Posts filed under 'NEGATIVE SPACE'
October 22nd, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
On the worst carnage in Pakistan’s history in which close to eight hundred innocent people were killed and maimed.
Today I weep for this blood-smeared mournful land that you have become, marooned in the blazing desert, torn and tormented, plundered and ravaged, disfigured by the scars of myriad wounds, tears dropping from your dolorous, longing eyes. Today I weep for thee.
Today my grief is a sea–a fathomless, boundless sea. In this dark expanse drifts my soul…aimless, doleful and in mortal pain. Today I weep, unreservedly, unashamedly and in gushing torrents for Pakistan my fatherland. Today I weep for thee.
Today I weep with grief for Pakistan of flowering fields and blooming orchards, that wondrous land of jasmines and daffodils in freshest blossom, of tall snow capped mountains with rose fragrant valleys. I weep at your slow death at the hands of boisterous evil. I weep at your bloodied countenance and contorted face. Today I weep.
Today I weep for the demons of extremism that are stalking your splendid fields and farms. I weep for none can see that these monsters come clothed as messiahs bearing gifts steeped in poison. Nurtured on a diet of hate, these are now out of control. Rejuvenating in each bloodbath, they are consuming innocent humans at will. And while these demons have taken our nation on a guided tour of hell, the good men continue to wallow in their deafening silence. Today I weep.
Today I weep for the hapless victims. I weep for the unsung songs of the dead, for their unlived lives, for their untold stories. I weep for the loss of innocent souls whom no amount of crying or wailing can now bring back. I weep for scores of disabled whose limbs were torn asunder and will now hobble on ugly crutches through the rest of their miserable existences. Today I weep as I gaze upon your once promising past and then the present full of pain and then again upon the ominous unknown towards which you are headed. Today I weep as I find myself unable to soar above this dark abyss, weighted down with the mute silence of my good countrymen as I am. Today I weep.
Today I weep for this blood-smeared mournful land that you have become, marooned in the blazing desert, torn and tormented, plundered and ravaged, disfigured by the scars of myriad wounds, tears dropping from your dolorous, longing eyes. Today I weep.
Today I weep in the full knowledge that in vain are my bitter tears. In vain and useless because man the man-eating beast is on rampage in your bosom in the name of God while my good countrymen sit in meek acquiescence to the evil sermonizing from the pulpit. With their heads bowed, they listen to bigotry, intolerance and oppression spewed out in the name of God. Today I weep.
Today I weep for even as these lines are being written, somewhere at the fringes of humanity, in some dark recesses devoid of fresh air and sunlight, ominous creatures huddle together planning more massacre as the good men sway in trance to the bellowing from the pulpit. Today I weep.
Today I weep at the festering wounds in your body the gangrene in which is alive and spreading fast. Today I weep because your sons who could cure these boils with air and light now sit cowering in fear in their homes hoping that time somehow will pass healing all your injuries. I weep for they fail to realize that the time to break out of our collective apathy and lead the nation from its present state of gloom and despair is now or never. Today I weep.
Today I weep because my countrymen think that their religion is just about prayers and worship. I weep for they forget that a significant portion of their Book deals with purification of self, interaction with others, knowledge of the universe and what is contained therein. I weep because they do not see that while they are busy loathing the West, the West is busy conquering the same universe, solving its riddles, harnessing the nature for the benefit of mankind and finding that time is their only competitor. I weep because my countrymen counter the West by suicide bombing, beheading of innocent human beings, issuing Fatwas to that effect, continuing to pray for Divine intervention and by hating the whole West for the stupidity of just a few of their leaders. I weep because nobody seems to care that the only, repeat only, way to walk tall and strong in the comity of nations is to come at par with the West in education, technology and economy. Today I weep.
Today I weep for the once wonderful madarasah that was supposed to be a bastion of knowledge and a guiding light to the world where every order of learning from mathematics to science, from medicine to astronomy, from philosophy to jurisprudence were taught, where great Muslim luminaries such as Al-Beruni, Ibn-e-Sina and Ibn-e-Khuldoon produced timeless works is now being used to mislead innocent Muslims by promoting intolerance, hatred and violence. I weep because from its podium and the pulpit, the so called clerics are inciting adherents to kill innocent people, while singing sweet lullabies of their marvelous past. I weep because we are told to keep hugging past glories to our chests and remain prostate in prayers waiting for a Saladin to appear and restore us to our rightful destiny. Today I weep.
Today I weep for the horrendous indifference of the good people, for the hush, impotence and disappearance of moderate voices from across the national scene. Today I weep over the past three decades that have seen Pakistan navigating a course strewn with blood, bones, and bodies of innocent victims. I weep for I have witnessed firsthand -the whole nation slowly caging itself into an obscenity of horror, pushed by the hands of decent men who remain quiet when they should speak. Today I weep.
Today I weep, O country mine, for each new pain the beasts inflict upon you. My breast is torn again and again as you reel from the countless wounds inflicted by the savage hordes. I weep in the sure knowledge that neither God nor fate had destined you to become this vale of sorrow and anguish that you have now become. I weep for I cannot see any time soon that dawn will rise and put an end to your murk and gloom. Not unless we the silent ones arise from our slumber and pour sunshine into your stricken heart that you may burnish with new light, my Fatherland. And that I do not see. Today I weep.
Today I weep for I see nary an effort to get up and start carving tunnels of hope though the dark mountains of despondency and disillusionment that we have allowed coming up all around us by remaining a silent majority. I weep because the dark clouds and the deep fog of extremism now engulf our communities from all around. I weep for I cannot see any where on the horizons the radiant stars of happiness, harmony and prosperity that should have been shining by now over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty. Today I weep.
Today I weep for the thousands that have paid for our apathy with their lives and the thousands more that surely will because we continue to remain silent. I weep for this harvest of hate season after season. I weep for our failure to face squarely the extremists who sell their dark dogmas as superior to enlightened reason. I weep for my countrymen who fail to see through the naked, twisted, mindless logic of the bigot. I weep at the silence of the good men who have brought this about. I weep at the impotent look in their dead eyes as they gaze on at the slowly erecting sorrowful tomb of Pakistani nation. I weep at their terror-stricken question that they ask each other in hushed tones….what happened to Pakistan?
YOU happened to Pakistan.
Pakistan, I weep for thee.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
October 22nd, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
It is clearly time that folks woke up regarding military contractors. If you missed Bill Moyers interview with Jeremy Scahill, I strongly encourage you to watch it. It is online in two parts on Moyers website at PBS. Scahill has written extensively on Blackwater - most recently publishing .
In the interview, Scahill rightly points out that the Bush administration did not start the privatization (corporatization) of the military. Further, that while Cheney went to a highly profitable CEO position at Halliburton, it was under Clinton that the Halliburton contracting mushroomed:
But let’s, let’s remember here we’re talking about Blackwater right now because we have a Republican administration. For so many years, we had a Republican dominated Congress. Blackwater is certainly the beneficiary of the– the Republican monopoly in government. But this system has been bi-partisan for a very long time. When Hillary Clinton’s husband was in the White House, he was an aggressive supporter of the privatization of the war machine. Bill Clinton used mercenary forces in the Balkans. Who do we think gave Dick Cheney’s company all of those contracts during the Nineties? We talk about Halliburton. It was Clinton. It was the Clinton administration. And and, Blackwater may be a– an extraordinary Republican company. But they’re gonna be around when there’s a Democrat in office.
These so-called “peace and security” corporations are doing more than making a fat profit out of the contracting from the “war on terrorism.” These billions are being used to expand their infrastructure and reach. Some, like Blackwater, now have full scale private militaries which are larger than some nation’s militaries. So these companies may be hired by a government - or by another corporation - as a military force. In other words, what has been created, and what is rapidly growing, are standing corporate armies. That should make people across the political spectrum very nervous.
There are three books that I encourage everyone to read:
;
;
.
Scahill is not the only one writing about Blackwater and corporate militaries. Naomi Klein discusses them in relationship to disaster capitalism in her book “Shock Doctrine.” R. J. Hillhouse talks about them (fictionally) in “Outsourced.” Hillhouse also has a site The Spy Who Billed Me, and is (in part) a journalist tied into the intelligence community.
Taken together, these three books present a chilling vision of the present, and even more so of the future. While not the total focus of her book, Klein discusses the role of mercenary forces in enforcing and extending the policies implemented under the economic shock doctrine. The premise of this economic approach is to create, or take advantage of “disaster” to implement the privatization of social functions (education, public resources, critical infrastructure), and the role of militaries and police forces (including corporatized ones) in controlling a panicked (or angry) public. She talks about the presence of Blackwater in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina - as does Scahill in response to Moyers’ comparison of Blackwater to Pinkerton guards of old:
No. I mean, you know, it was like Baghdad on the bayou down there in New Orleans. And– I mean, this is the point I’m making. The poor drowned. They are left without food. They’re called looters when they take perishable goods out of a store when they’ve been systematically neglected. The rich bring in their mercenaries to guard their properties or their businesses or their hotel chains. And I think it’s a window into what happens in a national emergency. And in this country, the poor are left to suffer and die and the rich bring in their mercenaries.
Of course it is not just the rich hiring mercenaries. Blackwater showed up in New Orleans on their own, but within three days they had a contract from Homeland Security.
R. J. Hillhouse focuses more on Intelligence issues, but sometimes those are almost indistinguishable from military activities. He book “Outsourced” is set in Iraq and Afghanistan and focuses on the activities of two contractors. On one hand, she weaves a web of military contractors competing for a bigger part of the contracting pie. However, she also focuses on the merging of corporate interests and interagency competition (Pentagon and CIA in particular). In this miasma, the contractors have found an almost unimaginable gravy train. They have found an almost limitless source of no-bid contracts which pour hundreds of millions of dollars into their corporate (and personal) accounts. The ending of the conflict also ends the need for the contractors and the lucrative situation they are in. So you have a situation of contractors funding and supplying insurgents and even Al Qaida. On the other hand, the contractors in Outsourced are also intimate parts of the secret operations of the CIA and the Pentagon (who of course are not talking to each other).
So we have a monster on our hands. A monster with the best weapons, deep coffers, tremendous political influence, and the protection of corporate status. Dealing with corporatism and the influence it wields over government - the U.S. government at the head of the list - is one thing. You can apply pressure to elected representatives and to the IMF, World Bank, and World Trade Organization. However, corporations which are complete militaries into themselves are a very different scenario indeed. They are particularly a concern when the government is their primary customer.
October 21st, 2007
BY Joel S. Hirschhorn author of Delusional Democracy and Friends of the Article V Convention
Why would a prominent law professor supposedly in favor of having the nation’s second constitutional convention organize a symposium where the keynote speaker is dead set against a convention? And why pack the three subsequent panels with people against a convention? I kept asking myself these questions as I attended the recent symposium that Larry Sabato had the audacity to title “National Constitution Convention.”
When I first heard about the event I was troubled by how it was being marketed as, literally, a national constitutional convention - not a conference about a second convention, or the case for the first time use of the option in Article V of the Constitution to hold a convention of state delegates to consider making proposed amendments. Why sell the event as a national constitution convention? The answer became clear: to sell Larry Sabato’s latest book that sets forth a large number of constitutional amendments, most of which both the panelists and nearly everyone else examining them rejects.
This raised another troubling question: Why would someone who sincerely believes our nation needs another convention, rather than relying on Congress to propose amendments, purposefully set forth so many controversial amendments? History has shown that the many attempts to get an Article V convention failed because each of them was linked to advocacy for a specific amendment. When people opposed an amendment they automatically opposed an Article V convention. So here comes Larry Sabato who engineers a lot of public attention to over 20 amendments that many will oppose. True, it brings attention to amending the Constitution. But does he think that doing this will actually promote support for the nation’s first Article V convention? It certainly did not do that at his symposium. Consider these public positions given at the event:
Keynote speaker Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential nominee, could not have been more anti-convention. She said she was “not a fan of a second convention” and is “afraid of one.” While she articulated considerable fears about the damage a convention could do, she failed to even mention the safety net created by the Framers in Article V: the difficult ratification process where three-quarters of the states would have to approve every proposed amendment. Such an obvious bias cannot be overlooked when considering her perspective and comments - so typical of political establishment elites protecting the status quo.
The biggest event speaker was Supreme Court Justice Alito who said he was “skeptical” about the nation having the kind of talent for a second convention that was present at the first one. “I’m skeptical we’d be so fortunate if we tried it a second time,” he said. He seems to not understand that our current corrupt, dysfunctional political system has for some time not attracted the very best people. He also failed to mention the 2006 decision he supported with the rest of the Supreme Court to not consider a federal lawsuit, Walker vs. Members of Congress, that dealt specifically with the obligation of Congress to obey the Constitution and call an Article V Convention.
Several panelists took the position that Americans do not have sufficient civic literary or education to support having a convention, and that we could not do better than the original Framers, ignoring many of the subsequent amendments that have been extremely important because they improved upon the initial Constitution. Not one speaker recognized that there have been hundreds of state constitutional conventions, none of which wrecked state constitutions.
Lance Cargill, Oklahoma Speaker of the House, expressed concerns about a new convention causing political and economic instabilities. Could one expect anything more from the status quo political establishment? There was not one person on the symposium panels that could be considered a true activist advocating for an Article V convention as a critically need path to major political reforms.
One of the panelists noted that Sabato talks about “a new Constitution” and, of course, that rightfully frightens people. In fact, all an Article V convention can do is propose specific amendments to the current Constitution. It just feeds opposition to a convention to speak of a “new Constitution.” So why does Sabato do that?
Interestingly, one of Sabato’s proposals for a balanced budget amendment received sufficient applications from the states to cause a convention call by Congress which it disregarded, which he should know and take a strong position on.
Let me give Sabato deserved thanks for pointing out a number of facts that theoretically should build public support for an Article V convention. He has correctly emphasized that the Founders gave us the Article V convention option because they “didn’t trust Congress.” And he has made it clear that Congress has refused to give Americans the convention option because they fear changing the political system by which they have gotten their jobs. “Congress is a burial ground for constitutional amendments,” he said. He has also made it abundantly clear that the Founders did not believe that the original Constitution was “perfect” and that, indeed, they “never intended it to be sacred and untouchable.” He has noted that the convention “was the Founders’ preferred method.” He likes quoting Thomas Jefferson who believed in periodic rebellions to safeguard American democracy. He should also quote Hamilton who stated a convention call was “peremptory” and that “Congress shall have no option” regarding a convention call.
In sum, on the one hand Sabato recognizes the need for constitutional amendments and that the route to getting important ones is through an Article V convention. On the other hand, however, nothing he is doing in his efforts promoting his latest book seem effective in actually building public support for the very difficult task of getting - after 220 years - the first Article V convention. How can we reconcile this dichotomy?
He expresses no sense of urgency despite recognizing the current political and government system is broken. “It will probably take a generation before anything happens, if it happens then,” he said - and a generation today means about 30 years. It would appear the professor is content simply to write a book about the issues, stir up a lot of negative feelings about a convention, but solve nothing regarding the problem.
He seems stuck in an academic mindset rather than proudly arguing for reform through a convention. He speaks promotes school mock constitutional conventions. In other words, he seems to have capitulated to a pretty negative perspective that despite having a big set of revolting conditions the country is not ready for soon having an Article V convention to reform and fix our broken system. Sabato knows that the Article V convention option was put into the Constitution because the Framers anticipated that the public might someday lose confidence in the federal government, and he surely knows that that day has arrived.
As a co-founder of Friends of the Article V Convention at www.foavc.org I welcome more explicit support for pressuring Congress to obey the Constitution and their oath of office by acknowledging that there have been over 500 applications from all 50 states for a convention. This more than satisfies the one and only requirement specified in Article V. And Sabato knows that Congress has never passed any law that in any way expands or re-interprets that single requirement that two-thirds of states ask for a convention, upon which Congress “shall” call a convention. It certainly would help the nation if Sabato would talk more about all of these circumstances than merely focus on a large set of contentious possible amendments which if a convention is never called will never come to pass.
October 17th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born on October 7, 1952 in St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad. His father Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin, was a factory foreman and his mother, Maria Ivanovna Putina. He was raised as an only child; his two brothers died young, one shortly after birth, the other of diphtheria during World War II. In his youth he was often called Putka.
On the world stage, Putka’s arch rival is the 43rd President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush. He was born two days after the national holiday of the Fourth of July, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut where his father was attending Yale College in the Class of 1949. His mother was the former Barbara Pierce, whom his father had married on January 6, 1945. George was their first born. He likes to call himself Dubya (W).
Of late, Putka has been hopping mad with Dubya. Dubya has been riding rough shod in his backyard for some time now with Putka merely watching. Dubya’s latest push to expand NATO to Russia’s borders and his plans to deploy missile defense systems in the former Soviet bloc, however, seems to have finally drawn Putka’s ire. Dubya’s administration’s sporadic criticism of Putka’s rising dictatorship has not helped the matters either.
That Putka seems to have had enough of Dubya is evident from a speech in Munich last July where he derided the U.S. for its “unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions,” claiming that “the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way” and slammed its “greater and greater disdain” for international law. Not very far back, in a thinly veiled reference to the U.S., he also said,” the Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows who to eat and is not about to listen to anyone, it seems.”
Putka now seems to have had enough of Dubya’s solo stint at the world stage. Flush with his recent oil wealth, Putka wants to recapture some of the lost glories of Russia. His country is the world’s No. 2 oil producer. That combined with an oil price of $80 a barrel filling the Kremlin’s coffers like never before, Russian military has had a much needed shot in the arm. He now views the Iran standoff as another opportunity to reclaim some of the past global power status. He is pushing back hard against Dubya.
In a tit for tat response, therefore, Putka test-fired a new ballistic missile supposedly capable of thwarting Washington’s fledgling missile shield, has blocked moves at the U.N. aimed at granting Kosovo formal independence from Russia’s ally, Serbia and recently planted a Russian flag at the North Pole. Also, last week in Russia, he made the U.S. Secretaries of State and Defense wait 45 minutes for him before delivering them a tongue-lashing over America’s missile defense plan. All this while, Putka has offered only lukewarm support to West’s campaign against Iran.
Not satisfied with redeploying the Russian fleet to the Mediterranean, Putka engaged in war games with China and several central Asian nations. Moscow and Beijing are more closely aligned now, against U.S. power, than they ever were during the Cold War, when their respective Communist Parties were at daggers drawn.
Putka has also withdrawn from a Cold War-era treaty governing the size of conventional military forces in Europe, ordered its old Bear bombers to fly nuclear patrols along old Cold War frontiers and this Tuesday, disregarding warnings of a possible suicide attack against him, Putka became the first occupant of the Kremlin since Stalin to visit Tehran. From Tehran yesterday, to give further heartburn to Dubya, he issued a not-so-veiled warning against any attack on Iran. This at a time when the U.S. and its key European allies are rattling their sabers loudly while pushing for a new round of sanctions aimed at forcing Tehran to suspend uranium-enrichment.
At home, Putka has fanned nationalist, anti-American sentiment with nostalgia for the past global power status, has created an aggressively anti-Western youth league called “NASHI” and has ratcheted up his own rhetorical attacks on the U.S. and Western Europe.
That both Putka and Dubya are equally ruthless when it comes to pursuing their interests is a fact duly confirmed by the political legacies of their respective predecessors and their present day actions in places like Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan. A quick look at their lives, however, may give us denizens of planet earth some inkling as to what is in store for us in the coming years.
As a young man, Putka studied law at State University in St Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, and joined the KGB’s foreign intelligence service after graduating. His rise in the Russian political system has been meteoric after he left the KGB in 1990. He then became an ally of liberal Anatoly Sobchak, the mayor of St Petersburg, whom he met during his study. He first became Mr Sobchak’s head of external relations and then served as deputy mayor from March 1994. When Mr Sobchak lost power in 1996 it was another liberal, deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, who recommended him for a job in the presidential administration.
There he rose to be deputy chief-of-staff before being asked, in July 1998, to take charge of one of Russia’s new security services, the Federal Security Bureau (FSB). Subsequently, President Boris Yeltsin appointed him as head of the powerful Security Council. After Boris Yeltsin sacked Sergei Stepashin in August 1999, he became Russia’s prime minister. On the last day of the 20th century, Boris Yeltsin resigned and appointed him as acting president. Presidential elections were held on March 26, 2000. Putin received 52.94 percent of all votes. The inauguration took place on May 7, 2000.
Until the presidential elections, Putka had no experience of elected office. He was not renowned as a captivating speaker - his nickname used to be the “grey cardinal”. During recent summits though, he proved to be an excellent speaker indeed. He is said to be most popular among young people, Muscovites and educated people. His reputation is of a good chairman and organiser. He is a candidate of economic sciences (1996).
Putka has good command of English and German and is fond of sports, especially wrestling. He has been going in for sambo (a Russian style of self-defence) and judo since the age of 11. He won the sambo championships of St Petersburg many times and became Master of Sports first in sambo and later in judo. Putka doesn’t smoke and he is not an excessive drinker.
Boris Yeltsin introduced him to the Russian people by saying that “he will be able to unite around himself those who will revive Great Russia in the new, 21st century”. Sergei Stepashin, federal security minister under Boris Yeltsin, later described him as a “decent and honest man”. Boris Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, said that “he’s a decent, tough and energetic man who was out of public politics due to the specifics of his job”. During a summit in June 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton praised him for “surely being capable of creating a strong and prosperous Russia”. After Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met with Mr Putin in August 2000, he told that “he’s certainly no threat to the Russian democracy”.
Here are some of Putka’s famous quotes;
“History proves that all dictatorships, all authoritarian forms of government are transient. Only democratic systems are not transient. Whatever the shortcomings, mankind has not devised anything superior.”
“We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.”
“Anyone who doesn’t regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.”
“My sacred duty is to bring together the Russian people, unite the people around clear tasks. We have one Fatherland, one people and a common future.”
And on America pulling out of long-standing treaties and bullying the UN, he said, “Unilateral, illegitimate actions have not solved a single problem, they have become a hotbed of further conflicts.”
In the other corner we have Dubya of the United States of America. Possibly hobbled by childhood dyslexia, initially, Dubya’s prospects of living up to his famous lineage were dim. Though he did maintain a gentlemanly “C” average at Yale and acquired a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, he proved an uninspired student throughout his educational career. With an admittedly drinking affliction in his youth, he continued to flounder until he turned 40. His rebirth as a believing Christian, by his own admission, helped put him on the straight and narrow path that led him to the Presidency.
A lot in Dubya’s success in later life can safely be attributed to his social position and his father’s business and political connections. The first President Bush had great connections in the Middle East, particularly with the Saudi royal family and the powerful Bin Laden clan. Using his father’s Saudi connections, Dubya became a millionaire twice over through Middle Eastern oil projects. His most notable achievement in private life was becoming president and chief operating partner of a professional baseball team. He later became the supreme commander of American armed forces.
He was arrested in 1976 for driving under the influence of alcohol, in Kennebunkport, Maine. Pled guilty, paid fine, and had driver’s license suspended for 30 days. Dubya, thus, is the only U.S. president to enter office with a felony conviction on his record. He was also arrested twice for college pranks (charges dropped) for celebrating a Yale football victory by pulling up Princeton goal posts and for “borrowing” a large Christmas wreath from a store door (source: Washington Post).
During his first presidential campaign, Dubya capitalized on the low expectations others had for him, and won respect - and votes - for going the distance without stumbling or embarrassing himself. His opponent, Al Gore, had to rise and exceed expectations while Bush merely had to live up to lowered expectations to rise above them and gain credence.
It was thus that in the closest election in a century, it all came down to a matter of 537 votes in Florida. Out of the nearly six million votes cast in the Sunshine State (5,861,785 total, only 36,742 of which were won by third party candidates), Bush won by a margin representing 0.0087%. That’s less than nine one-thousandths of a percentage point. To this day, many Americans doubt the win by so slim a margin. His succession to the Presidency was decided by the Supreme Court, after a month-long battle over who actually won the election.
Dubya took the oath of office on January 20, 2001 as the 43rd President of United States of America. Months later, after a convenient 911, Dubya proceeded forthwith to declare open a non-ending ‘war on terra‘ that continues to this day. That war, his terrorized nation and a few thousand overstuffed ballot boxes ensured his re-election in November 2004 to become the first son of a president to win two terms in office. After initially riding high on the ‘wings of terra’, he has recently become the least popular president of United States ever.
As a hobby, Dubya collects autographed baseballs.
Here are just some of Dubya’s many quotes;
“I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.”
“I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.”
“I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer questions; I can’t answer your question.”
“I think we ought to raise the age at which juveniles can have a gun.”
“The very act of spending money can be expensive.”
“More and more of our imports come from overseas.”
“The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.”
“One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected.”
[June 14, 2001, speaking to Swedish Prime Minister Lars Göran Persson, unaware that a live TV camera was running] “It’s amazing I won. I was running against peace, prosperity, and incumbency.”
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”
Now the scribe has three questions to ask of readers;
Q No.1. Dyslexia is a learning disability characterized by problems with reading, spelling, writing, speaking, listening, confusion with directions, confusion with certain concepts, such as “up” and “down,” “early” and “late,” and mathematics etc. Do you think Dubya still suffers from dyslexia?
Q No. 2. Dubya has given Putka a nickname. It is Pootie-Poot. What do you think Putka should call him?
Q No. 3. Who is going to kill us more in the coming years, Putka or Dubya?
What say dear readers?
Sources
1. http://vladimirputin.4u.ru/
2. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0124133/bio
3. http://tinyurl.com/2pqpt6
4. http://tinyurl.com/38dyl3
5. http://tinyurl.com/32lcud
6. http://thinkexist.com/quotes/vladimir_putin/
7. http://faqs.org/health/Sick-V2/Dyslexia.html
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
October 16th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
For some it is no surprise that the illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens began prior to September 2001. The Bush administration went into office with the plan to “transform” the power of the president with its attempts to implement the “unitary executive.” It was clear from the start with the refusal to release past presidential records as required by law, and then the refusal to obey a court order to release information regarding Cheney’s energy “advisors.” The statement from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio that Qwest had denied an NSA order for calling records in February 2001 has opened a door on the lie.
President Bush and his administration have pressed continuously for “expedited” and “expanded” surveillance powers. It is clear at this point that the surveillance ordered by Bush via the NSA without FISA warrants was illegal. So too, did the companies who complied with the NSA orders break the law. That is why retrospective immunity is included in currently proposed legislation.
However, the repeated public reason for the necessity of such abridgement of existing law and Constitutional protections has been the events of September 11, 2001. Bush and company have argued repeatedly that they need these expanded powers in order to ensure national security, and as an effective tool in the “war on terrorism.” Repeated thousands of times in hundreds of appearances, we have heard September 11. If that was the impetus, then why was the administration violating the law in February 2001 - six months prior to September 11?
I can feel the spin coming that the administration took seriously the threat of Al Qaida that was at the forefront of Clinton’s exiting warnings. However, they couldn’t say anything about it in all this time, and all the questions and hearings, because it would pose a threat to “national security.”
To place this in perspective, the February 2001 date means that one month after entering office, Bush had found the FISA laws and the Constitution to be burdensome. One is left to assume that the implementation of the overthrow of the government was started almost immediately upon Bush taking the oath of office. This too is no surprise given the overlap between the Bush administration and the Project for a New American Century.
John Conyers (D-Michigan), who is the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is following up on the claims of Nacchio with requests to the Justice Department and Mike McConnell (head of the NSA) for release of information relating to the NSA surveillance orders.
Another Congressional request for information has brought for letters from AT&T and Verizon regarding NSA surveillance requests in 2005. The response from the telecom giants shows significant requests (88,000 for Verizon alone), but the White House has told the telecoms to not respond to Congressional demands for information citing “national security” (see previous link). Meanwhile, the FCC has also refused to investigate the scope and timing of the information provided by the telecom companies - also citing national security.
Related to, but separate from the telecom response to NSA and FBI requests is the FBI running National Security Letters (NSLs) for the Pentagon. This from :
The Pentagon has misled Congress and the US public by conniving with the FBI to obtain hundreds of financial, telephone and Internet records without court approval, civil-rights campaigners said Sunday.
This information gotten by the ACLU shows that the Pentagon has moved well outside the scope of its powers by . Such activity would likely fall afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act:
… generally prohibits Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act substantially limit the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.
So that blows a huge hole in Dick of the Department of Defense engaging in domestic surveillance and intelligence gathering:
Vice President Dick Cheney has defended the practice as a “perfectly legitimate activity” used to investigate possible acts of terrorism and espionage.
Just more trivia to add to the ever-growing list of abuses and illegalities engaged in by the Bush administration. Abuses for which, apparently, they will never be held accountable. But for those of you who think those of us concerned about these issues are “partisan” or “paranoid,” guess what? The next president (who may well be a Democrat) gets to inherit the “Unitary Executive” with all the extensions of power and surveillance and no oversight or accountability either. Personally, I find no comfort in that thought - nor in the ongoing dismantling of our Constitution.
Note: Nacchio is serving a six year prison term for insider trading. The information was part of recently unsealed testimony in his case. He stated that Qwest refused to comply with the NSA requests, and was retaliated against with the loss of contracts from the NSA.
October 16th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
The TOPOFF 4 exercises started in Guam and Portland, Oregon. There are reports from various sources on how those are progressing. However, there is no news at all out of Phoenix (the third site in this week’s scenario). Further, while there is news regarding TOPOFF, there is absolutely nothing about Vigilant Shield 2008 which is running currently and in coordination with the exercise.
The lack of media coverage of TOPOFF is planned. Media that are involved are fake media. Yes, they have fake media present for the exercises, but have placed the real media at a distance.
Also participating in TOPOFF-4 are individuals acting as reporters and photographers that are actually reporting on the incident as part of a virtual news operation. This part of the drill is designed to test the communications and responses of the players tasked with dealing with the media. ~ KUAM News
And the media. Did I mention the drill includes fake media? ~ OregonLive
The most humorous bit of first person reporting is from an employee at the Oregon Department of Transportation Region 1 Headquarters:
ODOT Region 1 headquarters response: Evacuate the nice filtered air conditioned building that was untouched by the explosion, protected by three separate approach spans to the bridge, to send everybody outside into the rain that is now supposedly polluted with radioactive dust. Take a full head count of 600 employees to make sure there are no survivors, and that everybody is now dying of massive lung cancer before letting them back in the building.
However, the news from Guam shows more disruption than from Portland. Guam had significant traffic disruption, and the access to the hospital is blocked to all but emergency vehicles. As I already noted, there is no news about Arizona and how the TOPOFF exercise is going there. Nor is there any mention that I can find about what or how the Vigilant Shield exercise is progressing.
October 14th, 2007
By Rowan Wolf
Starting tomorrow Portland, Oregon (and Phoenix AZ, and Guam) will be the site of a “simulated” terrorist attack with a “dirty bomb.” A radioactive substance is scheduled to be released so that live tracking of the plume can be observed and integrated into the exercise. According to a source I have who is in the exercise, the supposed release in the Pearl District is inaccurate. Where the release will occur is “top secret.” When I pressed, my source stated that “some things have not been made public, and he wasn’t going to leak the information.”
According to the Oregon Fact Sheet on the exercise:
The Scenario
The T4 full-scale exercise is based on National Planning Scenario 11 (NPS-11). Terrorists have planned attacks in Oregon, Arizona, and the U.S. Territory of Guam. They have brought radioactive material into the United States. The first of three coordinated attacks occurs in Guam, with the detonation of a Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD), or “dirty bomb,” causing casualties and widespread contamination in a populous area. Within hours, similar attacks occur in Portland and Phoenix.
An RDD is not the same as a nuclear attack. Rather, it is a conventional explosive that releases radioactive material into the surrounding area. Although it does not cause the type of catastrophic damage associated with a nuclear detonation, an RDD causes severe problems in rescuing victims, providing emergency care, and managing long-term decontamination.
TOPOFF stands for “Top Officials” and is a Homeland Security exercise costing about $2.5 million for Portland and surrounds funded by Congress.
While state agencies have been preparing for the exercise for two years, there has been no effort to prepare Portland’s citizens for either the exercise or a real emergency. Periodic public broadcasts of what to put in an emergency kit aside, one would think that the state would have taken advantage of the funding to prepare for an actual emergency.
TOPOFF 4 is a “full scale exercise,” meaning that first responders are included in the drill.
Some people are quite nervous about the exercise, and I would be the last to say that they are overly paranoid. Certainly it is difficult for a “full scale exercise” to be realistic if there are not real people panicking. We’ll see as the exercise runs for five days.
However, TOPOFF 4 is not the only major “exercise” that is occurring October 15-20. Also running will be Vigilant Shield 2008. This is a six day martial law exercise being run by NorthCom. The NORTHCOM Fact Sheet on Vigilant Shield states”
National Level Exercise 108
will include the simulated detonation of three radiological dispersal devices within the USNORTHCOM and U.S. Pacific Command areas of responsibility. These exercise events and others are designed to test the full range of incident management response procedures at the local, state, and federal levels.
Purpose: Exercise VIGILANT SHIELD 2008 and National Level Exercise 1-08 will provide local, state, tribal, interagency, Department of Defense, and nongovernmental organizations and agencies involved in homeland security and homeland defense the opportunity to participate in a full range of exercise scenarios that will better prepare participants to prevent and respond to national crises. The participating organizations will conduct a multilayered, civilian led response to a national crisis.
In other words, Vigilant Shield is running in coordination with TOPOFF 4. However, Vigilant Shield appears to be bigger as “These linked exercises will take place 15 - 20 October 2007 and are being conducted throughout the United States with several partner nations (Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom), as well as the Territory of Guam..”
It seems like a strong possibility that the three TOPOFF sites may be targets for martial law “exercises,” and possibly beyond that.
According to the NORTHCOM fact sheet, NORTHCOM is “conducting multiple homeland defense and critical infrastructure protection events.” These “events include “aerospace” defense and control, as well as inter-agency coordination.
So, NORTHCOM will be testing response and “missile defense” which likely means a number of military jets in the air, and “bogies” on air controller’s screens. If this sounds hauntingly familiar, it should. Massive “exercises” were also occurring on September 11, 2001 (see also Complete 9/11 Timeline). While this has been left out of most of the corporate media renditions of that day, those who have bothered to look at the full story are well aware of those events.
The level of the TOPOFF & Vigilant Shield exercises presents a distraction, and possibly an opportunity, for other things to happen. Whether that is a “terrorist” attack, or an opportunity to launch “surgical strikes” at the “Axis of Evil” remains to be seen.
Unlike some folks, I actually think that practicing emergencies is theoretically a good idea. Fire drills, tornado drills, etc. can help individuals and communities meet such events more readily. However, I have found no reason to trust those currently in power, and the scope of these exercises makes me quite leery. Not to mention that Vigilant Shield has a 2008 title (Vigilant Shield 2008) and I am pretty sure this is 2007.
The Oregon Truth Alliance has produced a Citizen’s Pocket Guide to TOPOFF 4 & Vigilant Shield 08 which I recommend that everyone take a look at. For those in Portland, it also includes a map (below) of the expected radioactive plume and “kill zone.”
October 8th, 2007
By Carolyn Baker of Speaking Truth to Power
In my recent article “The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now” I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn’t nearly as dire as I’m asserting it is.
This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.
Have we not all heard about the New York woman on her way to rehab who passed through the Phoenix airport, became distraught when she had just missed her flight, and was arrested for disorderly conduct by airport police? The suspect, Carol Ann Gotbaum, was handcuffed and then placed in a holding cell and left alone. According to police, when they returned, she was dead. At this writing, Gotbaum’s family and officials are awaiting the autopsy report-the “official” cause of death.
Just a few days later, again in Phoenix, a male suspect was handcuffed after an on-foot chase by police, and shortly after being handcuffed, according to police, he lost consciousness. He was then taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
In today’s New York Daily News, the story “Science teacher’s brush with police ends in heart attack” relates an incident that happened back in June of this year when an African American Brooklyn high school teacher was mistaken for a perpetrator by police, suffered a heart attack, and was left on his own by the street cops who accused him of “acting.”
As outrageous as these incidents may be, the most chilling event appeared on networks across the nation this morning with the story of a twenty year-old Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy who shot and killed six young people at a party Saturday night. The most obvious question: How is it that a community of citizens allows a twenty year-old to become a deputy sheriff? Why not give an M-16 to a third-grader?
Nevertheless, all of these stories are connected by a common thread: Law enforcement in the United States, whose duty it is to “protect and serve” have now become not just part of the problem but in fact, predatory devourers of those they are sworn to keep safe.
Deepening collapse will be attended by manifestations of the unraveling of all institutions, one of the most frightening examples being law enforcement’s hysterical repression of citizens.
Although we are seeing more media attention given to private security companies such as Blackwater, we should not assume that the power and funding granted to these firms will dissipate anytime soon. They are an integral part of the Shock Doctrine brilliantly analyzed by Naomi Klein in her new book of the same title. The greater the extent of the empire’s collapse, the greater the intensity of the shock applied to those who reside within the belly of the beast. From those shocks flow not only increased terror and social control, but flourishing profits for private security companies.
The U.S. government is making it unmistakably clear that it intends to use every avenue of power at its disposal to lock down the nation. A story sent to my subscribers today from the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) reveals that in its correspondence with the Treasury Department “The Treasury Department was surprisingly candid in that correspondence, asserting the U.S. Government’s authority, in declared emergencies, to confiscate precious metals and to restrict ownership of mining shares — and to confiscate and restrict every other financial asset as well.”
Almost daily we hear of increased surveillance of Americans as well as unprecedented restrictions on travel, not only on persons entering the U.S. but on persons traveling within the country and on dissenters who attempt to enter other countries as in the case of two activists, Medea Benjamin and Ann Wright who were denied entrance into Canada on Thursday “because their names appeared on the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database.”
Another relevant story relinked today pertains to the anti-terrorism Vigilant Shield 2008 exercise of U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) “The series of exercises is mandated by the US government to prepare, prevent and respond to any number of national crises that would call for the use of the military inside the United States. Vigilant Shield 2008 builds a scenario of a domestic disaster in the US (terrorist attack or natural disaster). It posits the domestic use of the US military including a special role for the US Air Force.” As we know, a precedent for using the U.S. military inside the U.S. was set in the aftermath of Katrina in 2005.
For those considering expatriation, it will soon be too late to leave. For those who choose to remain within this increasingly locked down nation, it will be necessary to acquire survival skills, a strong community of friends, and a great deal of stealth in order to navigate this empire’s exacerbating Orwellian treachery.
October 8th, 2007
By Mathew Maavak of Panoptic World
This is a planet in denial. While the existential question gets a red hot “apocalypse now” for an answer, our stock markets seem to have regained paradise lost.
We are witnessing nothing less than history’s first confluence of unsustainable “peaks.”
Perhaps, we are incapable of piecing them all, for when crude oil reached an all-time intra-day high of $84.10 per barrel on Sept 20, its entitlement to a front pager screamer was conceded to the tale of a few thousand empty — or emptying — American homes.
It was like the Butterfly Effect, with a twist. The flapping rooftops of confiscated homes were now whipping up an economic tsunami worldwide.
Here is how it works.
US mortgage lenders, voracious as ever for “more,” had extended loans to the default-income group, who, were in turn hit by bad economic management. Credit card issuers followed suit to bloat consumer fantasies, and banks tightened the noose with additional loans for cars, tuition and businesses.
In the world of finance, debt is ironically regarded as an “asset.” Think of the rock-solid house that can be repossessed in the event of a default.
Debts, with the outward promise of a steady cash flow, are regularly pooled, “securitized” and converted into a bewildering array of financial products along an upward chain, where, they are hawked off by fund managers to the global market
This money buys up commodities, stocks, and yes, more “securities and derivatives,” along with junk bonds and blue chips.
It was easy come, easy go, wherever the money takes you…a 24/7 electronic casino…a Las Vegas without borders.
London bankers were toasting to the dawn of “the haves and the have yachts” at cocktail parties where sauvé qui peut was the vintage.
One of the greatest scams in recent memory was unfolding, exposing a pyramid scheme of epic proportions.
When this reached the point of metastasis, stock markets began to collapse.
The bottom feeders could not pay up anymore. Even the middle class were finding it difficult to pass the buck upwards.
This is called a liquidity crisis, and it happens when the laws of gravity finally exert a pull on the cash flow.
Still the champagne flowed. Lip-smacking advertorials continued to gush over “securities,” “derivatives,” and “comprehensive financial suites,” set in a Jacuzzi lilting to Ponzi’s version of “money for nothing and chicks for free.”
The pyramids may come crashing down, but the missing capstones are free to roam, investing in gold here, financial products there and junk bonds everywhere.
To avert a panic run though, central banks worldwide pumped $400 billion to maintain liquidity’s equilibrium.
Stock markets were no longer in the bearish or bullish mode; rather they were cancroidal, allowing fund managers to sidewheel from one market to another in search of profits, suckers, and a subtle pullout before the big bang.
It was the dawn of the crab, of cancer in stock market terminology, if one was needed. Suspicions were mounting. European banks were facing insolvency.
For three days beginning Sept. 14, savers across the United Kingdom removed £2 billion ($4 billion) from Northern Rock, Britain’s fifth largest lender. The Bank of England had to step in to guarantee all deposits in all banks – a move with little or no precedence.
However, the banks were not convinced either. Inter-bank lending, which profitably cycled cash from one bank to another as demand dictated, was now deemed an inter-bank debt trap. Available cash was hoarded up.
The Bank of England’s cash auction of £10bn — at a rate of 6.75% over three-months — has been shunned for the third consecutive week.
Either the “have yachts” have sailed away, or banks may actually find it difficult to repay the Bank of England.
Worldwide, the full weight of the “asset-backed” collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and structured investment vehicles (SIVs) may run into more than the $400 billion which central banks coughed up to keep the system afloat.
CDOs and SIVs are the sleek-sounding trillion-dollar apexes built on loans taken from simple homeowners.
Banks are still tallying what is real and redeemable, and what was created and whirling in thin air. Their best bet now is for a deux ex machina.
Bull in the China Shop
The biggest economic success story of our times was the product of Western consumerism. It created a real supply and demand situation, which forced the relocation of factories to the Third World of cheap labor.
China was the champion recipient. Demand for toys, screws, machinery, computers and cellphones could never ebb, whether it came leaded or unleaded. Beijing’s policymakers decided that the perennial flow of greenbacks demanded a domestic infrastructural revolution dictated by the export market — a first in history if there was one.
Factories, coal-fired plants, superhighways, skyscrapers were springing up at breakneck speed to fulfill the export craze. Excessive pollution and the plight of “unregistered” migrant workers from rural China mattered little.
What mattered were prestige, kickbacks and $1.2tr in hard currency-based reserves. It did not matter that China’s domestic consumption vis a vis its GDP was actually decreasing; it was more a matter of consumer opiates, of who was boss in the center of the universe.
It did not matter that Chinese cities were shrouded in toxic gray, where “only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.” [1]
The Chinese may cough but the ‘days when the world caught a cold whenever Uncle Sam sneezed was over.” Or so it seemed.
Uncle Sam sneezed.
Global finance began hemorrhaging, and it had to be resuscitated through an intravenous flow of taxpayer money.
Western consumers finally realized that girths had to be tightened, and what to better way than to curb spending, and let a market correction take place in the import sector.
An entire supply chain leading to China’s factories are in danger of folding up. Mineral resources from Africa, semiconductor plants in Malaysia, raw textile products elsewhere, now face acute market uncertainty.
China is in a bad fix. However, this is not deterring factories from coming online next year to meet the projected “global demand.” If Western consumers are scaling down their purchases, Africans are not in a position to be the replacement buyers, and without a market, they will not be able to sell their raw products either.
In such circumstances, moods can shift. When “Beijing rolled out the red carpet for more than 40 African heads of state last November, billboards depicting Africans clad in leopard skin underwear, and an indigenous man from Papua New Guinea, plastered the city.” [2] It is no wonder that China’s list of “allies” is getting shorter by the day.
Events in Myanmar are not proving helpful. China enjoys a near monopoly over Myanmar’s estimated 2.46 trillion cubic meters of gas and 3.2 billion barrels of crude oil. Beijing had plans to develop two parallel oil and gas pipelines stretching 2,380-km to link the deepwater port of Sittwe to Kunming, in the Chinese province of Yunnan. Upon completion, a good portion of Middle Eastern oil and gas is expected to bypass the Straits of Malacca.
The quid pro quo was arms supply and support at the UN for Myanmar’s military junta. Any new government now might negate all existing deals, and pull Yangon into the US orbit. This is a timely revolution from Washington’s perspective.
North Korea too is seeking rapprochement. There is enough operational space now to tackle Tehran, Damascus and the Hezbollah.
China can of course play the spoiler by providing arms to these regimes via a proxy. It is still a bad idea as the Israelis are just itching for war.
The IAF recently destroyed a Syrian installation that was purportedly an embryonic nuclear facility, but may well turn out to be a Kolchuga-type passive radar system, ideal for downing B2 stealth bombers. Coincidentally, the Russians have pledged to upgrade Syrian radar defenses after the attack.
If a wider conflagration breaks out in the Middle East, there will be no oil flowing from the Straits of Hormuz to China, either through Sitte, or through the Straits of Malacca.
The best option for Beijing will be to lock its oil and gas grid to the Russian Far East at a breakneck speed, and clean up some level of air pollution in time for the 2008 Olympics.
If an all-out war in the Middle East is our worst nightmare, think of the following unfolding crises…
The Peak Crises and its plural
Peak Oil: Fossil fuels, compressed and formed over aeons in subterranean geological layers are now releasing the telltale sibilant whispers of a punctured gas tank –- low as it was on petrol in the first place. With crude oil hovering above $80 per barrel, the various subsidies built into national economies are bound to burst at the seams, and precipitate price increases for basic necessities.
There is however a unique solution — falling consumer demand worldwide. That would crimp industrial demand for fossil fuel. It is no wonder oil majors were reluctant to build new refineries when profits seemed guaranteed in the era of “peak oil.” This day would surely come!
Peak oil is also tied to the current dollar crises. With the US dollar dipping against other major currencies, crude oil should come cheaper for Washington.
Oil and other commodities are traded in dollars, and dollar-denominated assets outnumber assets weighed in other currencies. Beijing can dump its hundreds of billions in dollar reserves for euros, only to trade them back into dollars to buy crude oil, gold and other assets.
The dollar blackmail will not work, especially with the US Army entrenched in the oil-rich Middle East.
Doomsday theorists are however predicting another Great Depression ahead, where the value of the dollar may mean little in the event of a global financial meltdown.
If this occurs, a global depression will have to deal with the following phenomena that was absent in the 30s.
Peak Urbanization: More than half of the world’s population will live in urban areas in just… a few months, according to a United Nations Population Fund report. That translates to 3.3 billion people in an urban concentration camp of shantytowns and high-rise pigeonholes.
Children are growing up in a peculiarly boxed-in environment, removed from the soil that births their identity. They do not wake up to the sound of a crowing rooster, which is nature’s way of sowing repentance and a turning of mindsets outside the conventional thinking box.
They wake up to beastly clangor instead. It is either the alarm clock or the barking dog, installed as “pets” to yelp any perceived intruder during the morning rush hour. The urban jungle is an industrialized Ziggurat, which pecks out a hierarchy from childhood. The ones right at the bottom will be the ones shouldering more concrete, or the biggest debt burden.
Close human proximity also leads to petty competitiveness and conflict. That is why “civilization” is held at gunpoint; by the police, by the army and by “treaties.”
The urban life is delicate and vulnerable to all sorts of hazards, from plagues to a breakdown in the utilities, communications and transportation services. And political upheavals. A disaster will grind down traffic to a gridlock, far from the escapist countryside.
What if an energy warfare broke out? What if a global depression hits us? Can three billion people grow a patch of greens on their balconies?
When it comes to greens, the outlook is not at all verdant…
Peak Grain: Global grain stockpiles are down to their tightest levels in three decades after two years of unusual weather patterns. Heatwaves have wilted crops in the granaries of the world while floods and other environmental scourges have devastated some of the poorer “self-sustaining” regions.
Global wheat stockpiles will fall to a 34-year low by June 2008, according to the International Grains Council. U.S. stockpiles will fall to lowest level since 1951-52. Wheat futures in Chicago reached $9.3925 a bushel late September when major supplier Ukraine slashed exports.
The price of a bushel has more than doubled in the past year.
The bushel of woes includes rice, barley, soybeans, sorghum, oats and lentils as well, and they are all sagging under record prices. The grapes of wrath have gone on to stalk eggs, cheese, milk, meat and the a la carte menu.
There may come a point when the industrial food chain has little choice but to pass the rising costs to consumers in a dramatic fashion.
Creeping upticks in the price of milk and bread are turning Europeans livid. Milk is now dubbed as the “new white gold.”
It is not just bad weather to blame. Rising demand from China is pushing up prices, despite the fact that only half of its urban population has basic health insurance. Tragically, processed food re-exported through Beijing’s food chain is causing a global health nightmare.
But why pick on China? The current biodiesel craze is inducing farms to purpose-plant their crops for the profitable bioenergy industry, according to the Hamburg-based Oil World.
“It is high time to realise that the world community is approaching a food crisis in 2008 unless usage of agricultural products for biofuels is curbed or ideal weather conditions and sharply higher crop yields are achieved in 2008,” it added
Bad news gets worse.
Peak Water: There is not enough freshwater around to sustain the planet’s inland ecosystem and its human population. Rivers that help supply drinking water are laden with toxic industrial wastes. Population growth is already straining the capacities of water treatment plants worldwide while desalination plants remain the prerogative of wealthy nations. According to the Pacific Institute: “Over 1 billion people don’t have access to clean drinking water; more than 2 billion lack access to adequate sanitation; and millions die every year due to preventable water-related diseases. Water resources around the globe are threatened by climate change, misuse, and pollution.” It estimates that “over 34 million people might perish in the next 20 years from water-related disease — even if the United Nations ‘Millennium Development Goals,’ which aim to cut the proportion of those without safe access by half, are met.” [3]
Lots of water will be diverted to industries and agriculture, or the highest bidder as privatization of water supply gains currency. In some regions, the situation is so acute that water diversion in one country may precipitate conflict with a neighbor. As early as 1974, Iraq reportedly mobilized its army to target Syria’s al-Thawra dam on the Euphrates. Israel has cast its own eyes on Lebanon’s Litani River.
According to Former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “The next war in the Near (Middle) East will not be about politics, but over water.”
If this watery grave is not enough, think of the next one…
Peak Fish: There is some fishy business going on in our oceans. Like oil and water, we are trawling deeper and deeper for our fish supplies. Such piscatorial adventures have led to a global decline in fish stocks. “Ecologists worry that entire fisheries will collapse as… ‘junk fish’ are used up.” Aquaculture, which substitutes marine catches to an extent, comes with its own environmental problems. [4]
The Times of London paints a similar gloomy scenario. According to some experts, 90% of fish around British waters “will disappear within 20 years” in the absence of an immediate intervention.
With 75% of fish stocks fully exploited, declining numbers across species worldwide hint at a collapse point by 2048, beyond which replenishment is not possible.
Peak Fish “comes at a time when their nutritional value is recognized more than ever.”
“World Health Organisation officials recommend a weekly intake of 200 to 300 grams of fish each week but today’s catches can only just meet this target. Since the 1950s an estimated 60 per cent of stocks in British waters have collapsed…”
The Times invokes the paradox that “measures proposed to limit fishing to a sustainable level will only place a cap on the nutritional flow for the coming decades.” [5]
The full circle
What began as sub-prime woes in the US housing sector may ripple into something we cannot yet imagine. Will there be a severe global recession, or worse? If wars are yet contained, bidding wars will yet emerge over wheat, water, fish, medicines and oil. What will the future hold in this ecology of crises?
Here is a refrain from the book of Hosea (4:3):
Because of this the land mourns,
and all who live in it waste away;
the beasts of the field and the birds of the air
and the fish of the sea are dying.
Kuala Lumpur, Oct 9, 2007
Copyright 2007 Maavak
Reference:
[1] As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes, NYT, Aug 26, 2007
[2] Beijing police round up and beat African expats Guardian, September 26, 2007
[3] Global Water Crisis Pacific Institute.
[4] Water shortages will leave world in dire straits USA Today, 26th Jan 2003
[5] Fish will vanish from British waters in 20 years, says author Times Online, Sept 15, 2007
Most of Mathew Maavak’s commentaries can be read here or visit the Panoptic World homepage.
October 8th, 2007
By Anwaar Hussain of Truth Spring
There are main battle tanks, there are fish tanks and there are simple water tanks. Then there are ‘Think Tanks’.
Odd as it may seem, Think Tanks are tanks that think. And just as when a dog bites a man that is not news, but when a man bites a dog that is news, their ‘thinking’, whenever they do that, makes it straight to the main stream media. Ours, on the other hand, remains confined to free google blogspots.
So when in a recent study, the Oxford Research Group Think Tank said the “war on terror” has been a disaster, it was a man biting the dog but when we poor bloggers cried ourselves hoarse to, “bring out the nails to hammer into the coffin of the Empire dream because the Empire seekers tried to defeat with brawn what should have been conquered with brain”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank warns against attacking Iran it was a man biting the dog but when we said, “America’s invasion of Iran may finally prove to be that last straw on the camel’s back in the unraveling of that great country a la the Soviet break-up post Afghanistan invasion” and that “it is not wise to deliberately alienate 1.3 billion Muslims and act as lackey for the miniscule Zionists who are the only ones to benefit from the Iran misadventure while the Americans will foot the bill and take the brunt of Muslims’ wrath” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank asks for major changes to West’s military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan because the two places had become jihadist training grounds, it was a man biting the dog but when we said, ” from Sudan to Pakistan and beyond, the ranks of America haters now stand swollen like never before. The recruiters for suicide brigades now drool non-stop with glee at the long cues of raging applicants outside their murky caves”, it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” every aspect of the so-called war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan has been counterproductive” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” for the time being however, riding on the wings of terra, the Americans are being sleep marched into history’s hall of shame. But when they do finally wake up, they are sure to ask themselves, in a deafening global chorus of error, error, error, the fateful question, ‘What have we done?’ ” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said that “From the loss of civilian life through to mass detentions without trial, in short, it has been a disaster,” it was a man biting the dog but when we said way back in March,” post-invasion excess deaths in occupied Iraq now totals 1 million” and, ” when Bush hastily declared mission accomplished, he stated that “Saddam’s torture chambers are closed.” He did not tell the world that he had already opened his own…the first one at Bagram” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank talked of secret detentions and renditions, it was a man biting the dog, but when we said, “America’s torture trail at the present weaves across the globe. America has now become the biggest patron of torture by proxy in the history of planet earth” it was dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Western countries simply have to face up to the dangerous mistakes of the past six years and recognize the need for new policies” it was a man biting the dog but when we said,” That this bloody US occupation practically guarantees that Americans and their sidekicks will continue to be targets of violence wherever and whenever possible and that the soon-to-come Iran misadventure is most likely to swell the ranks of these very ‘terrorists’ like never before” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank said,” Going to war with Iran will make matters far worse, playing directly into the hands of extreme elements and adding greatly to the violence across the region” it was a man biting the dog but when we said that there is a,” likelihood of hundreds of thousands of Taliban types who will come screaming banshee-like down the surrounding mountains to take revenge on our unfortunate troops bogged down in Iran” it was a dog biting the man.
When the Tank wants the West to take heed, the main stream media sits up and takes notice because it is a man biting a dog but when we shrieked from the rooftops for years that America has to realize, “that many other empires have had their day in the sun as superpowers before which others trembled. But today their crumbling ruins stand witnesses in mute silence to the fact that none were sovereign over the kingdoms of men for infinite times. All came to sad, inglorious ends” it was a dog biting the man.
If I were a Tank, every time I would think, men would bite dogs.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
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