stop using the unemployment rate!

esoltas | The standard unemployment rate is a deeply flawed measurement of macroeconomic conditions. It is so flawed that a decline in the unemployment rate as we measure it is not necessarily good news, nor is an increase in the unemployment rate surely bad news. Movements in the unemployment rate are -- or perhaps have become -- ambiguous signals of economic improvement or worsening.

What's wrong with the unemployment rate? The problem comes down to definitions. We know that the unemployment rate is the fraction of unemployed workers in the labor force. To be counted as "unemployed" by the surveyors of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you must "have actively looked for work in the past 4 weeks," and to be in the labor force, you must either match that definition of unemployment or have a job.

Normally these definitions work well. A stay-at-home mother or father who is not looking for work, for a simple instance, should not be counted as "unemployed" in a way which is relevant for public policy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' definitions of unemployment and labor force participation, however, become deeply problematic when economic conditions are so poor that they mischaracterize unemployed workers as having left the labor force, or people who should have joined the labor force as non-participants.

This is breaking the unemployment rate today. As I've pointed out in prior posts on this blog, the labor force stopped growing in 2008. That is largely the result of unemployed workers giving up and dropping out of the labor force, as well as would-be entrants to the labor force not doing so. Only a small fraction of this can be explained by changes in population or workforce, such as the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. These individuals who are not being counted as members of the labor force are, in every sense which is meaningful for public policy, unemployed. They number roughly 5.6 million as of July 2012.

This is why the numbers are so misleading, and why I think we cannot keep talking about falling unemployment as good news. We're saying, in effect, this: Good news, America! Another million workers gave up hope this morning! Don't you feel better about the labor market now!

since the end of world war II, the economy has not been faced with such a large employment slack

seekingalpha | the USA economy is screwed up because 8% of the pre-recession workforce has been vaporized (the red line on the above graph is currently at 92% of the pre-recession peak).

If one is on social security, in some other social safety net, employed, or the 0.001% - the new normal may not be that bad. You may pity the jobless, but you may be missing the reality that 8% loss of jobs caused the economy to lose 8% of its prime driver - Joe "the consumer" Sixpack. With over 2/3rds of the economy consumer driven, the solution is obvious - create 24 million jobs.

Since the end of World War II, the economy has not been faced with such a large employment slack.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sees this as the economic headwind which is causing terrible growth, and the stated reason for QE3. This author doubts that quantitative easing on top of a zero interest rate policy can have any effect on employment. It seems like a "hail Mary" play stemming from a lack of fiscal policy stimulus from Congress - and even a Hail Mary pass with no receivers downfield, if you will.

Any solution to stimulate employment is in fiscal policy and regulation - and possibly a revisit to policy utilized post WWII to create jobs for the returning soldiers.

watch, read, google - "after next-gen technology" - and other fascinating breadcrumbs....,

VeteransToday | Mombasa (WNT) The Adamus Group announces an 18 month project in partnership with governments of Africa, the USAID and the International Wildlife Foundation to operate two Skyships on their first “peaceful” mission.

The advanced LTA (lighter than air) defense platforms have been used in counter-terrorism and drug interdiction efforts in the past. This is the first application of “blimps,” each supplied with the most powerful sensor arrays ever to have been used for a non-military mission. The platforms, capable of continent wide missions are equipped with advanced sensor packages, synthetic aperture radar, low light high definition streaming video and “next generation” FLIR (infared) optics. 

Communication is through direct microwave and satellite up-link.

Several television networks have shown an interest in participation as the platform capabilities, previously “military only” technology have, not only the ability to aid in the understanding of wildlife, climate and agricultural development and coastal marine environments but have wide geological and even archaeological capabilities as well.

Project manager James Hanke of Adamus told reporters in Mombasa:

“We thank the US government and Department to of Homeland Security for making available these advanced capabilities.  It is our hope, in what we deep a “ploughshares” effort, to provide a bank of data that will inspire a generation of scientists of every discipline.

This project, we predict, will have an immediate impact on securing both wildlife resources and, at the same time, supply a wealth of previously unavailable data to ensure responsible and productive land management and resource development.
In many cases, we begin with a ‘blank slate,’ we have little idea what we will find but, for certain, our ‘after next generation’ imagery and sensor capability will open, not only new vistas for investment but tourism as well.”

The advanced airships are to begin operation in first quarter 2013.  A number of universities have indicated a desire to acquire data and a ”mission based’ tasking committee of scholars and scientists will be overseeing operations in concert with wildlife management and security officials.

voting for death

lindinh | America, you have become a nation of enablers and apologists for tyranny and mass murder. You condemn the Nazi and gulag guards of times past even as you celebrate your own mercenaries and torturers, even as you explain away, if not outright cheer, the unspeakable crimes committed by your sons and daughters. You don’t care who you kill, as long as your soldiers are paid, and your munitions, bomb and tank factories are humming.

Safely ensconced in academic luna parks, your leading intellectuals lean slightly right or left, but never enough to rock this blazing gunboat, lest they sour the cocktail parties or, god forbid, have their tenure revoked. Mouths stuffed with antipasti, they’re expert at sidestepping Israel’s prolific crimes, 9/11, Bin Laden’s faux death or the parasitic Federal Reserve, and as another joke election nears, they’re all gung ho about candidates who back illegal wars and banking frauds, since each is supposedly the lesser of two evils.

For the past five presidential elections, winning candidates have won 52.9%, 50.7%, 47.9%, 49.2% and 43% of the popular votes respectively, so there hasn’t been an overwhelming mandate for any of them, but with the runner ups from the other major party often close behind, and in 2000, actually ahead in the popular vote count, the two-party system has gotten a stranglehold on our public life and pocketbooks. As for our senators, only two are not Democrat or Republican. An American election, then, is basically a rigged referendum for this thoroughly corrupt and murderous system, and simply by voting, you will give it the green light to go on killing and looting. Every four years, we’re railroaded into sanctioning endless war and bottomless corruption. If disappointed, we’re then steered by our brainwashing and dumbing down media to a near clone of our current rapist.

The Good Old Party spooks the upper and middle classes by threatening, If you don’t vote for us, the Dems will take your hard-earned cash and give it to the freeloaders, crackheads and other miscellaneous losers, while the Democrats, in turn, scare the lower rungs by snarling, If you don’t vote for us, the Republicans will let your retired, diapered ass rot under a bridge, on a piece of cardboard, but lordy, lordy, lordy, it is already happening, but let us not sweat the details.

if this happened at the peak of american power and prosperity...,

not one word about poverty...,

aera-l | Lots of talk about the middle class. Tax cuts for the middle class. Saving the middle class. Doing more for the middle class.

Not one word about poverty.

No mention that nearly 25% of the children in the world's richest nation live in poverty. Not one word. The overriding influence of poverty on educational achievement has been noted in, e.g. (alphabetical order by author):

1. "Our Impoverished View of Educational Reform" [Berliner (2005)], at;http://bit.ly/ff8BV

 2. "Poverty and Potential: Out-of-School Factors and School Success" [Berliner (2009)], http://bit.ly/fqiCUA

3. "Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children's Life Chances"   [Duncan & Murnane (2011a)] at;http://bit.ly/nCkmKv

4. "Economic inequality: The real cause of the urban school problem," [Duncan & Murnane (2011b)] at;http://bit.ly/rv3rMO

5. "To Improve Schools, Fight Poverty, Education Expert Says" [Gosier (2011)], online at; http://bit.ly/qyrBSL; - the expert is Stephen Krashen;http://bit.ly/Ui9xm

6. "Re: Economic Inequality: The Real Cause of Urban School Problems #2" [Hake (2011a)] at;http://bit.ly/ozuZEn

7. "Is the 'Teacher Effect' the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain?" [Hake (2011b)], online at;http://bit.ly/g6UWUZ

8. "Is the 'Teacher Effect' the Dominant Factor in Students' Academic Gain? #3" [Hake (2011c)], online at;http://bit.ly/jy61UB

9. "Class Matters. Why Won't We Admit It?" [Ladd & Fiske (2011)] at;http://nyti.ms/vx3nub

10. "Education and Poverty: Visualizations of World, US, and State-level Educational Data" [Marder (2011)] at;http://bit.ly/nYC6eF

11. "Failure of U.S. Public Secondary Schools in Mathematics" [Marder (2012)] at;http://bit.ly/KPitWM

12. "The hard bigotry of low expectations and low priorities" [Ravani (2011b)] at;http://bit.ly/sUZ17T

13. "Unaddressed Link Between Poverty & Education" [Schaffer (2011)] at;http://bit.ly/tbckql

paid pundits and ignant peasants pretend there was some kind of contest...,

I squinted and failed to see the air gap...,

real unemployment reaches 20% in colorado...,

thecoloradoobserver | The slowest economic recovery since World War II is going especially slow for sections of Colorado, according to a letter from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment (CDLE) obtained by The Colorado Observer.

 

In seven counties in Colorado unemployed individuals are close to or exceeding 20% of the population, a letter from the Chief Economist of CDLE to the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.

The letter, obtained through the Colorado Open Records Act, was sent August 29 as required by federal law. According to the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act, the Colorado Labor Department is required to certify counties where the “Not Employed Rate” surpasses 19.5%.

The “Not Employed Rate” is defined as “the percentage of individuals over the age of 18 who reside within the community and who are ready, willing and able to be employed but are unable to find employment as determined by the State Department of Labor.”

Ranking highest was Costilla County at 23.56 percent. The list runs from larger counties like Pueblo (20.09%), Montrose (20.62%) and Fremont (19.66%) to smaller populations like Huerfano (21.78%), Archuleta (19.97%) and Dolores (19.85%).

Whereas the unemployment rate doesn’t include people who are out of work, but have given up looking for a job, the “Not Employed Rate” gives a fuller picture of the dire economic situation many Coloradans are currently facing.

Colorado has faced one of the slowest economic recoveries in the nation coming out of the recession.

Last month, Colorado’s official unemployment rate — 8.2% — surpassed the national unemployment rate for first time in nearly 7 years. While unemployment fell from 8.3% the previous month, Colorado’s unemployment rate rose for four consecutive months prior to that.

is all of japan radioactive?

fukushima-diary | Iodine 131 was measured from sewage sludge in Kumamoto city. Kumamoto city is about 1070 km from Fukushima plant.

7/24/2012   33 Bq/Kg, 31 Bq/Kg
7/25/2012   120 Bq/Kg
7/25/2012   150 Bq/Kg ,11 Bq/Kg

humanzee religion in action...,

strike point senkaku....,

newscientist | It all comes down to black gold. Anti-Japan protests erupted in at least 100 Chinese cities on Tuesday, as anger over a struggle for control of oil and gas in the East China Sea turned violent, and increased the tension between the countries.

The focal point is a dispute over a remote island chain known as Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China, lying east of China and south-west of Japan (see map).

The US handed them to Japan after the second world war, but China says that it has a prior claim. Japan recently purchased several of the islands back from a private Japanese owner, and their nationalisation has ratcheted up anger in China.

"There is potential oil and gas," says Pui-Kwan Tse of the US Geological Survey. It's not clear how much is there, or whether it would be economical to drill for it.

However, the East China Sea is rich in oil and gas reserves, many of which have only been discovered in recent decades. China and Japan are both eager to stake a claim: China's energy demand is growing rapidly, and Japan's reserves are limited.

a genial fellow with whom almost anyone would like to have a beer...,

kunstler | Flying at higher platitudes in the thin upper air of his own mind last week, Republican candidate Mitt Romney remarked apropos of airplane travel: "[T]he windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous."

It turned out that Mitt meant the remark as a gag. But it sheds some light on the hazard of trying to be funny by saying the opposite of what you mean, and also on the essential character of Mr. Romney who, to put it as plainly and directly as possible, is the sort of person commonly described as "an asshole." Hence, the thought that must be flashing through many people's minds these days when Romney's off-kilter, square-jawed, grinning visage floats over the nearest flat-screen: Who would vote for that asshole...? Being given to more baroque taxonomy, myself, I would be satisfied in calling Mr. Romney an empty vessel in a vacant room in an abandoned property in a forsaken land, and leave it at that.  

It happens that his opponent, Mr. Obama, is a genial fellow with whom almost anyone might like to have a beer. Despite his winning smile, though, the president has managed to cripple due process of law, make war on the nation's own citizens, let Wall Street criminals run amok, and sell out the electoral process to a corrupt corporate oligarchy. I wouldn't vote for him again if he water-boarded me in a Jacuzzi full of Schorschbräu's Schorschbock 57 beer ($275 a bottle). But he's welcome to come over to my house and watch the baseball playoffs if he brings his own six-pack and a bag of Cheetos.

And so it goes on the backstretch of the emptiest election contest in memory.  The nation simply can't contend with the existential problems it faces and doesn't want to hear about them. As far as I can tell, nobody is paying attention to the campaigns, not even the reporters, certainly not the bloggers, who have their eyes on the riots and other kinetic unravelings related to the money crisis in Europe. Here, where anything goes and nothing matters, everybody just goes through the motions of electoral politics. It all has the odor of a ritual that nobody remembers the original purpose of - namely, to govern, i.e. to manage society's collective affairs. These days, nobody believes that our affairs are manageable, and their perception is probably correct, especially when it comes to paying for it all, since accounting fraud is now the basis of all financial operations.

But I don't mean to just deplore the situation. It is what it is, and we are at a certain juncture of history because of the choices we have made, and we'll have to see how the consequences roll out. Here's how I see some of them.

lesser evilists convince themselves that evil looks like something good...,

warisacrime | A writer at the Atlantic named Conor Friedersdorf recently noted the level of evil many have been brought to support:

"Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along. Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama. Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've mentioned? I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers."

Not long ago, I attended a speech by Obama, along with thousands of his adoring cheerleaders formerly known as citizens. I asked him to stop killing people in Afghanistan, and the Secret Service asked me to leave.  But, just now, I got a phone call from the local Obama office.  They had my name because I'd picked up a ticket to attend the speech.  The young woman wanted to know if I would come help phone other people.  I asked if she was familiar with the president's kill list and his policy of killing men, women, and children with drones.  She said she knew nothing about that but "respected my opinion."  She hung up.  Objecting to presidential murder is now an opinion, and willingness to be aware of its existence is an appendage to the opinion.  If you don't object to presidential murder by Democrat, then you simply arrange not to know about it.  Thus, in your opinion, it doesn't exist.

Some of my friends at this moment are in Pakistan apologizing to its government and its people for the endless murderous drone war fought there by our country.  They're meeting with victims' families.  They're speaking publicly in opposition to the crimes of our government.  And my neighbors, living in some other universe, believe most fundamentally, not that one candidate will save us, not that the two parties are fundamentally opposed, not that a citizen's job is to vote, not that war is all right if it's meant well -- although they clearly believe all of those things -- but, most fundamentally, they believe that unpleasant facts should simply be avoided.  So, in a spirit of afflicting the comfortable to comfort the afflicted, here are a few from recent days:

more impressed with this boy than I am with myself....,

As it turns out, my son has been making little sarcastic picture/word that he calls "memes" for about a year. He set up an instagram account a month or so ago, and has been cranking these out on the daily. He has 300+ subscribers on his instagram feed. 

Since he's doing these like it was his job, and he produces more hits than misses, I showed him how to put these memes up on a more permanent basis on a blog. His blog is lesmemes.blogspot.com. 

Check him out.

how lies become the government's truth...,

LewRockwell | In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”

The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.

The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke.

Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran.

Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” is just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.

In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.

That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?

The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor? Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.

Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.

Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rouge criminal state and demonized.

A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.

no matter the outcome of the election, it'll be warsocialism's 18th term in office...,

do you think that america is not a police state yet?

targetfreedom | It is a very old adage that “seeing is believing”.

Yet we know that DENIAL is the most common reaction to incredibly horrible realities.

It is not at all uncommon to punish the bearer of bad news.

Anothervery old adage is that: THERE ARE NONE SO BLIND AS THOSE WHO REFUSE TO SEE. 

To understand Denial visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial From Wikipedia The quick summary is this: People avoid discomfort. Thoughts of horrible realities cause discomfort. Truthful information about horrible realities causes thoughts about those horrible realities. To avoid that discomfort the brain shuts down like a circuit breaker tripping. Denial (also called abnegation) is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence. The subject may use:

• simple denial: deny the reality of the unpleasant fact altogether
• minimisation: admit the fact but deny its seriousness (a combination of denial and rationalization)
• projection: admit both the fact and seriousness but deny responsibility by blaming somebody or something else.

Here are some easily proveable facts, with the proof provided on this very page: ACTUAL VIDEOS ARE PROVIDED FOR ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY DOES WANT TO KNOW. “Seeing is believing”.

time to accept an additional human neurotype: psychopathic?

scientificamerican | Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers—a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse and the manipulation of others—are also shared by politicians and world leaders. Individuals, in other words, running not from the police. But for office. Such a profile allows those who present with these traits to do what they like when they like, completely unfazed by the social, moral or legal consequences of their actions.

If you are born under the right star, for example, and have power over the human mind as the moon over the sea, you might order the genocide of 100,000 Kurds and shuffle to the gallows with such arcane recalcitrance as to elicit, from even your harshest detractors, perverse, unspoken deference.

“Do not be afraid, doctor,” said Saddam Hussein on the scaffold, moments before his execution. “This is for men.”

If you are violent and cunning, like the real-life “Hannibal Lecter” Robert Maudsley, you might take a fellow inmate hostage, smash his skull in and sample his brains with a spoon as nonchalantly as if you were downing a soft-boiled egg. (Maudsley, by the way, has been cooped up in solitary confinement for the past 30 years, in a bulletproof cage in the basement of Wakefield Prison in England.)

Or if you are a brilliant neurosurgeon, ruthlessly cool and focused under pressure, you might, like the man I'll call Dr. Geraghty, try your luck on a completely different playing field: at the remote outposts of 21st-century medicine, where risk blows in on 100-mile-per-hour winds and the oxygen of deliberation is thin. “I have no compassion for those whom I operate on,” he told me. “That is a luxury I simply cannot afford. In the theater I am reborn: as a cold, heartless machine, totally at one with scalpel, drill and saw. When you're cutting loose and cheating death high above the snowline of the brain, feelings aren't fit for purpose. Emotion is entropy—and seriously bad for business. I've hunted it down to extinction over the years.”

Geraghty is one of the U.K.'s top neurosurgeons—and although, on one level, his words send a chill down the spine, on another they make perfect sense. Deep in the ghettoes of some of the brain's most dangerous neighborhoods, the psychopath is glimpsed as a lone and merciless predator, a solitary species of transient, deadly allure. No sooner is the word out than images of serial killers, rapists and mad, reclusive bombers come stalking down the sidewalks of our minds.

But what if I were to paint you a different picture? What if I were to tell you that the arsonist who burns your house down might also, in a parallel universe, be the hero most likely to brave the flaming timbers of a crumbling, blazing building to seek out, and drag out, your loved ones? Or that the kid with a knife in the shadows at the back of the movie theater might well, in years to come, be wielding a rather different kind of knife at the back of a rather different kind of theater?

Claims like these are admittedly hard to believe. But they're true. Psychopaths are fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless and focused. Yet, contrary to popular belief, they are not necessarily violent. Far from its being an open-and-shut case—you're either a psychopath or you're not—there are, instead, inner and outer zones of the disorder: a bit like the fare zones on a subway map. There is a spectrum of psychopathy along which each of us has our place, with only a small minority of A-listers resident in the “inner city.” Fist tap Arnach.

the most successful people in america are liars

activistpost | The incentive to speak the truth and the reward for doing so are very weak. And not just for a writer, but also for academics and experts who can make far more money by lying than by telling the truth. How else would we have got GMOs, jobs offshoring, the “unitary executive,” and a deregulated financial system? It is a very lucrative career to testify as an expert in civil lawsuits. It is part of America’s romance with the lie that experts purchased by the opposing sides in a lawsuit battle it out as gladiators seeking the jury’s thumbs-up.

And look at Congress. The two members of the House who stood up for the Constitution and truth in government will soon be gone. Ron Paul is stepping down, and Dennis Kucinich was redistricted out of his seat. As for the Senate, these thoughtful personages recently voted 90-1 to declare war on Iran, as the sole dissenter, Rand Paul, pointed out. The Senate is very much aware, although only a few will publicly admit it, that the US has been totally frustrated and held to a standoff, if not a defeat, in Afghanistan and is unable to subdue the Taliban. Despite this, the Senate wants a war with Iran, a war which could easily turn out to be even less successful. Obviously, the Senate not only lies to the public but also to itself.

Last week the Pentagon chief, Panetta, told China that the new US naval, air, and troop bases surrounding China are not directed at China. What else could be the purpose of the new bases? Washington is so accustomed to lying and to being believed that Panetta actually thinks China will believe his completely transparent lie. Panetta has confused China with the American people: tell them what they want to hear, and they will believe it.

Americans live in a matrix of lies. They seldom encounter a truthful statement.There is no evidence that Americans can any longer tell the difference between the truth and a lie. Americans fell for all of these lies and more: Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections. Saddam Hussein’s troops seized Kuwaiti babies from incubators and threw them on the floor. Gaddafi fed his troops Viagra to help them rape Libyan women. Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Change–yes we can! The US is “the indispensable country.” America is broke because of food stamps and Social Security, not because of wars, bankster bailouts, and a failing economy. Russia is America’s number one enemy. China is America’s number one enemy. Iran is a terrorist state. Jobs offshoring is free trade and good for the US economy. Israel is America’s most loyal ally. The US missile shield surrounding Russia is not directed at Russia. The South China sea is an area of US national interest. Financial markets are self-regulating.

The list is endless. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision. The most successful people in America are liars.

The endless lies have created a culture of delusion. And this is why America is lost. The beliefs of many Americans, perhaps a majority, are comprised of lies. These beliefs have become emotional crutches, and Americans will fight to defend the lies that they believe. The inability of Americans to accept facts that are contrary to their beliefs is the reason the country is leaderless and will remain so. Unless scales fall from Americans’ eyes, Americans are doomed.

claims on "modernity" and supremacy rooted in...?

CSM | Israeli President Shimon Peres offered his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a history lesson on Thursday, saying his lack of knowledge about the region was an embarrassment.

The outspoken Iranian leader raised hackles in Israel on Monday when he said Israelis had been occupying their territory for no more than 70 years. "They have no roots there in history," he added during a visit to New York.

Meeting a group of children in Jerusalem, 89-year-old Peres said Ahmadinejad should have known better.

"It was an embarrassing speech which showed a deep historical ignorance with regard to the deep historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel," he said, adding that Ahmadinejad did not even know the history of his Persian ancestors.

The name Israel first appeared at the end of the late Bronze Age and Israelite tribes were living in the area more than 3,000 years ago, archaeologists say.

Shortly after 600 B.C., Babylonian forces swept through the lands and forced Jews into exile and captivity. But in 538 B.C. the Persians in turn conquered Babylon and King Cyrus let the Jews return to their old homeland.

"Around 2,500 years ago King Cyrus, the King of Persia, granted the Jewish people led by Ezra and Nechamia the right to return to Israel and to rebuild their home. The Jews lived on the land of Israel for thousands of years and there is no lie or leader that can remove chapters of history," Peres said.

The Jewish rulers of Jerusalem were crushed by the Roman empire and modern-day Israel was founded in 1948 as imperial Britain withdrew from Palestine.

Israel is at loggerheads with Iran over its disputed nuclear programme, saying that if Tehran develops an atomic bomb it might use it to try to destroy the Jewish state. Tehran says its nuclear industry is for purely civilian purposes.

can you see azazel?

hypertiger | Since the Universe is absolute capitalistic...as long as it exists...belief can exist.

All the ants and the rivers and such...Appear to be ignorant and doomed and don't seem to care much.

The only path they follow is the path of least resistance.

To the logical conclusion of the take more than you give equation that Truth is the supply of power to.

And the rivers are driven by the sun.

Take more than you give to the rivers and you run out of water.

How about line signers...What if you take more than you give to the net producers of debt which is technically all of you.

There is shrinkage...but because Bretton woods is global...as it collapses...absolute capitalist states that make up the system...collapse.

Because they are cut off from the system.

Greece because they are dumb tax evaders and Iran because they are evil.

But this can be traced back to the period following the liquidation climax...and the new system to replace the old system which is the current system the is collapsing.

Basically as slow as is possible.

That is what is currently going on but there will be accelerations that will just led to more long periods as people figure out how to adapt and survive.

Now how long until we accelerate is where the just think positive ignore negative religion of hope begins that you all embrace.

The majority.

Unless you can show a devout worshiper of the just think positive ignore negative religion...that which they don't want to see...they are blind to it.

did the u.s. envoy stay seated for ahmadinejad's u.n. speech?

veteransnewsnow | Iranian President Ahmadinejad alluded to what he sees as Israel’s illegitimate nuclear arsenal, and criticized members who haven’t stopped Israel from acquiring it:

“Some members of the Security Council with veto rights have chosen silence with regard to the nuclear warheads of a fake regime, while at the same time impeding…the scientific progress of other nations.”

He also bore down on those who have revolted at Holocaust revisionism. He did this by calling attention to those who “infringe upon other’s freedom and allow sacrilege to people’s beliefs and sanctities, while they criticize posing questions or investigating into historical issues.”

Throughout all of this, the U.S. envoy remained seated.

Outside the hall where Ahmadinejad was speaking, the Israeli envoy referred to Ahmadinejad as, “the leader of an outlaw country that is a serial violator of the fundamental principles of the rule of law.” He added, “It is a shame and a disgrace to give someone like him the opportunity to speak on such an important topic.”

The fact that nobody walked out on Ahmadinejad has sent a clear message to Netanyahu that the days when Israel could demand other nations send their children to war with Israel’s enemies are numbered. 

Netanyahu has played gambit after gambit after gambit and finds himself checkmated. Nuclear threat didn’t play after the Iraq debacle. Red lines did not work. Tinkering with the US election did not work. AIPAC did not work.

Netanyahu must be feeling checkmated right about now, leaving his only remaining play as “knee to corner of board”, i.e. a false-flag attack. Except of course, that is what everyone is expecting Netanyahu to be considering right now, which means it is a risky gambit not likely to reverse Israel’s situation.

Netanyahu must be throwing a tantrum right about now, He grew up politically in a climate where whatever Israel wanted, Israel got; money, American kids to throw onto the bayonets of Israel’s enemies, etc. Netanyahu is not a man used to dealing with failure. In many ways he is a spoiled child, spoiled by decades of US acquiescence to Israel’s will and because of the US, other nations also bowed to Tel Aviv.

The US envoys have sent a very clear diplomatic message to the rest of the UN that they no longer back Israel’s demands for more war.

A rational man would topple his King and admit defeat, but Netanyahu may not be rational. He may stage a false-flag. He may just go ahead and attack Iran’s power station. He may, out of pure spite, blow the whistle on who really did 9-11, confident that the revelations will harm the US Government more than it will harm Israel. Such deceptions are, after all, what Israel is famous for. It’s expected!

But one thing is certain, Bibi will probably in one form or another hit the panic button to get his war with Iran before Israel’s October elections.

the fire next time?

arctic-news | Although the sudden high rate Arctic methane increase at Svalbard in late 2010 data set applies to only a short time interval, similar sudden methane concentration peaks also occur at Barrow point and the effects of a major methane build-up has been observed using all the major scientific observation systems. Giant fountains/torches/plumes of methane entering the atmosphere up to 1 km across have been seen on the East Siberian Shelf. This methane eruption data is so consistent and aerially extensive that when combined with methane gas warming potentials, Permian extinction event temperatures and methane lifetime data it paints a frightening picture of the beginning of the now uncontrollable global warming induced destabilization of the subsea Arctic methane hydrates on the shelf and slope which started in late 2010. This process of methane release will accelerate exponentially, release huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere and lead to the demise of all life on earth before the middle of this century.

when I was a little boy, I remember my parents poking fun at Nixon lying...,

NYTimes | The anti-American violence in the Muslim world demanded a firm push back from President Obama, who finally delivered it on Tuesday in the last United Nations General Assembly speech of his term.

Since the protests, attacks and flag burnings erupted two weeks ago over an anti-Islam video made in California, administration officials have condemned its crude depiction of the Prophet Muhammad and explained that the government had nothing to do with it. Mr. Obama made a similar point at the United Nations.

But he also gave a full-throated defense of the First Amendment right that, in this country, protects even hateful writings, films and speech. “We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities,” Mr. Obama said. He added that “the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.”

Mr. Obama was right to deliver that message, however foreign it is in much of the Muslim world. The assembled leaders applauded when Mr. Obama said he accepts that, as president, people will call him “awful things every day” and that he will defend their right to do it. But a number of Islamic leaders have recently revived a push for an international ban on blasphemy, which would move in exactly the wrong direction.

Mr. Obama’s more pragmatic challenges to Arab Spring countries trying to build new democratic societies may have more impact. He said all leaders must speak against violence and extremism out of obligation to United Nations norms as well as self-interest. “Burning an American flag does nothing to provide a child an education,” he said, and popular outrage can be turned as easily against Muslim leaders, ethnic groups and tribes as America.

that film, and not washington's predations, have set the muslim world on fire!

lewrockwell | Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.

Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.Try to imagine more deluded reporting than this by America’s Presstitute "free press." For 11 years Washington in pursuit of its rightful hegemony has been sending troops, bombers, jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones, and assassination teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington and left in chaos.

Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.

The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."

On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.

This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!

Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.

In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.

The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up.

Washington’s assaults on seven countries have blown up weddings, funerals, kids’ soccer games, farm houses, hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the streets, village elders, but the Muslims don’t mind! They understand that the well-meaning Americans who love them and are committed to their human rights, are bringing them democracy and women’s rights. The million or more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low price to be paid for liberation by Washington.

The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."

On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.

This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!

Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.

In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.

The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up.

The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and were content with Washington’s liberating violence until some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film. This film, and not Washington’s predations, set the Muslim world alive with "hate America."

On the symbolic date of September 11, the US ambassador to Libya and some other Washington representatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Americans because Washington destroyed their country and left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans because of an anti-Islamic film for which the murdered American representatives were not responsible.

This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not Washington’s slaughter of Muslims and control over their societies and political life that produces blowback. It is independent film-makers in California!

Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for "experts," brought these forceful rejections of America upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim countries on the basis of concocted lies – weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, brutal dictators – but also destroyed the secular governments who held the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US representatives and institutions.

In Egypt, long an American puppet states, the US Embassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If only this was all. Washington could again purchase the Egyptian government, as it has since Anwar Sadat’s assassination. But the ongoing news is that Anti-American protests are not only spreading across the Middle East but erupting throughout the world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen, Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and even into Israel.

The Obama administration is blaming al Qaeda, an Islamist group that the administration is currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow the secular Assad government in Syria and the group that the Obama administration used to overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed the protection from Islamist attacks that secular Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers, Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya, raising the prospect that more schools and children's soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi encampments and blown up. Fist tap Dale.

focus on a "mocking" film has served its purpose...,

medialens | On September 11, four Americans, including the US ambassador, were killed in an attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The following day, the BBC's Lunchtime News reported that the killings were part of 'disturbances' which were 'linked to an anti-Islamic video' (BBC News, September 12, 2012). The BBC's News at Six explained that the US ambassador was killed 'in a protest'. This was mild language indeed given that the consulate had been attacked with assault rifles, hand grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. (According to the New York Times, two US security guards were killed by mortar fire).

We can easily imagine the BBC reaction if the killings had happened under Gaddafi, Chavez or some other official enemy. The favoured adjective, 'terrorist', would surely have made an early appearance.

How to explain the BBC's response? The key, of course, is that the current Libyan government owes its existence to Western military intervention. It achieved power because the West exploited UN resolution 1973, which authorised a 'no-fly zone', as an excuse to bomb Gaddafi's forces to defeat. The 'no-fly zone' in fact became a 'no-drive zone' for one side of the conflict. As so often, the BBC was taking its cue from Washington and Downing Street. Obama expressed 'appreciation for the cooperation we have received from the Libyan government and people in responding to this outrageous attack... This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya'.

Like most other media, the BBC instantly concluded that the 'protest' and killings were expressions of religious rather than political anger. As late as September 22, the BBC reported: 'The attack on the US consulate was triggered by an amateur video made in the US which mocks Islam.'

In similar vein, Julian Borger wrote an article in the Guardian under the title: 'How anti-Islamic movie sparked lethal assault on US consulate in Libya.' Kim Sengupta commented in the Independent:

'The US ambassador to Libya and three members of his staff were killed in an attack by an armed mob which stormed the country's consulate in Benghazi in a furious protest over an American film mocking the Prophet Mohammed.'

How, the world asked, could any sane human being kill over a second-rate film, over the idea that a religion had been insulted? Reasonable questions. On the other hand, one might ask how anyone could kill or die for a flag, or an idea like 'the Homeland/Fatherland/Motherland', or for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Subsequent reporting suggested that the initial media consensus blaming a provocative film was false. The Telegraph noted:

'A security guard wounded in the attack... has insisted it was a planned assault by Islamist fighters, and not a protest that got out of hand.

'The guard, who works for a British firm, said there was no demonstration over a controversial anti-Islamic film before extremists stormed the compound in the eastern city of Benghazi.'

Matthew Olsen, director of the US National Counterterrorism Center, told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs: 'I would say [the four Americans] were killed in the course of a terrorist attack.'

Olsen added:

'A number of different elements appear to have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly in the Benghazi area. We are looking as well at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaida or al Qaida's affiliates, including al Qaida in the Maghreb.'

US Senator Joe Lieberman also questioned the US regime's assertion that the attack was spontaneous:

'I will tell you based on the briefings I have had, I have come to the opposite conclusion and agree with the president of Libya that this was a premeditated, planned attack that was associated with the... anniversary of 9/11. I just don't think people come to protest equipped with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and other heavy weapons.'

Between June and August in Benghazi, there had been bomb, grenade and RPG attacks on the US consulate, the UK ambassador's motorcade, the Tunisian consulate, and the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, with leafleted warnings of more to come. CNN reported that Chris Stevens was 'worried about what he called the never-ending security threats' and 'mentioned his name was on an al Qaeda hit list'.

The attack also gave an insight into the US role in the country it helped 'liberate'. The New York Times observed:

'Among the more than two dozen American personnel evacuated from the city after the assault on the American mission and a nearby annex were about a dozen C.I.A. operatives and contractors, who played a crucial role in conducting surveillance and collecting information on an array of armed militant groups in and around the city.'

Their role in a Libya that we are told is 'free' and 'independent':

'American intelligence operatives also assisted State Department contractors and Libyan officials in tracking shoulder-fired missiles taken from the former arsenals of Colonel Qaddafi's forces; they aided in efforts to secure Libya's chemical weapons stockpiles; and they helped train Libya's new intelligence service, officials said.'

As Glenn Greenwald pointed out, evidence that the attack was a carefully planned, politically-motivated attack, rather than a spontaneous eruption of religious ire, is the wrong kind of news for the many supporters of Nato's intervention in Libya:

'Critics of the war in Libya warned that the US was siding with (and arming and empowering) violent extremists, including al-Qaida elements, that would eventually cause the US to claim it had to return to Libya to fight against them – just as its funding and arming of Saddam in Iraq and the mujahideen in Afghanistan subsequently justified new wars against those one-time allies.'

The truth of the attack 'underscores how unstable, lawless and dangerous Libya has become'. Indeed, as we noted in July, the media did an excellent job of burying an Amnesty International report which described 'the mounting toll of victims of an increasingly lawless Libya, where the transitional authorities have been unable or unwilling to rein in the hundreds of militias formed during and after the 2011 conflict'.

This post-intervention mayhem is something supporters of Western intervention are naturally keen to hide – focus on a 'mocking' film has served the purpose.

how government is literally in bed with wall st.

RollingStone | The great mystery story in American politics these days is why, over the course of two presidential administrations (one from each party), there’s been no serious federal criminal investigation of Wall Street during a period of what appears to be epic corruption. People on the outside have speculated and come up with dozens of possible reasons, some plausible, some tending toward the conspiratorial – but there have been very few who've come at the issue from the inside.

We get one of those rare inside accounts in The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins, a new book by Jeff Connaughton, the former aide to Senators Ted Kaufman and Joe Biden. Jeff is well known to reporters like me; during a period when most government officials double-talked or downplayed the Wall Street corruption problem, Jeff was one of the few voices on the Hill who always talked about the subject with appropriate alarm. He shared this quality with his boss Kaufman, the Delaware Senator who took over Biden's seat and instantly became an irritating (to Wall Street) political force by announcing he wasn’t going to run for re-election. "I later learned from reporters that Wall Street was frustrated that they couldn’t find a way to harness Ted or pull in his reins," Jeff writes. "There was no obvious way to pressure Ted because he wasn’t running for re-election."

Kaufman for some time was a go-to guy in the Senate for reform activists and reporters who wanted to find out what was really going on with corruption issues. He was a leader in a number of areas, attempting to push through (often simple) fixes to issues like high-frequency trading (his advocacy here looked prescient after the "flash crash" of 2010), naked short-selling, and, perhaps most importantly, the Too-Big-To-Fail issue. What’s fascinating about Connaughton’s book is that we now get to hear a behind-the-scenes account of who exactly was knocking down simple reform ideas, how they were knocked down, and in some cases we even find out why good ideas were rejected, although some element of mystery certainly remains here.

There are some damning revelations in this book, and overall it’s not a flattering portrait of key Obama administration officials like SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami, Department of Justice honchos Eric Holder (who once worked at the same law firm, Covington and Burling, as Connaughton) and Lanny Breuer, and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Most damningly, Connaughton writes about something he calls "The Blob," a kind of catchall term describing an oozy pile of Hill insiders who are all incestuously interconnected, sometimes by financial or political ties, sometimes by marriage, sometimes by all three. And what Connaughton and Kaufman found is that taking on Wall Street even with the aim of imposing simple, logical fixes often inspired immediate hostile responses from The Blob; you’d never know where it was coming from.

imf austerity hunger has spaniards foraging in the dumpsters for food...,

NYTimes | On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby. 

“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet. 

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution. 

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink. 

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.

imf's call for more cuts irks greece

NYTimes | As Greece enters a pivotal week in its economic crisis, tensions between the Greek government and the country’s international lenders have reached a boiling point. The government is resisting a push by the International Monetary Fund to impose additional austerity measures that Greek leaders fear could destabilize the shaky coalition government.

Although those talks are expected to resume later this week, they have been suspended since an angry exchange last week between the Greek finance minister and the I.M.F.’s top negotiator for Greece.

The impasse has elevated tensions here as Greece braces for a nationwide general strike planned on Wednesday that threatens to bring public services to a halt. The Greek people are increasingly angry over the prospect that public salaries and pensions will be cut again in a last-ditch bid to secure a new loan installment of 31.5 billion euros, or $40.7 billion, from Greece’s creditors. 

The Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, plans to address the nation this week to bolster support for the austerity package. He has already publicly warned his center-right party, New Democracy, that he will oust lawmakers of the party failing to back the package once it comes up for a vote, probably in early October.

Various European leaders have gone out of their way in recent weeks to voice support for the Greek government, which came to power in June. And they have praised the Samaras government’s renewed commitment to taking difficult steps to revamp the economy despite concern that Greece could be a ward of its euro zone partners for years to come. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has joined France in declaring that Greece must stay in the euro union to avoid even the perception that the union would be vulnerable to a wider breakup. 

In this political calculus, Ms. Merkel and others see Mr. Samaras as the last best hope for Greece. They worry that if the government teeters, new elections might be called in which his party could lose power to the increasingly popular leftist party Syriza, led by the political maverick Alexis Tsipras. Mr. Tsipras advocates tearing up the loan agreement with Greece’s international creditors. That would raise the risk of default and an eventual exit from the euro. 

The situation is also being monitored by Chinese officials, who would be reluctant to see a Greek exit from the euro destabilize the European Union, China’s largest trading partner. 

“We want the euro zone to stay intact,” Du Quiwen, the Chinese ambassador to Greece, said in an interview on Monday. “If something in Europe goes seriously wrong, if there’s a major mishap in the euro zone, it would put pressure on the world economy and it would not be in the interest of the world community or China.”