tagged w/ Crisis
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare a famine, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
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U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
Famine, a highly technical term, means that the rate of child malnutrition and deaths in two areas of southern Somalia, a country riven by fighting and drought, has risen. Agencies appeal for aid.
PHOTO: Eleven-month-old Abdifatah Hassan, suffering from severe malnutrition, is cared for at a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders at a camp housing Somali refugees in Dadaab, Kenya. The United Nations officially declared famine in two regions of southern Somalia, saying child malnutrition rates exceed 30% and as many as six children age 5 or younger are dying daily. The region is suffering its worst drought in 60 years and tens of thousands are feared dead.
(Roberto Schmidt / AFP/Getty Images / July 4, 2011)
By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times
July 20, 2011, 2:19 p.m.
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa—
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For months, people have been trudging out of the desert, leaving their dead children behind and carrying those who have managed to survive. On Wednesday, the horror of hunger and death unfolding in the Horn of Africa officially got a name: famine.
It's actually a very technical term — unless you're one of those walking for weeks in a last-ditch hope to save your family.
For the United Nations to declare a famine, as it did at a news conference in Nairobi, child malnutrition must be at 30% or higher, daily deaths at two per 10,000 people and people are not able to access food and other basic necessities.
According to Unicef, the U.N. agency that focuses on children, the rate of child malnutrition rate in southern Somalia has doubled in a single month; in some places it has reached 55% and infant deaths have increased to six per day.
Yet the global response has been dismal. An appeal late last year for $535 million to address the need is still more than $250 million short. Officials hope the famine declaration will help focus global attention on the Horn of Africa.
Across the country, about 3.7 million people, half the population, are facing starvation, with an estimated 2.8 million of them in the south. The agency says another 6.3 million in other countries in the Horn of Africa affected by hunger.
It's the worst African hunger crisis in 20 years, according the Rozanne Chorlton, Unicef's representative on Somalia. The last time things were this dire in Africa was 1991. Then, as now, it was in Somalia.
The U.N. famine declaration Wednesday formally covered two regions of southern Somalia, Bakool and Lower Shabelle, where farmers' crops failed and their livestock died. Malnutrition rates exceed 30% and more than six children age 5 or younger are dying daily in some areas. But in coming months, neighboring regions will inevitably fall into famine too, said Mark Bowden, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Somalia.
U.N. and non-governmental agencies are appealing for $300 million in the next two months to increase their operations in the worst-hit areas.
If it seems extraordinary that millions of Africans can be facing starvation in 2011, despite the focus of a raft of humanitarian agencies and their early-warning networks, it is, Bowden said.
Part of the problem is that many donors had written off Somalia as too hard, he said in a telephone interview. Aid agencies must grapple with a long-running civil conflict and Somalia's extremist Shabab militia, which controls much of the south, where the worst hunger is.
"We have good warning systems, but we don't always listen to them, particularly if we put some countries in the too-difficult-to-deal-with basket," Bowden said.
Two decades with no government and the failure of successive efforts to restore peace have left donors cynical. The country's global reputation for piracy and mayhem have done it no favors.
The 1991 Somalia famine occurred after civil war destroyed agriculture and clan warlords hijacked humanitarian aid, leading to the U.S.-led Operation Restore Hope. That resulted in bloody fighting with militias in Mogadishu portrayed in the book and film "Black Hawk Down."
But Bowden, who recently met Somali refugees walking to Ethiopia, said the problem today was mainly one of successive drought, compounded by global warming.
"They are victims of drought. They are also victims of climate change. They're people who have lost everything after years of successive drought."
The situation is complicated by the Shabab, which in the past has imposed informal taxes on humanitarian agencies, limited their access, and demanded they send female staff home. The World Food Program withdrew early last year from areas controlled by the Shabab because of security threats and unacceptable working conditions. It recently announced it would resume it work there if conditions allowed.
Aid agencies have been negotiating access with local leaders, but security remains uncertain.
"We need predictability," Unicef's Chorlton said in a telephone interview. "The important thing is that those who are there [in Somalia] should be able to act unhindered to deliver the services to children and families that are so desperately needed."
Unicef has doubled its food, health and water programs in Somalia, she said.
"Somalis have always helped each other to cope in times of crisis, and they have been incredibly resilient over the years. I think what has not been quantified is that people's resistance has been so undermined over the last year, it's no longer adequate to the task," she said. "The issue is now we need donors to massively increase their contribution."
.U.N. declares famine in southern Somalia
By Robyn Dixon | 2:19 p.m.
To declare... more
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"Using trumped up crisis to raid the public purse"
"This is naked class war, waged by the ultra rich against everyone else."
"The phony debt ceiling crisis is one more excuse to further shred the social safety net and deepen wealth concentration at the top."
"Naomi Klein pulls no punches in her comments about the debt ceiling charade happening in Washington", as cited at RootsAction
www.RootsAction.org/limit
Hit the link and sign the protest if you want !"Using trumped up crisis to raid the public purse"
"This is naked... more
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Using his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI's behavioral analysis unit, Jim Kouri has collected a series of personality traits common to a couple of professions.
Kouri, who's a vice president of the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police, has assembled traits such as superficial charm, an exaggerated sense of self-worth, glibness, lying, lack of remorse and manipulation of others.
These traits, Kouri points out in his analysis, are common to psychopathic serial killers.
But -- and here's the part that may spark some controversy and defensive discussion -- these traits are also common to American politicians. (Maybe you already suspected.)
Yup. Violent homicide aside, our elected officials often show many of the exact same character traits as criminal nut-jobs, who run from police but not for office.
Kouri notes that these criminals are psychologically capable of committing their dirty deeds free of any concern for social, moral or legal consequences and with absolutely no remorse.
"This allows them to do what they want, whenever they want," he wrote. "Ironically, these same traits exist in men and women who are drawn to high-profile and powerful positions in society including political officeholders."
Good grief! And we not only voted for these people, we're paying their salaries and entrusting them to spend our national treasure in wise ways.
We don't know Kouri that well. He may be trying to manipulate all of us with his glib provocative pronouncements. On the other hand ...
He adds:
"While many political leaders will deny the assessment regarding their similarities with serial killers and other career criminals, it is part of a psychopathic profile that may be used in assessing the behaviors of many officials and lawmakers at all levels of government."
-- Andrew Malcolm
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/06/politicians-and-serial-killers.htmlUsing his law enforcement experience and data drawn from the FBI's behavioral... more
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In my last article “Why The Pledge of Allegiance Should Be Removed From Schools”, I got a lot of feedback saying what a crock it was, and that somehow it was a statement against America herself. Many seemed to get the idea that the article was about how I am so disappointed in America that I believed that the Pledge of Allegiance to it should be removed. Though I believe the pledge of allegiance should be removed, it is not because I hate America as so many seemed to believe.
The first and most common argument was that the Pledge of Allegiance to our country was a good thing because it taught kids and adults alike to take pride in our nation. I will address this one first as the revolution was not fought to create a new nation or empire, but rather to free themselves from the one they already had.
1 – The creation of America was not the dream of the common man at the time, or by many of the so called founders. On the contrary, most people just wanted to live their lives without the interference or burden of government regulation or taxes with no perceived benefit. They knew that should a nation be created, that what little taxes and regulation they did have would grow in kind. They even feared that should it happen, there would not have been a point to the revolution (see Radicalism of the American Revolution by Tom S Wood, and Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauf).
2 – At the end of the revolution (and with the newly found freedom), the middle class began to flourish, the abolitionist movement grew rapidly, the States made great strides in paying off war debt, and advocating women’s rights. Of course the States in those days were nothing as we have today. There were very few governing bodies, and thus few laws to govern the people. This suited them just fine.
3 – Yet the federalists in congress realized that if things continued in that manner, then their wishes for a glorious empire would not be realized. So after years of haggling and hot debating, the Constitution was drafted. To those like Jefferson, it was to limit the government so that the people could continue to flourish. To those like Hamilton, it was a means to build a new nation. The end result was a small federal government that the people at the time paid little mind to as it had no real power to affect them in any real way.
4 – Hamiltons efforts at granting the new federal government more power were virtually ineffective until he was made Secretary of treasury. Being a sharp minded individual, he used his knowledge of debt based economics to appeal to the states to buy their debt, and thus alleviate the burden from the states. Many of the people saw no need for this and petitioned their elected leaders to just let it be. However once in the audience of Hamilton, they were unable to make solid arguments against his proposed system. So Hamilton simultaneously increased the debt (by a wide margin), used the funds to build an army that he could control, and used the army to support the federalist system.
5 – Adams then signed the Alien and Sedition Acts rendering Jefferson (or anyone else for that matter) unable to speak out without being thrown into prison. This however did not prevent Jefferson from making his thoughts on the subject known at a later date. At this point, the federal government now had the control that Hamilton wanted.
So far I am seeing nothing here at all to be proud of. In addition to breaking the Constitution almost before the ink was even dry, Hamilton paved the way for holding the people to the law, but not the government. Because Hamilton’s system endures today, people seem to see it as something to be proud of despite its lies and law breaking ways. After all, they live well, so the ends justified the means.
To many on the comment string, this was a good thing. They believe that without the Federal Government, and strong state governments, that society would be in chaos, and that we would still be in the stone age. I find this hard to address as such commenter’s belay their ignorance of the cycles of nations, empires, and civility as a whole. It also tells me that not one of them ever bothered to read any real literature on what happened immediately following the war, to the creation of the powerful federal government we know today. So far all its led to is a bunch of people being proud of lying cheating politicians who they refuse to even do their research on before declaring their pride in it, but I digress.
1 – To build an empire you need to expand. During the age where land ownership was highly prized and hotly debated, this was problematic at best. The French owned much of the middle land and the land to the north, the Spanish held what is now Texas and California. They held it somewhat loosely having figured out that the best way to deal with the native Indians was to do so peacefully and as rarely as possible. Seeing an opportunity, the Louisiana Purchase (and a few other land deals) were made, and the land was acquired so that the rapidly growing population would have a place to settle. It needs to be kept in mind that there was a major difference between what the colonists thought of the new land, and what the natives and other countries did. To the colonist, it was as simple as buying the land and making it produce. Not so for the natives.
2 – When the French sold the land to Federal government (paid with debt and taxes from the people, who by the way were made to pay for it yet again if they hoped to by it), they washed their hands of the mess and moved out for the most part. The natives on the other hand had lived there their whole lives, and did not expect the land prospectors to just move in and try to settle it. To be blunt, it was a mess. Between the friction and the less then favorable land conditions, it turned out to be a major cost burden to the Fed as not to many buyers wanted it at the price offered (sound familiar?). The federal government that people praise so much, then pulled another trick.
3 – They claimed that the natives were uncivilized, and that is why there was so much friction. They claimed that they were not ready to become civilized, and that instead of learning peaceful methods of interaction, that force should be used to remove them – after all, they were not viewed as the rightful owners of the land. This added even more cost because soldiers had to be called in to accomplish this task.
So up to this point, the federal government had not only lied and cheated, but swindled the people. It sold them land whenever possible that it used their money to buy in the first place, and then left them to deal with the upset natives. Then when the beleaguered settlers called for help, the federal system added taxes and debt to cover that cost as well. And still somehow, many people who claim to be knowledgeable ,comment on how great the federal government is; that without it, chaos would reign.
Now I can do this all night, but will end with one last example of how our countries founding is nothing to be proud of. Its actions set the standard for the expansion of its empirical interests rendering the republic irrelevant.
In his memoirs, Grant said “Generally, the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not con...
http://peacefreedomprosperity.com/5393/follow-up-why-the-pledge-of-allegiance-should-be-removed-from-schools/In my last article “Why The Pledge of Allegiance Should Be Removed From... more
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The pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist by the name of Francis Bellamy in 1892. The original gesture to be made was a Hail Hitler like salute (it’s actually where Hitler and Mussolini got it) – and this is why we now use the hand over the heart instead. The best part is that it all began as a sales campaign to help sell magazine subscriptions – selling flags to schools to increase visibility. The pledge was later added to aid in the process, and has been in place since. The original pledge was “”I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all“”
It has children pledging allegiance to an entity they know nothing about making it the most powerful indoctrination tool ever devised in our nation. Following this – children learn summed up history of our nations founding, and little more from there on in. This does them a great dishonor because the only thing they have to correlate this bit of knowledge to, is the world as it is today. Given the lack of in-depth knowledge covering the creation of the US, and how it came about, this makes such times and events appear as meaningless in today’s world.
First of all, republics are not by nature unified nations – that comes later when a Republic decides to expand its interest to become an Empire – something many of the founders including Jefferson stood very much against. In fact we did not even have a truly unified nation until the end of the civil war. However up to that point, our nation committed many acts in complete disregard to the intent of the original revolution. We gained expansion by War – war is economically damaging (unless your a Keynes sympathizer – in which case there is nothing i can do for you), politically chaotic, and socially damaging. Those who believed that a limited republic was as far as the new nation should go knew this all to well having seen it throughout history over and over again.
Second, by teaching the kids that we are a united country in spite of the fact that is not what were trying to be when we broke from England, it teaches them that centralization is a good thing. This wrong is only eclipsed by the fact that they are pledging allegiance to it. Funny how when religious sects do this they are called cults, yet when government does it, it is called law.
Finally, children are taught that the law is the law, and they must obey it. At such a young age, they have little knowledge or experience to tell them whether it is a just reasonable law or not.So it comes about that indoctrination begins when children say a pledge to something when they are still learning how to read and write properly. I am truly sad that so many people see this as correct and justifiable. That’s like forcing someone to swear an oath, telling them that it is for a good cause, and yet enacting a myriad of evils paid for by their labor and never being honest with them about it. Come to think of it – that’s precisely what it is.
Indoctrination – to instruct especially in fundamentals or rudiments; to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle. By very definition, our children are indoctrinated before they are taught anything.
It is sad and utterly pathetic that we employ such nonsense on our children. Bastiat and Jefferson alike warned of this, and yet modern society in all its wisdom continues to ignore such warnings. They never tell the kids about them – and blithely continue on to inflict one social evil upon another in the name of their more ‘enlightened’ teachings. As a result, many people haven’t the faintest clue on why the economy is getting hammered, why we have ongoing wars in nearly every corner of the globe, and why poverty at home continues to rise with the price of everyday goods. In addition it is almost impossible to argue such points, for the masses have been indoctrinated since they learned to read, and can’t bear the idea that there is more out there then what they are told. Indeed, many argue that the old antiquated ideas of those like Spooner, Jefferson, or Bastiat are just that, and that the new way is far more enlightened and rosy.
It is things like this that have caused our empires creation. It is also because of things like this, that its collapse is ensured.
http://peacefreedomprosperity.com/5390/why-the-pledge-of-allegiance-should-be-removed-from-the-schools/The pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist by the name of Francis Bellamy in... more
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by David Shirk on July 4, 2011 in Uncategorized { edit }
July 4th, 1776. A divided continental congress was forced to unite in a cry for independence against England when a handful of the bunch told England that they were through. Subsidies, high taxes, the imprisonment of political renegades, and the favoritism showed by those in power to their favorite producers had gone to far. The declaration was recieved with a myriad or responses, some in shock, others in wounded pride. The sum of the resulting confusion and chaos cannot be crammed into a mere short article so I will spare everyone the history lesson.
In the end, many people died for many different reasons. Some felt it was their duty, some thier wellbeing, and others for a crack at a name for themselves. In the end, a high death toll, an economical disaster, and a fractured idea of what to do next plagued the newly free people. In spite of the odds, the people got back onto their feet, and began to rebuid and regroup.
Less then a decade after the fighting ceased, all of that would come to nothing. Ideas of grandeur began to seep into the heads of the politically powerful. The idea that America needed to become an Empire became the driving factor into the minds of those that held the power, and the rest as they say, is history.
So here we are, celebrating the 235 year old demopublic. The conditions of today are no different that those found in 1776 – high taxes, corpatism, subsidies, iron clad rule, and enough regultation to make a drill sergeant cringe. Of course its not all bad – never was, and until the breaking point is reached, nor will it be. There is a plus side to America’s paciveness to its government, and that is the acknowledgement that violent revolutions only replace one tyrant with another. In point of fact, violent revolutions often bring forward the most misguided, and in the midst of the confusion, grants them power.
Personally I hate the idea that i find myself questioning things to the level that i do. Ignorance in many cases was bliss as it aloud me the simple minded belief that we were doing well as a country, and that we just hit a bump in the road. History is a very disturbing wake up call.
I say we stop this pattern. Nations come and go, and the US is no different having already proved herself more then apt to inheret the ideals of failing societies the world over. The truth is that the colonial experiment was hijacked by the American Experiment – ripped from the hands of the people and turned over to the hands of politicians and bureaucrats.
You see long before the Stars and Stripes, there was liberty, and i have become all to aware of the difference between the two. Many of our so called ‘leaders’ follow in the foosteps in their predecessors. Arrogantly assuming that a law bent on the futile notion of solving the foibles of the human condition was a possible task, they have enacted law upon law on themselves until liberty has become no more then a fleeting vision.
I would like to remind people on this day of where we came from and what made us. After 235 years, its time we grew up, and rid ourselves of the notion that socialism, and statist mindsets are the keys to ‘civilized living’. These are nothing more then theives shaking right hands with you and robbing you with their left. The truth is that no Nation nor Empire can ever exist in pusruance with the ideals of liberty – for that is something that can only truly be had and maintained by the individual.
So lets have a revolution. Screw the state and the horse it rode in on. Its power is great only because it carries the threat and use of force. Yet the people hold a far greated power – one that never ceases to rise against the odds and overcome, and that is the power of individuals truly united upon the foundations of human rights. Violence is not the answer and will solve nothing. You cannot force your fellow man to your views – thats the states job. So be better then that – set an example. Show them by example that civilization needs no force to exist save that used in true defense. Educate yourselves and never stop, for in the end, it will yeild far more benefit then gold.
In the immortal words of Frederic Bastiat “Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun—reject all systems, and try liberty” – The Law.
http://peacefreedomprosperity.com/5368/independence-day-time-for-history-to-repeat-itself/by David Shirk on July 4, 2011 in Uncategorized { edit }
July 4th, 1776. A divided... more
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This critical documentary made by Greek artists and activists seeks the real causes of the country’s crippling debt crisis — and proposes an economically and socially responsible solution.
Exactly a year ago, Greece sank into the dark abyss of global capital markets and the EU and IMF reluctantly came to the ‘rescue’ with a 110 billion euro bailout.
Attached to the rescue package came the same draconian austerity measures that had previously triggered social crises and popular uprisings in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Thailand and Indonesia. Once again, the neoliberal ‘medicine’ is threatening to kill the patient.
Now, the Greek debt crisis is flaring up anew amidst confirmations by EU officials that either a second bailout or a restructuring of the country’s debt will be necessary — and amidst rumors in the popular press that Greece is actually planning to leave the eurozone.
At this critical juncture comes Debtocracy, a spectacular crowd-funded Greek documentary made by artists and activists, and freely shared online under a creative commons license. The film reveals the shocking truth behind the neoliberal propaganda that has been so greedily spread by the mainstream media in Europe and the US.
The myth of Greek laziness is exposed for what it is — a racists ploy to distract the European people from the indelible reality behind the bailout: Germany and France wanting to save their banks. Rather than having Greece default on the reckless speculators at Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas, Europe would like to see Greece defaulting on its own people.
And so millions are pushed into abject poverty — a recent estimate by a London School of Economics survey is that nearly a third of Greece’s 11 million people live near or under the formal poverty line — while public funding for crucial social services such as health and education are being cut across the board.
In a bizarre parody on even the wildest persiflage of the ‘immoral capitalist’, the EU even managed to include a clause in the bailout agreement that would see Greece continuing to buy up heavy military hardware from German and French weapons producers. The last shreds of Greek sovereignty and democracy have been crushed by the powerful forces of European capital.
Indeed, in a total aberation on the notion of European solidarity, we are forcing families earning less than 500 euros per month to cut back their spending while simultaneously forcing their government to keep spending its austerity-squeezed tax receipts on buying more weapons! How such nefarious practices are allowed to continue unabated remains one of the greatest mysteries and injustices of our time.
Yet there is an alternative to the inhumane denigration of Greek national sovereignty by the henchmen of the global financial industry. In the uplifting second part of this documentary, the filmmakers outline the concept of odious debt and the possibility for an Ecuadorian-style default.
After all, why would the Greek people have to pay for a debt they were never officially informed about and that didn’t benefit them one single bit?
Featuring some of the heavyweights in critical political economy of our day (including David Harvey, Samir Amin, Alain Badiou and Manolis Glezos), this documentary is truly a must-see.This critical documentary made by Greek artists and activists seeks the real causes of... more
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albyom
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The cash-strapped Greek government were accused of ‘selling off the family jewels’ today when it emerged that they have hung a huge ‘for sale’ sign on the Acropolis and put it on the market with a number of international estate agents.The cash-strapped Greek government were accused of ‘selling off the family... more
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Politics, like any other institution, relies on rigourous paradigm maintainence and a collective acquiesence to authority and expertise, with inherited and unquestioned assumptions and game rules. The game will run so long as everyone agrees to acknowledge the validity and value of those rules, or until they get hungry. Platitudes and cliches are typically the first line of attack against dissent, which act to mollify the other players, and serve to denigrate the opines of dissent through ad hominen association and dogmatic reitteration, rather than by an genuine act of communicatory progress. Classic binary 'debate'.
Dæmoncracy, assuming a philosophical purity, requires that the citizens (which the elected are supposed to be representative of) have information available to them to serve sufficient in the mediation and actuation of their votive decision. Secondly, they must not only be able to accurately parse that information but subsequently construct a 'realistic' temporal understanding from it.
Neither of those two conditons exists in our current (S)tate (and perhaps cannot), nevertheless the memegineers promolgate the notion of our dæmoncracy as THE historical endpoint, almost as a moral attainment, whilst only paying the most basic lip service to what such an ideal democracy genuinely requires. In parallel, people typically behave according to the expectations of their cultural background, socio-economic circumstance and intellectual pretensions, whilst drowning in the noise of manipulative emotives and vapid mis/disinformations that crowd out the signal of necessary information (obviously in the absolute sense this is a naivete, in that information always has bias).
These observations exist external to the darker awareness that the (usually) polar, side-shifting political mafias (at least the ones that have any kind of real power), whilst feigning ideological concerns, are in fact self-serving egotists and servant brokers (even when unknowing) for non-local, amorphous, essentially globalised, financial mafias and shadowed aristocracies. These are the inevitable by-products of our usurious currencies, that fix wealth and power to the vested interests of entrenched historical institutions and privilege.
It is very difficult for a person to make an accurate assessment because we are so heavily embedded in the game, through lifelong indoctrinations and the necessities of survival. We find it very hard to look at it from an external perspective, because to find that perspective unfortunately(?) one has to have become alienated from IT to a greater extent. We typically avoid such alienation and such personalities because they often lead us to social apoptosis. Confronting the myth of the 'good' will always get one into to trouble, because the mass of people that have associated with that myth take any dissent, as a personal affront to their character and a threat to the integrity of their 'reality'.Politics, like any other institution, relies on rigourous paradigm maintainence and a... more
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Germans have been warned not to eat cucumbers until tests identify the source of a deadly E.coli outbreak that has killed 10 and spread across Europe. It is thought contaminated cucumbers were imported from Spain, but further tests are being carried out.
:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13592765Germans have been warned not to eat cucumbers until tests identify the source of a... more
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suzane
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Según el economista de MetAnálisis, el desempleo en México sólo se podrá reducir a través de un mayor crecimiento o una reforma laboral.Según el economista de MetAnálisis, el desempleo en México... more
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Según el analista de Infosel, la BMV se recupera tras las ventas de la pasada sesión apoyada en la búsqueda de oportunidades de los inversores.Según el analista de Infosel, la BMV se recupera tras las ventas de la pasada... more
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La fortaleza del billete verde estadounidense y la debilidad de los datos macroeconómicos en Europa y China hacen tambarlearse al petróleo que ya pierde un 3%.La fortaleza del billete verde estadounidense y la debilidad de los datos... more
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Según el economista de Saxo Bank, la reciente crisis fiscal le concedió a este país una verdadera oportunidad única de hacer algo constructivo.Según el economista de Saxo Bank, la reciente crisis fiscal le concedió... more
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From the mouth of a Democrat that is buddies with the administration.
Bangkok, Thailand May 1, 2011 - In a one hour April 26, 2011 talk before the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Secretary of the Treasury (and CFR member) Timothy Geithner laid out a frightening picture of America's economic future. Despite a myriad of metrics used to assure the audience that economic disaster had been averted before Geithner took to the podium, Geithner himself would stress the need for Democrats to cut back on programs while Republicans would need to rethink tax cuts as part of the long journey to real recovery.
Geithner specifically said, "this is a war of necessity. There is no alternative. Democrats have to understand that our capacity as a country to finance things Democrats believe in like education, like a minimal guarantee of protection in health care and the safety net, require demonstrating we can live within our means; and Republicans have to understand, of course, that deficits matter, that they are unsustainable and they hurt growth left unaddressed. Tax cuts don't pay for themselves." In other words, more taxes and less services would help repair damage caused by the reckless degenerate gambling dens lining Wall Street who were protected and facilitated by Washington and its band of ineffective, if not entirely nonexistent, regulators.
Geithner would go on to say that the "cuts and reforms" required to repair the economy "have to be phased in over time to avoid damaging the expansion. The biggest mistakes countries make in financial crises, apart from waiting too long to act in the face of the gathering storm, is they put on the brakes too early." Geithner continued, "they shift too prematurely to abrupt contraction-rate strategies that put at risk the incipient expansion. So you have to be -- you have to lock these reforms in, but you have to phase them in to reduce that risk to the economy as a whole."
While drastic austerity measures have been decried from Europe where they are being put into place, to the United States where they are being proposed, Geithner seems to believe that by implementing cuts incrementally over a longer period of time, resistance can be avoided. Geithner said "the president laid out this $4 trillion deficit reduction plan over a 12-year period -- again, same broad magnitude of cuts that the Republicans embraced, much more balanced package, and you found Democrats largely embraced that imperative."
While the devastating effects of America's bankrupted Ponzi-economy have yet to be fully realized, Geithner himself is saying that it will be over a decade before the full range of austerity measures are "locked in." Even if this was mathematically, financially, or politically possible, it would require such efforts to be made within an economic environment free of further abuse. As we will see however, Geithner has no intention of creating such an environment.
Addressing the Cause of the Economic Crisis
Not surprising is the minuscule amount of time Geithner spent addressing the underlying causes of the economic collapse in the first place. When questioned about the "dearth" of criminal prosecutions resulting from the economic collapse, Geithner responded by saying, "you had this colossal loss of basic trust and confidence in the integrity of the system, and we have to rebuild that." He would go on to explain, "it's going to come from making sure that you have a credible enforcement capacity that people believe will be a little bit more proactive, hold people accountable. And you need -- you need to demonstrate that that will be there in the future, because you need the deterrent power that brings to affect behavior. And I agree that we have some ways to go to rebuild -- to rebuild that confidence."
Apparently, credible enforcement doesn't currently exist, and when asked by moderator Dan Doctoroff if Giethner thought it was really possible "to have the regulators stay equal to or ahead of the regulated, given all the incentives that exist among the regulated," he responded that more emphasis should be put on absorbing the effects of "when firms make mistakes and court failure." Geithner would claim that such failures could not be predicted or preempted.
However, the derivative hysteria was not only predictably catastrophic, it would have been easily preventable if this criminal behavior was reined in by "credible enforcement." Furthermore, the "dearth" of criminal prosecutions in the wake of the resulting collapse and the 12 year planned fleecing of the American people to cover the losses of these degenerate institutions only emboldens further economic atrocities in the future.
Geithner himself explains it best when he talked about "the understandable desire businesses always have to lower their tax burden and make sure they get more influence over the basic regulatory framework in which they operate." It appears that "businesses," and in particular the corporations and banking firms that sponsored Geithner's talk at the CFR last month, have completely seized the "regulatory framework in which they operate," effectively distributing all their losses upon the American people and alleviating themselves from any form of accountability.
Bottom Line
Links @ link below.
http://www.activistpost.com/2011/05/geithners-decade-of-incremental.html#moreFrom the mouth of a Democrat that is buddies with the administration.
Bangkok,... more
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A new report shows America’s largest banks likely profited off of the Federal Reserve by borrowing money at extremely low rates and then re-lending it back to the government at much higher rates.
The data from the Congressional Research Service shows banks received cash at near free levels and then opted to lend it out to the federal government at high rates, essentially taking advantage of tax payer funds. Meanwhile the same banks effused to lend the money handed to them by the Fed to Americans in need of loans for mortgages and small businesses.
Taking the federal hand out and flipping it for profit would have been easy for savvy financial firms. The government was as desperate to borrow as the Fed was to hand out cheap cash.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont has called the lending program "direct corporate welfare to big banks,” and initially ordered this study. The report shows the money was used to bring profits to big business "instead of using the Fed loans to reinvest in the economy," Sanders said.
The Fed however never required any conditions on how the $3 trillion dollars it lent to banks was to be used. The Fed was giving money away with no strings attached.
"Why wasn't the Fed providing these same sweetheart deals to the American people?" asked Warren Gunnels, a senior policy adviser to Sanders. "The Fed was practicing socialism for the rich, powerful and the connected, while the federal government was promoting rugged individualism to everyone else."
The Fed doled out on a number of occasions massive loans in excess of millions of dollars to banks at low rates or for very small fees. Nearly all borrowers, including Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, borrowed money from the Fed and showed later returns – mainly on government loans.
As the big banks borrow and prosper American small businesses continue to suffer dues to a lack of credit and the inability to stay afloat in an economy where consumerism has fallen. Families suffer as unemployment continues, foreclosures surge and conditions fail to improve on Main Street.
http://rt.com/usa/news/federal-reserve-wall-street-government-profits/A new report shows America’s largest banks likely profited off of the Federal... more
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We suffering from a series of intertwined crises one of which involves our educational paradigms. As we continue to push forth our old "neo liberal" style of education upon the next generation we fail to realize that the abstraction specialization in education has not only helped fuel the lack of any serious resistance to the crisis, it fundamentally prevents a critique of its causes by the citizenry.
an excerpt from the article:
"Specialized knowledge is itself a particular form of abstraction. Specialization abstracts, that is, it extracts an object from a given field, rejects the links and interconnections with its environment, and inserts it in the abstract conceptual zone of the compartmentalized discipline, whose boundaries arbitrarily break the relation of a part to a whole and the multidimensionality of phenomena. It leads to mathematical abstraction that splits itself off from the concrete, in part by favoring everything that is calculable and formalizable and for the rest by ignoring the context necessary for the intelligibility of its objects."
* read the full article here:
http://kickitover.org/2011/04/19/reform-thinkingWe suffering from a series of intertwined crises one of which involves our educational... more
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Aumentaron el 0,4%, levemente por debajo del consenso estimado en 0,5%, mientras que el crecimiento interanual fue del 7,1%.Aumentaron el 0,4%, levemente por debajo del consenso estimado en 0,5%, mientras que... more
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