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Silent Coup: The Removal of a President - Len Colodny & Robert Gettlin
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Just consider what current events will sound like two thousand years from now -- the greatest
nation on Earth bombing some of the smallest and weakest for no clear reasons, people starving
in parts of the world while farmers are paid not to plant crops in others,
technophiles sitting at home playing electronic golf rahter than the real thing, and police
forces ordered to arrest people who simply desire to ingest a psychoactive weed. People of
that era will also likely laugh it all off as fantastic myths...
It is time for those who desire true freedom to exert themselves -- to fight back against the
forces who desire domination through fear and disunity.
This does not have to involve violence. It can be done in small, simple ways, like not financing
that new Sport Utility Vehicle, cutting up all but one credit card, not opting for a second
mortgage, turning off that TV sitcom for a good book, asking questions and speaking out in church
or synagogue, attending school board and city council meetings, voting for the candidate who has
the least money, learning about the Fully Informed Jury movement and using it when called -- in
general, taking responsibility for one's own actions. Despite the omnipresent advertising for the
Lotto -- legalized government gambling -- there is no free lunch. Giving up one's individual power
for the hope of comfort and security has proven to lead only to tyranny.
You had to take those pieces of paper with you when you went shopping, though by the time I was nine or ten most people used plastic cards. . .It seems so primitive, totemistic even, like cowry shells. I must have used that kind of money myself, a little, before everything went on the Compubank.
I guess that's how they were able to do it, in the way they did, all at once, without anyone knowing beforehand. If there had still been portable money, it would have been more difficult.
It was after the catastrophe, when they shot the president and machine-gunned the Congress and the army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on the Islamic fanatics, at the time.
Keep calm, they said on television. Everything is under control.
I was stunned. Everyone was, I know that. It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen?
That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn't even an enemy you could put your finger on.
. . . Things continued on in that state of suspended animation for weeks, although some things did happen. Newspapers were censored and some were closed down, for security reasons they said. The roadblocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Everyone approved of that, since it was obvious you couldn't be too careful. They said that new elections would be held, but that it would take some time to prepare for them. The thing to do, they said, was to continue on as usual.
By the time Oscar reached the outskirts of Washington, DC, The Louisiana air base had benn placed under siege.
The base's electrical power supply had long since been cut off for lack of payment. The aircraft had no fuel. The desperate federal troops were bartering stolen equipment for food and booze. Desertion was rampant. The air base commander had released a sobbing video confession and had shot himself.
Green Huey had lost patience with the long-festering scandal. He was moving in for the kill. Attacking and seizing an federal air base with his loyal state militia would have been entirely too blatant and straightforward. Instead the rogue Governor employed proxy guerrillas.
Huey had won the favor of nomad prole groups by providing them with safe havens. He allowed them to squat in Louisiana's many federally declared contamination zones. These forgotten landscapes were tainted with petrochemical effluent and hormone-warping pesticides, and were hence officially unfit for human settlement. The prole hordes had different opinions on that subject.
Proles cheerfully grouped in any locale where conventional authority had grown weak. Whenever the net-based proles were not constantly harassed by the authorities, they coalesced and grew ambitious. Though easily scattered by focused crackdowns, they regrouped as swiftly as a horde of gnats. With their reaping machines and bio-breweries, they could live off the land at the very base of the food chain. They had no stake in the established order, and they cherished a canny street-level knowledge of society's infrastructural weaknesses. They made expensive enemies. . .
Louisiana's ecologically blighted areas were ideal for proles. The disaster zones were also impromptu wildlife sanctuaries, since wild animals found chemical fouling much easier to survive than the presence of human beings. After decades of wild subtropical growth, Louisiana's toxic dumps were as impenetrable as Sherwood Forest.
and s-integrator
Saturday, October 05, 2002
Go Raging Grannies!With their own take on familiar songs, the Grannies captivate the audience. People stop everything to stare at 80 crazily dressed women playing the washboard and singing at the top of their lungs. And that's when the Grannies deliver their message -- about things like pollution, poverty, or health care. Sixty-three-year-old Margaret Slavin-Diamond says the Grannies are true subversives.
"We deliberately look older than we are, and we deliberately play on the idea that people expect less of older women. And then say things with these tunes that people think of as old-fashioned and safe, and then we say things that have a real edge to them."
10:48 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Huertas
With half of the population living below the poverty line, Argentinians (inside and outside of cities) are planting small vegetable gardens (huertas) in record numbers [u]
12:01 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
A democratic future the current power structure doesn't want to see [u]
11:52 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Gonzo run by someone at cryptome4 October 2002: JYA is temporarily dead online due to work load in the DC area, near the armageddon push button, which is located, in case you give a, out on Route 7 disguised as FAA Leesburg. We paid a surprise Sunday morning visit to the CIA back entrance, got surrounded by HMMVs and spiffy guards with hands on guns, interrogated by a swell looking Ms. Security who ran our Duncan Frissell ID card through the master file, idled for 1/2 hour observing gaps in the malefactory maginot line, and then received a heartfelt thanks for cooperating, Duncan, wink. Mrs. Frissell hissed bitch as we serpentined the Jersey barriers back out the way in. Later we tested NSA HQ's way laid back security which was staffed by a single friendly gent in a NSA T-shirt and a cammied grunt grinning one tooth. No massive RPG-proof bunkers like the CIA, no flashing red lights, no antenna-bristling comm vans poised at the gate for maximum public display. NSA has nothing to hide, nothing to fear, no shameful secrets, we assumed was the message but it might have been a ruse to conceal who gets most of the dirty budget.Or a facsimile thereof.
10:28 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
FAIR piece on "checkbook science"The New York Times (7/10/02) captured the mood with its headline: "Hormone Replacement Study a Shock to the Medical System." Most media covered the story as if this was enormous news that came out of nowhere. The truth is quite different. For several years, article after article published in major medical journals had described the growing evidence that hormone replacement therapy increased the risk of breast cancer and did not help and possibly hurt women with heart disease. Other studies questioned the assumed benefits. Although some of these studies were covered in major newspapers, without a PR machine behind them they received limited media attention. (See Extra!, 3-4/97; CounterSpin, 7/19/02.)
Meanwhile, [drugmaker Ayerst-]Wyeth and other manufacturers promoted their products directly and indirectly, with a celebrity spokeswoman and many health experts. As recently as May 2002, a nonprofit women's health organization held a black tie, standing-room only dinner for almost 1,000 Washington, D.C. luminaries, completely underwritten by Wyeth. The theme was midlife women, and as part of the entertainment program, the audience was reminded that midlife women have better lives than ever before, thanks to hormone replacement therapy and other wonderful advances in medicine.
The media coverage also included a gem about the "father" of hormone replacement therapy, Dr. Robert Wilson. In the early 1960s, Wilson promoted hormones as a miracle cure for the "living decay" that besets the often "dull and unattractive" menopausal woman. His book, Forever Feminine, was enormously influential, and hormone replacement therapy has grown in popularity ever since. Wilson seemed to be speaking from the heart, but in interviews during the July 2002 media onslaught (New York Times, 7/10/02) the late doctor's son told a reporter that the book and his father's work were paid for by Wyeth.
3:17 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
"In an internal memo cited by media organizations this week, a CNN producer suggested adding hip-hop phrases such as "flava," slang for "style," to make the news more accessible to a younger audience"
[cursor]President Bush: "America must assert its global leadership. It cannot stand idly by in the face of an imminent threat. And it will not."
Blitzer: "In essence, Rudi, what tha president is saying to Hussein is 'Check yourself, fool.' Republicans praised tha president's resolve as off tha chain, and said America should smack Hussein upside tha head. But Democrats aren't down wit dat. Know what I'm sayin', Rudi?"
Bakhtiar [cross-talk]: "So, Wolf, it sounds as if the U.S. is staying all up in Saddam's grill."
Blitzer: "Straight up, girlfriend."
Bakhtiar: "Thanks, Wolf. In other news, the stock market was illin' again today. Lou Dobbs has our report."
Dobbs: "Rudi, it was wack again on Wall Street. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 183 points. The Nasdaq was disrespecting investors, too. The economy doesn't appear to be getting jiggy anytime soon. So it looks like there won't be much bling-bling under the tree this Christmas. Rudi?"
Bakhtiar: "For real, Lou. And I guess investors can forget about remodeling the crib or shopping for a fine new ride, eh?"
Dobbs: "Serious! Get used to that hoopty."
3:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Large Meteorite Falls on the Irkutsk Region
2:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
"a hitherto unheard of phenomenon"
Antarctic glacier reverses course
2:46 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Friday, October 04, 2002
Rampant corruption and criminality are nothing new in the offices of Southern sheriffs -- but now people are talkingThe only elected law-enforcement officers in the country, sheriffs still rule largely on their own terms. At their disposal are small armies of deputies, armories of weapons, jails full of seasoned criminals, and the broad latitude of independent budgets. What's more, the sheriff has vast power to hire and fire, which can endear him to communities -- or breed loyalty through fear.
These powers were clearly abused in the case of Mr. Dorsey: This summer, a Georgia jury convicted the former DeKalb County, Ga., sheriff of conspiring to have his elected successor, Derwin Brown, gunned down in December 2000. Dorsey was known to hire conmen to run his private security details, a gang of whom killed Mr. Brown. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, and 23 years for corruption. As late as last week, the case was ongoing, as accomplices took the stand.
While sheriffs in poor rural areas have often fallen prey to the lure of drug money, many say Dorsey took county corruption to new levels. But he's far from the bumbling stereotype: A former Atlanta detective, he rose to take over what had been known as a corrupt department, managing the biggest jail east of the Mississippi River and a deputized force of hundreds.
The extent of his and other recent sheriffs' ill-doings, historians say, points to the behind-the-scenes corruption that has plagued the office of high sheriff since it was founded in England a millenium ago.
In America, "This kind of thing goes way back to the 18th-century sheriff, where the sheriff managed the jails while doing all kinds of things, like charging for food and allowing people to take sexual advantages of prisoners," says Wilbur Miller, a history professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. "The only difference today is that it's more exposed."
4:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Confused about The . . . Whole Situation? Check out the American Crusade 2001+ Trading Cards! [u]
Takes a while to load, but loads of fun!
12:02 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Dan Gillmor on the MediaMobsters' attack on American culture [u]Jack Valenti says he and his movie- industry employers are all for compromise in the copyright wars. But the solutions they advocate for an admittedly tough dilemma, copyright infringement, are grossly one-sided.
[...]
Saying you believe in compromise is one thing. Acting like it is another.
In fact, the entertainment cartel has in recent years grossly tipped the balance. Spending millions of dollars on campaign contributions and lobbying, it has persuaded Congress to enact laws reflecting a radical view of information and its use.
The major media/entertainment companies believe that control of information -- absolute control over how it can be used -- belongs to the owner of the copyright. They insist, moreover, that copyrights should be able to last indefinitely.
This is not a compromise, no matter what Valenti calls it. This is a radical agenda, one that overturns tradition and would ultimately wipe out the public domain, without which our culture would be vastly poorer.
At least, you can understand the industry's paranoia. File sharing and other technologies -- all of which have entirely legitimate uses that the cartel would eliminate along with the illegal ones -- are an obvious threat to the business model of the past half-century, a highly centralized and grossly inefficient business that rips off the artists, overcharges the public and limits the market.
11:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
PRIVATIZE WAR NOT SOCIAL SECURITY
IF THE CONSERVATIVES insist in leading us into war, they should at least follow their own principles as they do so. This would mean putting the whole thing on a pay-as-you-go basis - which is to say paying for conflict at the gas pump. During the earlier iteration of the Gulf War I figured, as I recall, that about $15 a gallon would do the trick.
Now it's true that the Bush administration is a little confused on this matter - for example it wants to privatize Social Security but use the Treasury to subsidize religion - but surely the oil industry is pure capitalism at its best and ought to act that way by paying a user fee to the Pentagon for its war, which it can then retrieve from its customers. And if the latter are not quite as patriotic as they were when the true cost of war was better hidden, it will merely prove again the omnipotent magic of market forces.
10:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
A Tip O' The Blog to Sylvain at Temple Furnace for the link!
9:41 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
A seemingly pretty comprehensive survey of best and worst phone service [refdesk]
Suggests TollChaser.com for tracking down the best long distance (VartecTelecom and IDT) or wireless (Verizon and Cingular).
MCI and AT&T were the worst long distance, Sprint PCS and Qwest the worst wireless.
9:33 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Sign up here to sign the Not In Our Name list against the Iraq War
This is the letter referred to in that post a few days ago listing celebrities against the war.
12:34 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Thursday, October 03, 2002
Classic Imperial Bureaucracy Story
The chief of the Justice Dept's anti-trust division cuts out for a "new job [which] presented a rare opportunity that he could not pass up" -- VP and general counsel at ChevronTexacoThe surprise announcement by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft gave no indication of who his successor might be, and James said he is not sure when he will leave. As a result, it is unclear who will decide whether the government will challenge two major telecommunications mergers under review: the proposed buyout of DirecTV owner Hughes Electronics Corp. by its only domestic satellite-television rival, Dish Network owner EchoStar Communications Corp., and the acquisition of AT&T Corp.'s broadband and cable division by Comcast Corp., which would combine the country's largest and third-largest cable providers.You can bet ChevronTexaco won't be having any anti-trust problems, eh?
The department also has been investigating whether the music, movie and travel industries are violating antitrust laws by pooling efforts to sell their products and services on the Internet.
"It's a little unsettling that we're about to see transition in antitrust leadership at a time when critical decisions have to be made about whether the cable and satellite industries will become more competitive or will become increasingly concentrated," said Gene Kimmelman, head of the Washington office of Consumers Union.
Who knows, maybe his successor will be a better advocate on anti-trust issues.
*sigh*
For why this kind of thing can be expected to get even worse, read Kevin Phillips' excellent Arrogant Capital: Washington, Wall Street, and the Frustration of American Politics. Washington needs to be dismantled completely. Or maybe the states will eventually just make the federal gov't irrelevant by ignoring it.
11:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Acclaimed director Abbas Kiarostami, an Iranian, has been denied a visa to the US, despite his invitation to attend the premiere of his new film Ten at the New York Film Festival [u]
10:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Wait a minute . . this smoke. . .I can't see in here. . [u]JOSEPH CURL,WASHINGTON TIMES - The International Atomic Energy Agency says that a report cited by President Bush as evidence that Iraq in 1998 was "six months away" from developing a nuclear weapon does not exist. "There's never been a report like that issued from this agency," Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA's chief spokesman, said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency's headquarters in Vienna, Austria. "We've never put a time frame on how long it might take Iraq to construct a nuclear weapon in 1998," said the spokesman of the agency charged with assessing Iraq's nuclear capability for the United Nations.
10:47 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
"But you're still fucking peasants as far as I can see. . .
The bathroom break and why the workplace is a time machine -- that only goes back to the Middle Ages [u]In their 1998 book ''Void Where Prohibited: Rest Breaks and the Right to Urinate on Company Time,'' Marc Linder and Ingrid Nygaard of the University of Iowa - he's a law professor, she's a urogynecologist - trace the long and ignoble history of the struggle for the right to pee on the job. In 1995, for instance, female employees at a Nabisco plant in Oxnard, Calif., maker of A-1 steak sauce and the world's supplier of Grey Poupon mustard, complained in a lawsuit that line supervisors had consistently prevented them from going to the bathroom. Instructed to urinate into their clothes or face three days' suspension for unauthorized expeditions to the toilet, the workers opted for adult diapers. But incontinence pads were expensive, so many employees downgraded to Kotex and toilet paper, which pose severe health risks when soaked in urine. Indeed, several workers eventually contracted bladder and urinary tract infections. Hearing of their plight, conservative commentator R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. advised the workers to wear special diapers used by horses in New York's Central Park carriage trade.
How does a country that celebrates the joy of unfettered movement tolerate such restrictions on this most basic of bodily motions? Why do the freedoms that we take for granted outside the workplace suddenly disappear when we enter it? ''Belated Feudalism,'' a study by UCLA political scientist Karen Orren, suggests a surprising, and shocking, answer. According to Orren, long after the Bill of Rights was ratified and slavery abolished - well into the 20th century, in fact - the American workplace remained a feudal institution. Not metaphorically, but legally. Workers were governed by statutes originating in the common law of medieval England, with precedents extending as far back as the year 500. Like their counterparts in feudal Britain, judges exclusively administered these statutes, treating workers as the literal property of their employers. Not until 1937, when the Supreme Court upheld the Wagner Act, giving workers the right to organize unions, did the judiciary relinquish political control over the workplace to Congress.
10:17 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
An argument that shrub needs an intervention because he shows signs of being a "dry drunk" [u]Whether George W. Bush is or was an alcoholic is not the point here. I am taking him at his word that he stopped what he termed "heavy drinking" in 1986, at age 40. The point here is that, based on Bush's recent behavior, he could very well be a "dry drunk." Of course, he may just be an immature bully who will gladly sacrifice thousands of lives to get his way even against the advice of the most respected and mature members of his own party.
Still, Bush's past battles with the bottle are worth pondering at a time like this, one of the most dangerous in the nation's history. When a recovering alcoholic begins to engage in what AA calls "stinking thinking," he or she begins to exhibit the old attitudes and pathologies of their drinking years. These include an increase in anxiety, mild tremors, mild depression, disturbed sleep patterns, inability to think clearly, craving for junk food, irritability, sudden bursts of anger and unpredictable mood swings. According to AA literature, "Boredom and listlessness may alternate with intense feelings of resentment against family and friends, and explosive outbursts of violence."
[...]
The question is then begged, and seems to at least deserve some pause for pondering: how did he, at age 58, get so fumble-tongued, incapable of stringing more than two coherent sentences together, snippily irritable with anyone who dares disagree with him or even ask a question, poutily turning his back on the democratically elected president of one of our most important allies because of something one of his underlings said about him (Germany's Schroder, of course), listlessly in need of constant vacations and rest, dangerously obsessed with only one thing (Iraq), to the exclusion of all other things (including an economy that is slowly sucking the life from the nation as ! well as the retirement savings of anyone reading these words)?
9:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
A federal "no-fly" list seems aimed at protesters as much as at terrorists -- and no one is claiming they're in charge of it [u]
Typical corporate blame-shifting, from the Most Corporate Administration.A federal "No Fly" list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes, is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and other U. S. airports, triggering complaints that civil liberties are being trampled.Ohhh, yeahhh. . .
And while several federal agencies acknowledge that they contribute names to the congressionally mandated list, none of them, when contacted by The Chronicle, could or would say which agency is responsible for managing the list.
One detainment forced a group of 20 Wisconsin anti-war activists to miss their flight, delaying their trip to meet with congressional representatives by a day. That case and others are raising questions about the criteria federal authorities use to place people on the list -- and whether people who exercise their constitutional right to dissent are being lumped together with terrorists.
[...]
Federal law enforcement officials deny targeting dissidents. They suggested that the activists were stopped not because their names are on the list, but because their names resemble those of suspected criminals or terrorists.
9:41 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Looks like I pushed a button
I'm afraid I gave Mr Hackbarth the wrong impression. He thought I called him a fucker because I linked to his site with the title of my post "We Are the World, fucker".
I was referring to the world-view that I felt emanating from your site, sir, not a name-calling. Sorry you got the wrong impression.
On a less serious note: thanks for the heads up on Paul Wellstone. He's a Commie and a Fascist huh? Wow. I'll be keeping an eye on this Terrifying Threat to Democracy and Freedom, believe you me.
Thanks for the plug.
9:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Newseum's Front Pages of world newspapers is available online now [refdesk]
You open a window for each world region, then choose a thumbnail or a larger picure, and then can navigate to a pdf or the website.
Nice.
5:31 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
"It's OK -- they're our Terrorists"
Looks like there was a time not long ago when even Herr Ashcroft supported a terrorist groupWhen the White House released its Sept. 12 "white paper" detailing Saddam Hussein's "support for international terrorism," it caused more than a little discomfort in some quarters of Washington.
The 27 page document -- entitled "A Decade of Deception and Defiance" -- made no mention of any Iraqi ties to Osama bin Laden. But it did highlight Saddam's backing of the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MKO), an obscure Iranian dissident group that has gathered surprising support among members of Congress in past years. One of those supporters, the documents show, is a top commander in President Bush's war on terrorism: Attorney General John Ashcroft, who became involved with the MKO while a Republican senator from Missouri.
The case of Ashcroft and the MKO shows just how murky fighting terrorism can sometimes get. State Department officials first designated the MKO a "foreign terrorist organization" in 1997, accusing the Baghdad-based group of a long series of bombings, guerilla cross-border raids and targeted assassinations of Iranian leaders. Officials say the MKO -- which originally fought to overthrow the Shah of Iran -- was linked to the murder of several U.S. military officers and civilians in Iran in the 1970s. "They have an extremely bloody history," says one U.S. counterterrorism official.
[...]
...When the National Council of Resistance staged a September 2000 rally outside the United Nations to protest a speech by Iranian President Mohammed Khatami, Missouri's two Republican senators -- Ashcroft and Chris Bond -- issued a joint statement of solidarity that was read aloud to a cheering crowd. A delegation of about 500 Iranians from Missouri attended the event -- and a picture of a smiling Ashcroft was later included in a color briefing book used by MKO officials to promote their cause on Capitol Hill. Ashcroft was hardly alone. Among those who actually appeared at the rally and spoke on the group's behalf was one of its leading congressional supporters: Democratic New Jersey Sen. Bob Torricelli.
4:26 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Didn't see this in the American media this morning:
Looks like that art student Israeli spy ring (that was going to be a FoxNews special report till it got kaiboshed a few months ago) was tracking the al-Qaeda hijackers -- and tried to tell US Intelligence
10:45 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
We Are The World, fucker
This is where I heard about George Will comparing McDermott and Bonior in Bagdad to Jane Fonda in Hanoi.
Lower on the page there's a pic of a Paul Wellstone T-shirt portraying him as Lenin.
I sense this is a world-view where Curtis LeMay would feel at home.
The Hysterical American Militarization of the 50s is being affectionately nuzzled by many folks. Reading the Thomas book I'm struck by the similarities between the early years of the Cold War and now. I'm just starting my exploration of "Intelligence" agencies and their spawn, but this book is very readable and seems accurate enough. By 1958 the U-2 spyplane (one of the CIA's great successes) erased any notion that there was a missile gap -- for those who bothered to look. The threat of Soviet expansion was exaggerated far beyond when it was obvious the Soviet will and infrastructure weren't up to Empire. The mythology of the Red Scare was too pervasive by then, and Eisenhower's military-industrial complex too powerful -- and these boys were just having too much fun.
People seemed hypnotized and daft, ready to believe a hack like McCarthy about total Communist infiltration into the State Dept. etc.
Now the hack is running the country after a bloodless coup. And 9/11 has seemed to enchant at least a substantial part of the body politic into a dull narcotic haze within which mobilization against some Arab somewhere seems not just natural but necessary.
For we must Extend our Dominion, and Nestle the Tender, Pliant Head of Freedom within our Mighty Wings.
We have samples of your fluids, the Dr Strangeshrub Cocktail, The Blight and Terror which we lustily embrace, Our Legacy of Remotely Controlled and Plausibly Denied Dominion Over the World.
Our Wisdom is Beyond your pitiful nattering over civil rights and tattered treaties. Still We Protect You.
Paging Colonel Kurtz, paging Colonel Kurtz. . .
A Haunted Planet of Hungry Ghosts, never satisfied, never at peace.
2:59 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Wednesday, October 02, 2002
The New York Times mutters to itself that Japan can't happen hereJapan's stock market and real estate bubbles began losing air in 1990, almost exactly a decade before stocks in the United States peaked, and the country has still failed to recover fully. The Japanese market remains near an 18-year low, consumer prices are falling, and the central bank has cut interest rates to nearly zero, limiting its ability to lift the economy.
Few policymakers or economists expect the United States to fall into the same trap, largely because the U.S. bubble never reached the same size as Japan's and U.S. financial and political systems appear more flexible. Still, many signs suggest that the United States could suffer a post-bubble hangover that lingers for at least a few years. The stock market is still likely to decline for a third consecutive year, its longest such streak since 1939-41.
None of the U.S. economy's three engines - consumers, businesses or the government - appears poised to propel the nation sharply ahead in the near future. After the economy grew at a moderate pace this summer, business spending on new factories and equipment has weakened again in recent weeks, and large retailers warned this week that September sales were lower than expected.
[...]
The most likely outcome, however, is an economy that grows more quickly than Japan's but more slowly than the U.S. economy of the mid- to late '90s, many forecasters say.
"In Japan, the entirety of balance sheets collapsed," said Robert Barbera, the chief economist at ITG/Hoenig, a technology and investment company. "From stocks to land to gold-club memberships, everything fell 70 to 90 percent."
"We have a very defensible system, but we got too giddy, and we had a bubble," he added. "The immediate future is pretty pedestrian."
11:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Hail the Conquering Stewie
This piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution summarizes the Pax Americana (coy demure phrasing, that) strategy behind the Iraq War
The article is based largely on the "Project for the New American Century" piece published in Sep 2000 that I mentioned a week ago. The connection between Israeli hawks and US policy isn't delved into, nor the interesting way 9/11 has given the agenda of these folks the best boost imaginable.
It might be a good time -- aside from speculating on the now near impossibility that Congress or public opinion (at least apparent public opinion) will challenge these policies -- to think about what might happen if it doesn't work. . .
The whole thing has the same demented flavor as John Wayne trying to pull off playing Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. Except this time think shrub as an infant Pan -- Stewie from Family Guy -- pulling down the sky and things getting much worse for everybody. . .
Do you want to be an extra in that movie? Do you want to finance this real-life Heaven's Gate? Because that's what's coming down the pike, America.
All Imperial Roads lead to Rome.
7:39 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Here's an article claiming Israel funneled money to Hamas starting in the 70s to allegedly counter the PLO and try to infiltrate Hamas -- which kind of blew up in their faces [og]According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran.
What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon vis-à-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources said.
"Nothing provides the energy for imitation as much as success," commented one administration expert.
[...]
In addition, by infiltrating Hamas, Israeli informers could only listen to debates on policy and identify Hamas members who "were dangerous hard-liners," the official said.
In the end, as Hamas set up a very comprehensive counterintelligence system, many collaborators with Israel were weeded out and shot. Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.
But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named.
"Israel would still be the only democracy in the region for the United States to deal with," he said.
7:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
Doonesbury is doing a series on the medical marijuana situation
10:32 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Tuesday, October 01, 2002
What -- something free in America?: I'm sure WiFi is some terrorist conspiracy somehow. . .
I mean, people are out there, SHARING things, GATHERING INFORMATION with UNLIMITED BANDWIDTH.
That's it -- if you're not paying Starbucks $50/month for wireless access, you're hurting the American economy, thus giving the terrorists what they want.
"Witch! Witch!"
9:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Gulf War POW denounces Iraq intervention [a]NEWSWEEK: You were held captive and tortured by agents of Saddam Hussein?s regime. Why do you now oppose military intervention to secure his overthrow?
John Nichol: One reason why the West, and Britain and the United States in particular, are in such a difficult position is that they seem to think that they can cherry-pick regimes that are bad and need to be changed. We deal with bad regimes on a daily basis: we deal with Iran, we deal with Saudi Arabia, which has a truly appalling record on human rights, but we don?t talk about regime change there. America and Britain can?t set themselves up as the world policemen without a mandate from the world.
8:19 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
"Uranium," huh?
8:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
MusicMobsters settle CD price-fixing case for $143mil
I'm sure music buyers will see a lot of that payoff loot. . .
1:54 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Funny Al Martin on "leaked DoD report" that suggests spraying protesters with Valium and spiking tapwater with Prozac [og]The DoD is concerned that an increasing number of people will see through the "façade" of the Bush administration. Though the Pentagon intended to keep this report secret, parts of it have leaked out and have been reported.
Consequently, should Bush remain in office for a second term with, of course, the normal Bushonian economic malfeasance intact, if more people begin to identify George Bush with the destruction of their retirement and the loss of confidence in our marketplace and as more of their liberties are taken away under the guise of "the war on terrorism," then the Department of Defense wants the ability to invoke "stronger measures" to control an anticipated surge in civil disobedience. That's why they're asking the UN Council for a ruling on the use and distribution of this new high potency Valium gas.
1:40 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Hilarious Tom Tomorrow on the FLA elections
1:26 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Muslims and Arab from "select countries" now subject to fingerprinting, being photographed and possibly questioned by US
Which will make the country safe from terrorism, of course.
12:04 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
The most comprehensive report on the details and reasons for the WTC collapse may be kept from the public -- because it's part of a trial record
12:00 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
Monday, September 30, 2002
German TV says they've done analysis that proves only Saddam doubles have been seen on film since '98 [Undernews]
11:02 AM - [Link] - Comments ()
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