capital and labour are enmeshed in an integrated but ultimately dependent relationship with a powerful and autonomous state apparatus - an update of the triangular relationship that enabled unprecedented economic growth and gains for the working class in the West in the decades after World War II.

Ideologically, this kind of close working relationship between government, big business and organised labour is the antithesis of the neoliberal system WikiLeaks seeks to combat.

But Assange is right that there is something "neo", if not exactly new, in the way the corporate sector is behaving today and its relationship with government. It lies in the embrace - or better, re-embrace - of finance capitalism and militaristic empire and the military industrial complex that sustains it.

Whether preying on unwitting consumers in middle America or preying on suspected insurgents in the Middle East, these are two of the most secretive sectors of the American economy. They depend on the public knowing as little as possible about their inner workings to secure the greatest possible freedom of action, power and profits.

The power of secrecy
Assage's abandonment by the Swiss banking system and its American corporate cousins is thus not surprising. Few industries have used secrecy and lack of disclosure more effectively than the banking, financial services and credit card industries.

Indeed, their secretive business practises are central to their constant ability to rake in enormous profits at the expense of working and middle class Americans through monopolising trading systems, charging morally usurious interest rates and fees, and engaging in other practises that would make even the most cold-hearted lone shark blush.

If the grand bargain between workers, capitalists and governments enabled the first two post-World War II generations to move from high school right into the middle class, this road was irreparably damaged by the 1980s, when the neoliberal Right first came to power.

As the United States entered its long and painful era of deindustrialization American foreign policy became more aggressively militaristic; and so joining the military as opposed to GM or Ford became one of the few routes to secure any kind of stable economic future (as long as you stayed in the military).

Not surprisingly, profits from the financial sector surpassed that of manufacturing in the early 1990s and haven't dropped since. But these profits and the economic growth they generated have relied disproportionately on government and consumer debt and a hollowing out of the manufacturing sector, which together helped make the US the "sick man of the globe", as one senior corporate economist.

For their part, GM, Ford and Chrysler simultaneously focused most of their energies on producing comparatively profitable gas-guzzlers like SUVs while establishing financial services arms that quickly became responsible for a substantial share of their profits (in some years upwards of 90 percent of profits are so derived).

Their lending practises, it's worth noting, included the kinds of "liar" home loans, given out with little concern over the ability of borrowers to pay them, that precipitated the global economic crisis of 2007 till today.

Financialisation and history
None of these practises would have withstood the light of public scrutiny, and it was only the corporatisation - in good measure, financialization - of American politics that allowed them to flourish in the last thirty years. Few enterprises threaten that secrecy as much as WikiLeaks and its laser-like focus on openness, which is why its actions are viewed in Washington as "striking at the very heart of the global economy".

The "financialisation" of the economy represents the increasing dominance of the financial industries in the overall economy, taking over "the dominant economic, cultural, and political role in a national economy".

Crucially, this process isn't unique to the United States; it also happened to previous empires, like the Hapsburg's, Dutch and British empires, at precisely the eras they lost their dominant global position. In all cases, financialism and militarism went hand in hand, as first pointed out by the British historian John Hobson's famous 1902 book Imperialism: A Study.

In it, Hobson argued that the monopolisation of the financial sector created a new oligarchy that linked together the large banks and industrial firms together with "war mongers and speculators" which encouraged imperialism to secure markets for the surplus products produced by corporations.

naked capitalism

Video - Old commercial for the The Lodge.

NYTimes | Dallas clubs run the gamut, from parolee and sailors-on-leave sorts of dives where a mild-mannered writer has no business being, to the high-end establishments with their slathers of French Quarter swank, heavy on gilt and red-velvet. At the Lodge, Dallas’s most upscale club, alcohol sales are up more than 11 percent from last year. “We’re doing better than real estate,” is how Michael Precker, the co-manager, put it.

Even in a market as competitive as Dallas, which is home to upward of 40 topless clubs, neither Mr. Precker nor Dawn Rizos, the chief executive of the Lodge, could think of a single club that’s closed its doors during the past two years. But what, a neophyte might wonder, made Dallas a mecca for strip clubs?

“Because we’re in the Bible Belt,” said Ms. Rizos. “There’s a church on every block, and men just like to sneak around. Most of our customers are married men. They get a little bored with their wives, they can come in here and get some flirtation, our girls make them feel good and special, then they go home and feel so guilty about it that they treat their wives really nicely.”

“It’s very Baptist,” she continued. “If you’re going to give up sin, you got to sin.”

We were having this conversation in the Champagne Room, which with its oak barrels, jeroboams and country-manor décor could pass for the tasting room of a Napa winery. The Library Room features dark wood paneling, club chairs and shelves lined with books-by-the-foot; think of the Harvard Club, except with lots of beautiful, naked women. Ms. Rizos, the daughter of two doctors and sister to three more, opened the Lodge in 1996, in part with money invested from her mother and siblings. (“No bank was going to lend me money to build this place,” she snorted.)

Ms. Rizos was determined to offer the best food, the prettiest women, the most luxurious setting. She was equally determined that the Lodge would be a good place to work, and so the club has an on-site spa and salon for employees, an on-site wardrobe service, a full-time house mother and a points system for bonuses. Dancers can get tax and investment advice, as well as tuition money for college.

“This is a club that’s structured for the girls to make money,” one dancer told me, a young woman from Milwaukee who traveled to Dallas solely to work at the Lodge. “Most clubs want their cut of pretty much anything that runs through your hands, and this club isn’t like that.”

Be smart, Ms. Rizos and Mr. Precker tell their dancers. Save your money, get educated, buy property. Plan for life after dancing. Some of the waitresses make over $100,000 a year, the top dancers well in excess of that. Ms. Rizos’s business model makes a strong case for small-scale capitalism, a model where the focus is long-term, your people are taken care of, and the pay scale is such that everyone is making money.

arizona the mecca for prejudice and bigotry?

Video - Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima AZ calls out rightwing hate.

CNN | In the wake of the shooting of a congresswoman and 19 other people, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik told the news media Saturday that he blamed "the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business."

"The bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous," he said. "And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."

Bingo. Take it from me. I lived in Phoenix in the late 1990s while writing for The Arizona Republic. Dupnik got it exactly right.

Raise your hand if you have had it with the drama capital of America, which seems to spend more time on the front page than the other 49 states combined. Or if you think the Grand Canyon State has become, in recent years, more trouble than it's worth. Or if you feel like saying, to paraphrase what folk singer Phil Ochs said about Mississippi in the 1960s: "Here's to the people you've torn out the heart of. Arizona, find yourself another country to be part of."

The latest heartbreak comes from Saturday's horrific shooting rampage in Tucson. What authorities believe started as the attempted assassination of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords at an outdoor constituent meeting turned into a mass shooting that killed six people and wounded more than a dozen, including Giffords.

The deceased include U.S. District Court Judge John Roll, Gifford's Community Outreach Director Gabriel Zimmerman and 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green of Tucson.

The alleged shooter, 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner, used a 9mm Glock holding a magazine with more than 30 rounds. A lot more people might have been killed if heroic bystanders had not tackled Loughner to the ground and wrestled the gun away.

The shooting comes in a state that has been malfunctioning for years.

Just ask Arizona's large and embattled Latino population, which has had to fight off everything from attempts to do away with ethnic studies to a notorious immigration law that all but mandates racial profiling by local and state police. The next battle, expected to start in a few weeks, will be trying to stop state lawmakers from seeking to undermine the 14th Amendment by denying birth certificates to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.

In 1990, state lawmakers stubbornly refused to honor Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a state holiday. That cost the state an estimated $100 million when the NFL pulled the Super Bowl from the Phoenix area in protest. Two years later, Arizona voters finally gave in and approved a ballot initiative creating a holiday.

Before that, in 1988, Arizona became one of the first states in the country to declare English its "official language" when voters approved Proposition 106, an unnecessary and divisive ballot initiative that required all state and local government business be conducted in English. Ten years later, the Arizona Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

Throughout the 20th century, Arizona was a Southwestern bastion of unbridled racism and discrimination. Restaurants had signs in windows that read: "No dogs or Mexicans allowed."

Now, Dupnik and other Arizonans warn that sort of intolerance and meanness is back with a vengeance. This is where Arizona is headed now that it has removed the stigma from extremism and sanctioned narrow-mindedness.

was tuscon shooter tied to amren?

CSMonitor | On Sunday, Fox News quoted a Department of Homeland Security memo that states Mr. Loughner is "possibly linked" to American Renaissance, which DHS says promotes views that are "anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG [Zionist Occupational Government], anti-Semitic." Both Giffords and Mr. Zimmerman are Jewish.

American Renaissance is the publication of the The New Century Foundation, described by the Anti-Defamation League as a "self-styled think tank." The ADL, on its website, calls American Renaissance a "white supremacist journal and companion Website" that "promotes pseudoscientific studies that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies."

The DHS memo quoted on Fox goes on to say: "Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the target of Loughner’s firing frenzy, is the first Jewish female elected to such a high position in the US government. She was also opposite this group’s ideology when it came to immigration debate."

"When you look at Loughner's web posts, he puts himself out as half fantasy seeker and dreamer and half political philosopher, and American Renaissance, while a hate group, markets itself as a political philosophy organization," says Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, at San Bernardino.

Mark Pitcavage, director of investigative research at the Anti-Defamation League, is skeptical about any hard connection between Loughner and American Renaissance.

"The fans of American Renaissance tend to be older and they tend to be intellectuals or pseudo-intellectuals," says Mr. Pitcavage. "Based on the limited nature of [Loughner's] internet footprint suggesting his thoughts and beliefs, there's nothing to lead one to think he would lean that way. It's perplexing to us that there is a notion of a substantial connection."

In Arizona, particularly, immigration issues, including the passage of a tough anti-immigration law last year, overlapped with parts of the broader tea party agenda. Giffords narrowly defeated a tea party candidate in November's election. She supported the federal health-care reform law and spoke out against Arizona's tough anti-immigration law, both counter to her tea party opponent. American Renaissance's website carries what appears to be a paid tea party advertisement featuring the "Don't Tread on Me" flag that's become synonymous with many of the movement's protests.

After the shooting, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Democrat in a largely Republican state, condemned "the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government." But the potential link to American Renaissance frames the shooting in a different, and possibly more complex, light.

The New Century Foundation was founded by Yale University graduate Jared Taylor, the author of several books on race and policy who has has written that diversity is "dangerous" because it is "one of the most divisive forces on the planet."

Mr. Taylor has become a well-known and oftentimes mainstream commentator on race and immigration issues, having appeared on networks like CNN as well as hard-right radio shows. The ADL describes his bailiwick as "intellectualized white supremacy."

uh..uhn..., teabagger talk, threats, and hate didn't cause this!!!!

NYTimes | Ms. Giffords is a centrist Democrat who won re-election in part by stressing her strong support for gun rights and for tougher immigration controls, including tighter border security, even though she opposed the controversial Arizona law.

Last March, after the final approval of the Democrats’ health care law, which Ms. Giffords supported, the windows of her office in Tucson were broken or shot out in an act of vandalism. Similar acts were reported by other members of Congress.

In August 2009, when there were demonstrations against the health care measure across the nation, a protester who showed up to meet Ms. Giffords at a supermarket event similar to Saturday’s was removed by the police when the pistol he had holstered under his armpit fell and bounced on the floor.

In an interview at the Capitol this week, Ms. Giffords said she was excited to count herself among the Democrats who joined the new Republican majority in reading the Constitution aloud from the House floor. She said she was particularly pleased with being assigned the reading of the First Amendment.

“I wanted to be here,” she said. “I think it’s important. Reflecting on the Constitution in a bipartisan way is a good way to start the year.”

As a Democrat, Ms. Giffords is something of anomaly in Arizona and in her district, which has traditionally tilted Republican. Last year, she barely squeaked to victory over a Republican challenger, Jesse Kelly. But she had clearly heard the message that constituents were dissatisfied with Democratic leaders in Washington.

At the Capitol last week, Ms. Giffords refused to support the outgoing Democratic House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California, in her symbolic contest with the Republican, Mr. Boehner of Ohio. Instead, she cast her vote for Representative John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat and hero of the civil rights movement.

did the CIA funnel drugs into poor US neighborhoods?

Video - Russia Times CIA funnels drugs into poor US neighborhoods

Russia Times | There is a long and expanding history of American tax payer dollars being used to help certain people get rich off of illicit drug sales.

Gang violence has been a part of some Los Angeles neighborhoods for decades, but it wasn’t until the 1980’s that gang members saw their biggest money making opportunity with crack cocaine. Little did they know that the CIA was using them as pawns in a larger scheme by allowing the more affordable drug to come into their neighborhood.

Freeway Ricky Ross, one of America’s biggest drug dealers, unwittingly became a main player in the Central American drug connection, which sent millions of American dollars in drug money to Nicaragua.The CIA’s plan was to promote and finance the Contra revolutionary group, which was trying to depose the Socialist Sandinista government in the Central American country.

“Russia had given the Sandinistas a hundred million dollars to fight with. Congress had cut off all the money from the contras, so now, the Sandinistas had the advantage,” said Ricky Ross.

President Ronald Reagan and then Vice President George H. W. Bush fretted over Soviet influence in Nicaragua.

“They would be in our backyard.I believe that they felt it was more valuable to sacrifice a particular sector of America, and a race of people in America in order to save the whole country,” said Ross.

Former LAPD detective and author Michael Ruppert has written extensively about the government’s involvement in drug trafficking around the world.He says politics isn’t the only motive.

“The control of the cash from the drug trade is of vital importance to wall street, because drug profits are laundered under corporations and banks net profits,” said Ruppert.

The CIA’s policy of looking the other way wasn’t just for the benefit of big business or crushing revolutionary movements abroad.Domestically, drugs and drug lords were used to quell black activist movements that challenged the status quo.

just another day of barbarism in the empire...,

Video - Univision coverage of the arrest of child assassin El Ponchis and his sister.

aljazeera | Police found the bodies of 15 slain men, 14 of them decapitated, on a street outside a shopping centre in the Pacific coast resort of Acapulco.

Police in the southern state of Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, said on Saturday that handwritten signs were left with the bodies, a common calling card of Mexico's cartels.

Acapulco has seen bloody turf battles between drug gangs in recent years.

"On the sidewalk of the Plaza Senderos shopping centre were the decapitated bodies of 15 males, between 25 and 30 years of age," said the police report.

"The heads were found in one single place, with the exception of one that was half severed from the body and with an impact of a projectile from a firearm."

It was the largest single group of decapitation victims found in recent years. In 2008, a group of 12 decapitated bodies were piled outside the Yucatan state capital of Merida. The same year, nine headless men were found in the Guerrero state capital of Chilpancingo.

In keeping with a policy designed not to give the cartels publicity, state police did not release the text of the messages found with the bodies.

But Reforma newspaper reported that they referred to the Sinaloa cartel, headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.

Reforma said they apparently indicated the victims were killed by the Sinaloa cartel for trying to intrude on the gang's turf and extort residents.

Bloody turf war

Several Mexican states have become the focal point of turf wars between drug cartels who seem to take pride in the mounting body count their battles leave behind, sometimes displaying bodies, other times posting Youtube videos of their kills.

Guerrero, the southwestern state where Acapulco is located, is a stronghold of the notoriously bloody La Familia drug cartel, which is waging a war with the equally dangerous Zetas and its ally the Pacifico Sur.

The Pacifico Sur cartel has been blamed for the September 30 kidnapping of 20 Mexican tourists who are believed to have been mistaken for La Familia rivals. The tourists' bodies were unearthed a month later in a mass grave near Acapulco.

In November, one Mexican hitman boasted to Al Jazeera that he had lost track of how many people he'd killed as he travelled from city to city, carrying out hits for his boss.

And in December, the Mexican army arrested a 14-year-old US citizen nicknamed "El Ponchis" (or, "The Cloak") who allegedly worked as an assassin for the South Pacific Cartel, in the state of Morelos.

More than 600 people have been killed in the past year in the northern state of Nuevo Leon, where traffickers set up roadblocks in October, terrorising the general public.

And the state of Chihuahua is home the the city of Ciudad Juarez, known as a the country's murder capital, where over 2,000 people were murdered in 2010.

america: your last memory in a terrorist country

Video - Jared Lee Loughner's favorite

WaPo | In one video, titled "America: Your last memory in a terrorist country!," a figure in dark clothing and a smiley-face mask burns an American flag in the desert. The soundtrack is a 2001 song by the band Drowning Pool, in which the singer repeatedly shrieks "Let the bodies hit the floor!"

Another, posted Dec. 15, begins with a line of text reading "My Final Thoughts: Jared Lee Loughner!" What follows on the screen are seemingly unconnected thoughts about currency and dreams, and the words "I can't trust the current government because of the ratifications: the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar."

The videos also say that Loughner applied to join the U.S. Army. The Army issued a statement Saturday saying that he attempted to enlist but was rejected for reasons that officials would not disclose.

Another video attacks the police at Tucson's Pima Community College, where he had been a student.

School officials said in a statement late Saturday that Loughner attended the community college from 2005 until last fall, when he withdrew after disciplinary problems.

The statement said that between February and September last year, campus police were called five times to deal with disruptions Loughner caused in classrooms and libraries. On Sept. 29, the college said, it discovered that Loughner had posted a YouTube video he had made on the campus.

"In the video, he claims that the College is illegal according to the U.S. Constitution, and makes other claims," the college's statement said.

That day, two police officers delivered a letter of suspension to Loughner at his parents' house in a Tucson suburb.

On Oct. 4, during a meeting with Loughner, his parents and college administrators, he agreed to withdraw, the college said. School officials told him he could return only if he obtained a clearance certifying that "in the opinion of a mental health professional, his presence at the College does not present a danger to himself or others."

of course not....,

WaPo | When asked by The New York Post on Saturday if his daughter had any enemies, Giffords's father, Spencer Giffords responded, "Yeah...The whole tea party."

Trent Humphries was headed to the local Safeway for some milk when he was stopped by a police barricade. It wasn't until later that he would find out that a congresswoman with whom he had often clashed politically had been shot there, along with more than a dozen others. A neighbor was among the dead.

"We were sickened," recalled Humphries, an organizer with the Tucson Tea Party. "Obviously, we do not condone violence. We've had dozens and dozens of events and we've never had violence. Whoever did this, they're not grounded in political thought. I would be very surprised if it was someone who had ever come to our meetings."

After the suspected shooter's name was released, Humphries said he checked the 4,000-person Tucson Tea Party contact list and found no one by the name of Jared Loughner.

Across Arizona, conservative and tea party activists expressed shock and dismay at the events that unfolded in the grocery store parking lot in Tucson. Though little was known about the alleged shooter Saturday afternoon, questions inevitably arose about his politics.

Some Arizona tea party activists, like Humphries, said it was unfair to connect the politics of a large and mostly peaceful movement to the actions of a single criminal. The day's events led others to question the environment fostered by some of the more confrontational members of their movement.

"You have to be very careful what you say. We live in a very polarized environment here in the United States, and while I do believe in the second amendment, no one should be referring to second amendment solutions," said Patrick Beck, president of the Mohave County Tea Party in the northern part of the state.

"I've given many speeches to my group and at different events in my area, and in doing so I'm very conscious of who's listening," he said. "When I look out at the crowd, 99 percent of the people I see are just like me -- average every day Americans who want constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, things of that nature. Every once in a while, though, I see someone -- how should I put it? -- who is getting too excited, who seems a little farther on the fringe...I realized I had to tone down my comments a little bit, less yelling and screaming and more educational."

When asked about the Palin target map, Beck said: "I don't know. It's really easy in the context of what happened this morning to look back and say, I don't know if this was such a bright idea. At the same time, there are other politicians from the other side of the political spectrum who have said similar military-style sayings. Do I really believe they are intending harm on people? No."

getting the narrative ready

The Atlantic | There are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the U.S. economy. Workers are earning more, consumers are spending more, banks are lending more, and companies are ready to hire more. But if there's one number that could derail the recovery, it's the price of a barrel of oil.

Economists and watchdog groups are nervously monitoring the rising price of crude, now hovering around $90 -- down from a 2008 high of nearly $150. "Oil prices are entering a dangerous zone for the global economy," warns Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency. "High oil prices threaten to derail the fragile economic recovery," echoes Sylvia Pfeiffer at the Financial Times. Meanwhile, other economists say there's very little reason to think oil should spook the fragile recovery.

Who should we believe, and why should we care in the first place?

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?
The short answer is that expensive oil is poisonous to an oil-driven economy. Every severe oil spike in the last 50 years has been followed by a deep recession.

Here's the more complicated answer. The United States imported $400 billion of oil in 2008, nearly 3 percent of GDP -- or more than half the total cost of Social Security. Unlike Social Security, those hundreds of billions of dollars leave the country and don't get recycled into our economy. They're empty calories.

"If oil prices went back to the $140 dollar range, it would be a disaster"

When gas prices rise, American consumers can buy the same amount of gas for more money, which makes us poorer; or they can buy less gas, which makes the economy weaker. In the last decade, the price of crude increased from $1.50 to $3.50, and Americans kept filling up their SUVs. Only at $4.00 did Americans recoil, reducing their total miles driven fell for the first time in 30 years by 100 billion miles.

Some economists say the oil spike helped cause the Great Recession. By making it more expensive to commute, they argue, high oil prices both made Americans poorer and reduced the demand for suburban homes, thus hastening the housing collapse. A less dramatic interpretation would say that the Great Recession was caused by the credit crunch on Wall Street, but exacerbated by the historic rise in oil prices.

global oil demand.pngIn the Great Recession, the price of a barrel of oil fell by almost 70 percent. But now oil prices are climbing, for at least three reasons. First, higher global demand raises the price of oil if global supply cannot keep up. Second, as capital becomes more available throughout the world, investors might return to bidding up the price of oil. In 2008, experts estimate that up to a third of the $150 price of a barrel of oil was pure speculation rather than natural supply and demand factors. Third, in the U.S., a weak dollar makes oil, like most imports, more expensive for consumers. So what happens now?

THE CASE FOR FEAR
If you thought $4 gasoline was bad, wait a year. Americans will pay $5 for a gallon of gasoline by 2012 as global demand grows faster than oil producers' supply, predicted John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil and current head of Citizens for Affordable Energy. Without a significant investment in alternative energy sources, we're on a collision course with "blackouts, brownouts, gas lines, [and] rationing."

Hofmeister's math can be summed up in one graph, from the Center for American Progress, which shows projected oil consumption for the U.S., China and India. As China and India join the global middle class, global demand for oil will skyrocket past its 2008 levels, when a barrel cost $147.

peak oilers on the history channel via ron paul

Video - History Channel Prophets of Doom on Ron Paul's youtube channel

jimi hendrix and dick cavett

Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 1.


Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 2.


Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 3.


Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 4.


Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 5.


Video - Dick Cavett interviews Jimi Hendrix Part 6.

janis joplin and dick cavett

Video - Dick Cavett interviews Janis Joplin (her last interview in 1970) Fist tap Big Brother BT.

ravi shankar on dick cavett

Video - Ravi Shankar on the Dick Cavett show.

classic playahating

Video - Ravi and Anoushka Shankar serving pop-slop?

indignez vous! (cry out!)

Independent | Take a book of just 13 pages, written by a relatively obscure 93-year-old man, which contains no sex, no jokes, no fine writing and no startlingly original message. A publishing disaster? No, a publishing phenomenon.

Indignez vous! (Cry out!), a slim pamphlet by a wartime French resistance hero, Stéphane Hessel, is smashing all publishing records in France. The book urges the French, and everyone else, to recapture the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy".

The book, which costs €3, has sold 600,000 copies in three months and another 200,000 have just been printed. Its original print run was 8,000. In the run-up to Christmas, Mr Hessel's call for a "peaceful insurrection" not only topped the French bestsellers list, it sold eight times more copies than the second most popular book, a Goncourt prize-winning novel by Michel Houellebecq.

The extraordinary success of the book can be interpreted in several ways. Its low price and slender size – 29 pages including blurbs and notes but just 13 pages of text – has made it a popular stocking-filler among left-wing members of the French chattering classes. Bookshops report many instances of people buying a dozen copies for family and friends.

But Mr Hessel and his small left-wing publisher (which is used to print runs in the hundreds) say that he has evidently struck a national, and international nerve, at a time of market tyranny, bankers' bonuses and budget threats to the survival of the post-war welfare state. They also suggest that the success of the book could be an important straw in the wind as France enters a political cycle leading to the presidential elections of May 2012.

In a New Year message Mr Hessel, who survived Nazi concentration camps to become a French diplomat, said he was "profoundly touched" by the success of his book. Just as he "cried out" against Nazism in the 1940s, he said, young people today should "cry out against the complicity between politicians and economic and financial powers" and "defend our democratic rights acquired over two centuries".

In a party-political aside which might or might not undermine his new status as political prophet, Mr Hessel went on to imply that "resistance" should begin with a rejection of President Nicolas Sarkozy and a vote for the Parti Socialiste.

The book has not pleased everyone. It also contains a lengthy denunciation of Israeli government policies, especially in the Gaza Strip. Although the final chapter calls vaguely for a "non-violent" solution to the world's problems, the book also suggests that "non-violence" is not "sufficient" in the Middle East. Mr Hessel, whose father was a German jew who emigrated to France, has been accused by French jewish organisations of "anti-semitism".

Mr Hessel was born in Berlin in 1917. He emigrated to France with his family when he was seven. He joined General Charles de Gaulle in London in 1941 and was sent back to France to help organise the resistance. He was captured, tortured and sent to concentration camps in Germany. After the war, he helped to draft the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.

Jean-Pierre Barou, the joint head of the small Montpellier-based publishing house Indigène, which commissioned the book, said Mr Hessel had revealed a "deep sense of indignation in France".

As a political tract, the book contains no especially original analysis of the world's problems.

"They dare to tell us that the State can no longer afford policies to support its citizens," Mr Hessel says. "But how can money be lacking ... when the production of wealth has enormously increased since the Liberation (of France), at a time when Europe was ruined? The only explanation is that the power of money ... has never been so great or so insolent or so selfish and that its servants are placed in the highest reaches of the State."

The originality of the book is the suggestion that an organised "Resistance" is now called for, just like in 1940. "We, veterans of the resistance ... call on young people to revive and pass on the heritage and ideals of the Resistance," the book says.

How people should resist the power of money and the markets – by peaceful means, the book insists – is not made entirely clear.

A message of resistance

* "I would like everyone – everyone of us – to find his or her own reason to cry out. That is a precious gift. When something makes you want to cry out, as I cried out against Nazism, you become a militant, tough and committed. You become part of the great stream of history ... and this stream leads us towards more justice and more freedom but not the uncontrolled freedom of the fox in the hen-house."

* "It's true that reasons to cry out can seem less obvious today. The world appears too complex. But in this world, there are things we should not tolerate... I say to the young, look around you a little and you will find them. The worst of all attitudes is indifference..."

* "The productivist obsession of the West has plunged the world into a crisis which can only be resolved by a radical shift away from the 'ever more', in the world of finance but also in science and technology. It is high time that ethics, justice and a sustainable balance prevailed..."