the geography of economic collapse - redux

Video - Updated 01.12.11 - The Decline: The Geography of a Recession by LaToya Egwuekwe

mass animal deaths

palin's curious views on jews...,

Video - Overview of Christian Zionism aka Dispensationalism.

HuffPo | Palin's invoking of blood libel, which in its proper use refers to a centuries old lie that was used to justify mass anti-semitism and Jewish persecution, immediately drew angry responses from politicians and Jewish groups, but also brings back to the forefront her own religious affiliation -- and its not infrequent brushes with anti-semitism.

Palin, who makes no secret of her devout Christian evangelism, is a member of Wasilla Bible Church, which subscribes to the Pentecostal Assembly of God. It is a small community church, but one that has been the host to a number of controversial speakers -- with Palin both in the audience and openly participating.

But it starts earlier than that. Palin is a member of a spiritual network maintained by Mary Glazier, a member of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders. A council of 500 "apostles," with each leader heading up its own network - like the one Palin is in - they seek to use "spiritual warfare" to retake the nation - and world - from the sinners they claim are currently running it.

In large part, they're referring to American Jews.

One Apostle, Thomas Hess, wrote about the American Jews in his book, 'Let My People Go: The Struggle of the American Jew to Come Home to Israel,' and hit out specifically about American Jews.

"...the Jewish people today are in slavery to many false gods in America.... My prayer is that American Jewish people become aware of the bondages to these gods and break free from them.. They must make Aliyah (return) to Israel before greater judgment or plagues come upon America. The Jewish people in America must be freed from this slavery to materialism in all of its forms in order to escape to Israel. Because of the way the Jewish people have prospered and been blessed in America, this struggle is even greater than it was to leave Europe more than seventy years ago."

Aside from seeking mass conversion, the Apostles preach about the inevitable end times, and the hazard Jews face if they do not change their ways - to follow the fringe Christian Zionist agenda, which involves handing over their "control" of the world to these Christian leaders. Part of that "moral" Jewish transformation involves moving to Israel.

While they seem to be cautioning the Jews (if in hateful and insulting ways), in actuality, they believe that their return to Israel will trigger a second coming of the Messiah -- though that may require Israel go to nuclear war with Iran in a struggle for power in the region. Collateral damage.

In fact, they are beyond adamant about the requirement for all Jews to move to Israel, invoking great tragedies as part of the plan to make it happen. John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain and Palin, is one of those Apostles, and in 2008 gave a speech titled 'Hitler is God's hunter.'

In the speech, Hagee said:

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel."

Hagee, who was a close ally of President George W. Bush and Tom DeLay, spoke at Glenn Beck's rally in August -- as did Palin -- isn't alone in this belief.

In more close proximity to Palin's statement yesterday, Hess linked Jews with abortion - a claim that has echoes of the blood libel charge.

He wrote:

There is so much blood on American soil, it is a miracle we have not already been destroyed as a nation! Many secular, reformed and conservative Jews have encouraged abortion despite the fact that the killing of their future generations will affect the future of the Jewish people. There is little difference today between child sacrifice in the Old Testament and abortions today.

So, what is Palin's connection with this group? Palin got her famous "lipstick on a pig" joke from Hagee, and Hess's book is marketed by and contributed to by Rick Joyner, who has his own history of Jewish conversion-themed writing. And he has literally had his hands on the head of Palin.

Palin has been "anointed," or given blessing, three times by three separate apostles of the movement. Joyner gave his blessing to the pastor of Palin's church, Ed Kalnins, who passed it on to Palin in a ceremony in 2008.

smokescreen for evangelical xtianity?

NPR | "There's nothing about this assessment that indicates that you are fit or not fit to be a soldier," says Cornum. She says the training module only offers ideas for developing one's spiritual side. It is not mandatory and has no effect on one's career.

"There's no pass-fail, nothing happens. No one sees it but the guy who takes it," she says.

To which Mikey Weinstein replies: "Tell it to the judge."

Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says it's ridiculous to tell a soldier that a suggestion to buff up his or her spiritual muscles is voluntary. He believes the term "spirituality" is a smoke screen for religion — particularly evangelical Christianity.

As evidence, he cites the part of the spirituality training module that describes the meaning behind the flag-folding ceremony. For Christians, the narrator says, the 12th fold "represents an emblem of eternity, and glorifies in their eyes, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost."

Weinstein says the Army is promoting religion and creating a religious test for its soldiers, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. He says he has 220 Army clients — some atheist, but the vast majority Christian — who are willing to sue to eliminate the spiritual fitness assessment.

"This is not a hard decision to make," he says. "This is a 1-inch putt if you're playing golf. This is clearly, blatantly unconstitutional — and it has to stop."

the peak oil crisis: civil unrest

FCNP | Buried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. The implication, of course, is that as 87 percent or roughly 270 million Americans harbor some level of animosity towards their elected federal representatives, the emergence of people who believe that exercising their 2nd Amendment rights is solution to the nation's woes is inevitable.

Why are so many, so mad at the Congress? The answer is simple - they have no idea what is happening to their lives. Since the beginning of the great recession way back in 2007 they have been told by two Presidents, their senior officials, 99 percent of the Congress, and most of the media that recovery was on the way and that prosperity would return shortly.

As unemployment in the U.S. grew and grew, every politician with a prayer of winning positioned him or herself as the "jobs" candidate who could and would get us all working at good high-paying jobs again. This of course has not returned and is unlikely to do so. We are not only contending with a growing debt bubble of gigantic proportions, we are also rapidly running out of the cheap, abundant energy that allowed us to be so prosperous for the last 200 years.

America's problem today is that almost nobody in any official position is willing to publically recognize the real nature of the problem we face and start talking about realistic solutions. So long as our elected officials and our media continue to speak endlessly about the recovery that is supposedly underway and continue to hold out the hope that, by voting for this or that candidate, all will be well, the great charade will continue and the people will get madder and madder.

The lack of realism on the part of those in a position to lead public opinion, and the endless repletion of fictions, such as the U.S. unemployment rate now being only 9.4 percent, has left open the door to what were once thought of as extremists to join the political debate and even the Congress. Proposals that are tantamount to national, or perhaps even global, suicide such as defaulting on the national debt, rolling back health care, or dropping environmental regulation are seriously debated as solutions to creating more jobs.

The real problem, of course, is that without a continually growing source of cheap and abundant energy, such as that provided by fossil fuels, there will never again be significant economic growth in the sense to which we have become accustomed. It is inevitable that we are all going to get much poorer, in a material sense, and this is the great secret of our age that so far few have had the courage to express. The easier path has been Keynesian stimulation of the economy, government bailouts of what were held to be key financial and industrial institutions, and tax cuts to mollify those who believe all problems stem from taxes. These measures were accompanied by endless expressions of hope that things would soon be better.

However, as the real economic situation continues to deteriorate in the midst of so little appreciation of why it is happening, frustrations with the political system grows and grows. In America, we have now had a run of well over 100 years with minimal domestic unrest on the scale of the Civil or Indian wars. This, however, may not continue to be the case much longer. As unemployment grows and people see the standards of living they have always known slipping away, their frustrations can take many forms. Last November as a nation we threw out dozens of politicians and replaced them with new faces equally devoid of any comprehension of the problem or what we as a nation will have to do next in order to survive, much less prosper.

Next year we will face another round of elections and all indications suggest that 20 odd months from now our economic situation will be materially worse and gasoline will be approaching unaffordability for many. While realism could surface in the intervening time, the odds are it won't and next year we will be faced with a plethora of silly proposals to deal with imagined problems. As the situation deteriorates further however, some may see violence as the answer to their woes. So far in America violence against individual public officials has been perpetrated by individuals with mental problems or a cause to further. This may not always be the case.

As has been frequently noted by the media in recent days, the level of political discourse in America has been droping markedly in recent years and while no one of any stature seems to be openly advocating violence, some are getting mighty close. Another few years of economic stagnation and increasing unemployment could easily bring us to the point where the line will be crossed.

All this is by way of saying that there is a serious downside to simply ignoring the realities of the current situation and relying on hope rather than leveling with the American people. By failure to guide the country to real solutions to real problems, our leaders are risking increasing violence as the frustrations of an unknowing people continue to grow.

was this the beginning?

HuffPo | While the shooting was in some respects one very unstable man acting alone, it is also intellectually and politically dishonest to ignore the political context in which this happens. As our politics became increasingly saturated with violent images, use of the term revolution, replacing the word stop or block with kill, threats by candidates that if elections did not turn out their way it might be necessary to resort to violence, the chances of something like this happening grew. Military analogies have long been part of the language of political campaigns in the US. We speak of "air wars" "troops" and "targeting" in campaigns, but in the last few years this rhetoric has moved to a different level.

It is possible that talk of "second amendment remedies" from one right-wing Senate candidate, an image of a map with crosshairs on various congressional districts around the country on the website of another prominent conservative politician, the constant drumbeat about traitors in the White House from right wing pundits and politicians, exhortations to ordinary citizens to harass their representatives who supported the health care bill in 2009 and similar gestures or statements in no way contributed to Loughner's actions, but it is also possible, and probably at least as likely, that a disturbed, loner with strange political views given to conspiracy theories was influenced by these ideas and images. While the right wing should not be blamed for this incident, they probably should take this opportunity to take a closer look at the potential consequences of what they have been saying and doing these last two years, but so far they have not. Most serious conservative politicians have been quick to express their sadness about the incident, in some cases even calling for toning down political rhetoric, but have sought to do this without confronting the violent rhetoric specific to the far right.

The question the killings in Arizona raise is whether this will become an isolated incident or whether it is the beginning of something more. For example, Giffords' shooting could lead to members of Congress becoming less accessible due to concerns about security. This would be considerably more damaging to our political system than might seem to be the case at first glance. Members of Congress are already somewhat isolated from their constituents, but increasing this chasm between ordinary Americans and politicians will make people less trusting of government and lead elected officials to become even more out of touch with their constituents. This would probably exacerbate America's political crises.

It is also possible that there will be other acts of politically-motivated violence, particularly if the tone of the rhetoric remains the same. If this happens, we will remember Giffords' shooting not as an isolated incident, but as the day the country really came undone. More incidents like this will devastate our country, turning the US into a place where politicians are scared for their safety and violence is a regular part of political life. This is unlikely to happen, but it was also unlikely that a member of Congress would be shot while meeting with constituents in front of a grocery store.

It is not fair to blame Sarah Palin or any other right-wing political figure for this possibility, but it is reasonable to expect them to know better and to understand that gestures, words and images have consequences. It is also wise for everybody to understand what is at stake here. Each time Republican candidates, or anybody else, talks of revolution, "second amendment solutions," traitors and the like, or resort to violent imagery or language, the door to the violence that will destabilize our country is being pushed just a little further open -- once it is opened, closing it will be a lot more difficult. This is also the lesson from Arizona.

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.