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San Francisco, CA-

Is it foolish to rely on corporations at all?  One economist, Robert Reich, says “Yes”.

The scope of the Horizon Deepwater disaster continues to unfold exponentially. Today we offer a round up of the more compelling angles. The daily meetings held by Admiral Thad Allen and others often focus, at this point, on minutiae of operational successes and glitches that the primary vessels involved with the Lower Marine Riser experience in hourly work. As of late yesterday and early today, one of the ROVs (underwater vehicles) had accidently “bumped” into the riser tube thereby causing yet another effluence of oil directly into the deep gulf waters.

Without engaging in the neck-bending volleys of finger-pointing between the administration, the BP gang, and the public, the latest news from the White House is a kind of updated “access dashboard”  for those who seek to volunteer or locate a job working on the frontline of the recovery and repair process, wherever that kind of position might send a person.

As the clean up is now an industry unto itself, many citizens and other observers continue to express a posse-like mentality in the public sphere, calling for the location and  punishment of a variety of culpable figures. Those figures span the range from Tony Hayward, former chief executive for BP, to the still-unnamed figures in management at the moment the oil rig itself collapsed, to the Chairman of BP Carl-Henric Svanberg aka “Mr. Small People” and beyond.

Driven by a financial industry report, The Flip Side contacted Robert Reich, Former Secretary of Labor and Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley. We shared with him recent data that JP Morgan Chase held 28.34% of BP (controlling shares) and that JP Morgan Chase had received federal funds in 2007 (even though they reputedly paid those funds back in 2009.) Then we asked if one could point to that information and deduce that BP, if held primarily by JPMC, and if JPMC was bailed out with taxpayers funds, if one go so far as to suggest that BP is, to a certain extent, “us.”

We further explained that this was not an attempt to be “flip” or inexact, but simply to crack open the vagaries of corporate control and taxpayer funding. His response: “Good point about JP Morgan Chase. The real problem [with BP] is that BP, like any large corporation, exists to maximize shareholder value, whoever those shareholders happen to be. It does not exist to protect the health or safety of a nation. That’s why it’s foolish to rely on a corporation to fix what it negligently or recklessly created.”  The simple facts about corporations are that they are, indeed, kind of a spider’s web of contractual agreements, taking advantage of our laws that allow an entity such as a corporation many “rights” and privileges given to a private individual, while a corporation is the farthest thing from an individual citizen than one can imagine.

Moving on to the real pain here:  the wildlife recovery process marked a milestone last Sunday with the release of over 40 brown pelicans. View a video here on the Unified Response website.

Thus, this disaster continues to wreak havoc with the temperament and emotional life of the average American. Yesterday, two workers involved in the clean-up died.  Admiral Thad Allen could not comment on the deaths during the press conference yesterday, as he had “just been notified” prior to the conference itself. Rather than experience a kind of “Mad Max” post-petroleum apocalyptic end, will we, instead, drown in our own brown, tarry greed, and pull innocent wildlife down with us? The recent worker deaths seem ominous. And we have yet to witness what happens to this operation when hurricanes do arrive. It looks to be a bumpy summer, indeed.

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Allison Addicott is a professional writer who is also an award winning public speaker. She writes at The Washington Times Communities as author of  ”The Flip Side“. and  is the editor for the entire “Public Good” section at The Washinton Times Communities. To learn more about her visit www.allisonaddicott.com.  Her work has also appeared at The Daily Kos, and other sites. She has lived in Washington DC, San Diego, Paris, Tokyo, Honolulu, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where she now lives.

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These global paranoids come out of the woodwork at every summit of international leaders now. All the G20’s, climate summits like Copenhagen, just like clockwork.

I have to say it was more of a self-fulfilling prophecy this time. Most of the protestors are peaceful. Woven in there are always few troublemakers who are not there to promote any issue. The police and host government know that, so they show up in force. Then a few thugs start something, as they did this weekend in Toronto with some windows broken out and car or trash can fires, etc, etc.

The media shows the vandalism and announces a crowd size (10,000 or more for Saturday), making it look like a big riot. When actually it’s still just that few doing all the damage. The police are already there by the hundreds, then they overreact to the few troublemakers and start manhandling people who are peaceful!

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Here is an ongoing case that shocked me utterly when I heard about it – a college student was arrested and charged with terrorism just because he got into a purely verbal dispute with a faculty member, and the police has kept him in cutody without informing his family.

The student’s name is TianTian Zhai, an international graduate student of Stevens Institute of Technology, NJ. Around April 15, there was a verbal dispute between him and a faculty member of Stevens Tech, but there was no physical contact between them. On April 16, Zhai was arrested and charged with terrorism, and nobody outside knew about his detention until a jail-mate of Zhai passed the news to a local restaurant owner in early May, who then passed the news to Zhai’s incredulous parents. Zhai is still being detained. It is unknown whether he is being represented by any lawyer.

According to the news reports in the Chinese American communities such as “Qiao Bao” (”Expatriate News Report,” May 20, 2010), during the verbal dispute Zhai said to the faculty member: “If worse comes to worst, I’ll fight you to the end.” While those words sound inappropriate and aggressive to me, it is clearly not terrorism. In addition, not having been in the states for long, Zhai might not really mean what his words sounded like. Furthermore, even if Zhai meant what he said, when did our country fall into a state that criminalizes people purely based on their speech?

Here is picture of Zhai–

—I doubt any sane person upon looking at the picture would not find the terrorism charge unbelievable.

Cases like this make me wonder if the real terrorists have already won their war.  Paranoia has spread to even university campuses.  Where is our good old tolerant trusting American way of life?

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I’m not qualified to talk about oil in depth, if you’ll pardon the pun, but it seems (to my surprise) that no-one has raised the point yet. To me the oil leak in the Mexican Gulf is one of the most important things that’s happened lately, and it puts the spotlight on oil as such.

Oil is one of the facts of daily life to which few people (except those in the industry) give much thought until a major spill occurs. Now we have one of those on the US’s doorstep. (There are others at this very moment, apart from the constant sluicing out of ship bilges etc. that daily pollutes the sea. Read the Kon-Tiki expedition and see how long ago tar balls were polluting the oceans. Leaks on land? We don’t hear much about these things.)

There’s no easy way to end oil dependence, and that’s not counting resistance from the oil industry.

To begin with, we need the stuff for our cars. Electric cars are beginning to feature; in South Africa we’ve just come up with our first home-grown car (the Joule) and it’s electric. Of course, electric cars rate only two cheers at most until we have clean energy.

Meanwhile, oil-as-fuel remains. It remains a prime pollutant in every way. Even when nothing goes “wrong”, the industry is morally pollutive , irredeemably so (check the dirt that’s being stirred up by the current enquiry into the Gulf spill) and probably most of the carbon pollution that’s driving climate change is fuelled by oil.

The oil industry is entrenched. There are many, many vested interests there. The world would be a far better place if we could replace fossil fuels with clean renewable energy. How do we do it?

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With the costs of name-brand drugs rising exponentially over the past 20 years and higher premiums and co-pays, US citizens have, to a large extent, been able to count on lower-priced generics, which have always been assumed to be the same as their name-brand equivalents. This is not the case anymore as Teva Pharmaceuticals, based in Israel, has been swallowing up many of the leading generic drug manufactures over the past few years, making them the sole producer of many important generics that so many of us count on for a myriad of medical conditions.

For the rest of the world where health-care is typically universal, reliance on generic drugs has not been much of an issue up until recently. Generics are now making up an ever-increasing share of the EU pharmaceutical market. While the Eu will likely never adopt the for-profit U.S. model of health-care, it will most likely continue to increase the availability of generics over more costly name-brand drugs, with potentially detrimental health consequences.

The fact that Teva is buying up the competition is not the focus here–though corporate monopolies are never good for consumers. It is the fact that so many of Teva’s generics are poorly produced in third-world countries and are not the same as their brand-name equivalents. While the chemical components of their drugs are the same, or bio-equivalent,  as the main chemical compound of the name-brand, it is the low-quality precursor chemicals, inferior manufacturing facilities and lack of production oversight that is causing adverse reactions in consumers that have begun taking generics produced under the Teva Umbrella.

Teva takes over

Teva was officially created in 1976 after the merger of three pharmaceutical companies created in Israel by European Immigrants. In 1982, the FDA (The United States Food and Drug Administration) approved its main manufacturing plant — and so began the path to market domination.

Teva is not solely interested in generics as they have produced some very effective and useful proprietary drugs such as Copaxone and Azilect. Despite their own research and development, Teva’s meteoric rise atop the pharmaceutical food chain has come through buying and merging with other large drug manufacturers. Most recently, the acquisition of Barr Pharmaceuticals in 2008 for over 7 billion dollars has further entrenched them in generic manufacturing.

Barr had been the largest generic manufacturer in the world when they were acquired by Teva. This, in and of itself, is not necessarily earth-shattering information — big company acquires other big company, making bigger company; the way of capitalism. The relevance of the Barr acquisition lies in the history of Barr–a history of corruption and inferior production standards. Teva, as far as pharmaceutical giants go, has typically been considered a quality developer and producer of proprietary drugs up until the past few years. It is their acquisitions over the past ten years — Barr in particular — and their quest to cheaply produce generics to make even more money that has brought their quality standards under scrutiny.

Lowering the Barr

Barr was an outsider looking in for many years, trying desperately to get FDA approval for its generics. But this quest was deterred by the FDA, who was approving generics and other drugs for the highest bidder.

The company earned notoriety during the late 1980s, when its founder testified before a congressional committee about bribes between generic drug producers and U.S. Food & Drug Administration officials. Funding Universe

This testimony would actually set Barr back a bit throughout the 80s and into the early 90s as the FDA, in possible retaliation, stonewalled the approval for many of Barr’s bio-equivalent manufacturing requests. This would change in the mid 90s when Barr became more aggressive in its approach. With a team of highly paid attorneys, Barr set out to find loopholes in the patents of many popular name-brand drugs. One of the more notable patent challenges came against Eli Lilly’s Prozac in 1996.

Challenging existing patents with a “dream team” of patent layers would become Barr’s main focus in the late 90s and throughout this decade. Considering Barr had smoothed over relations with the FDA in the 90s, getting bio-equivalency approval after winning patent challenges in court was a quick and easy process — unlike the 80s which led Barr to testify against the FDA in the first place. Now Barr was in the driver’s seat. Barr swallowed up other generic manufacturers and continued to win patent suits and gain first rights to bio-equivalency claims of expiring patents.

When Barr was acquired by Teva in 2008, a string of voluntary re-calls would soon follow. Despite Barr’s unscrupulous business history, quality-control of their drugs was never a big issue. With Teva’s acquisition and control of Barr and its wide scope of generic manufacturing, the quest to make their drugs at the cheapest price possible has resulted in the use of low-quality precursor chemicals and a complete lack of manufacturing oversight. Just nine months ago, Barr’s generic Adderall was re-called because they were distributing batches at four to five times the listed dosage. Considering Adderall is a blend of amphetamines, this resulted in an array of cardiovascular and psychological problems for those unfortunate enough to take these potent Adderall pills.

While I’m on the subject of Adderall, it is of importance to note the complacency of many of the major brand-name drug manufacturers in allowing their proprietary formulas to be produced in a manner inconsistent with their own production standards. Shire pharmaceuticals, the original producer of Adderall, has recently granted Barr/Teva the right to be the sole manufacturer of Extended Release Adderall, which is still under patent. The reason for this is of course profit. Shire has a large stake in the growing ADHD market, and are pushing their new ADHD drug Vyvanse as the be all and end all of ADHS medication. Essentially, they have given up any concern over the quality perceptions of the very popular and widely used Adderall to push Vyvanse which is simply Dextro-Amphetamine (Dexidrine) with lysine bonded to it, supposedly creating a less abusable prodrug of something that has been around for over a hundred years. I’ll save my critique of the ineffectiveness of Vyvanse for another time as that would involve delving into some complicated bio and neuro-chemistry.

In addition to the Adderall recalls, there have been others just in the past two years since Barr was acquired by Teva. Obviously, recalls and mistakes happen, but Teva seems to make more mistakes than what one would consider acceptable when dealing with drugs that are used to treat life-threatening illnesses. The pharmaceutical industry as a whole, has historically shown indifference to their actual consumers for the sake of generating more profit. With Teva taking over such a large portion of the generic drug market, this could be a scary proposition for those of us who depend on affordable drugs for treating our medical conditions.

The FDA, the federal administration responsible for overseeing the safety and effectiveness of these medications in the United States, has continued to turn a blind eye to the issues of Teva. Considering the FDA’s history of corruption and the fact that it is made up largely of former pharmaceutical executives and representatives, their apathy toward consumers in favor of these corporations should come as no surprise. This could indeed affect the rest of the world as well, as so many countries are taking a similarly lax attitude toward quality control — especially countries on the global economic periphery who have a hard time getting any drugs in general, name brand or generic.

This article was taken from my website The Todd Blog and has been slightly edited from the original version.

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You’d think maybe Americans would understand the United States Constitution better than a Canadian!

Arizona’s new law, the so called SB1070, which is already a hash marked topic of scorn on Twitter, tells police officers to order persons to produce proof of their citizenship if they “suspect” them of being illegal immigrants. So that makes this law arbitrary and subjective on it’s face, and a violation of the American 4th Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure. (police need probable cause first, which is verified before or after the fact by independent judiciary). You don’t get to detain, search, pull over or arrest anyone on unanchored suspicions!

The firestorm of protest from those who understand that distinction, (and why it is an essential part of free societies which are not police states), has been nothing short of awesome over the last 2 or 3 days. City councils passing boycotts of Arizona merchants, conventions in Phoenix cancelling, and the state made a laughingstock of bigotry on the Internet.

So vast and speedy was the rebuke that the Arizona legislature passed this attempted fix only today. (see below) Which pretty much says, “but wait, the police can’t consider ethnicity or race in forming their suspicions!” Righto. Everyone feels better now!

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On a previous blog I raised the point about global population, but this attracted very little attention. Since it seems to me a crucial point, I’m raising it under a new heading.

The point of departure before was that an ageing population is an unmitigated and irretrievable disaster. I am saying that (1) it’s not necessarily as bad as that and (2) bad or not, we’ll have to bite the bullet or face a really irretrievable disaster.

One often hears that Earth is not overpopulated at all: if things were properly arranged,  there would be enough for everybody. But even if Earth is not overpopulated now, eventually it must be. And human nature isn’t going to change. The powerful (by endowment or by nature) will claim a greater share than the weak and powerless.

Another myth is that of ‘replacement’. As long as each couple produces only two children – in other words, reproduce themselves – numbers cannot get out of hand. But (even if this replacement thing could be enforced) most people reproduce long before their own parents have died. Three or even four generations are alive at the same time; and there is a drive on the part of the medical profession and others to extend life at all costs, regardless of its quality. I have two children, five grandchildren; the youngest is only 19 now, and none of them have started reproducing yet.

In theory, the birth rate can start falling at once. We’re told that in the West it is already falling (I don’t know: I was shocked to see a comment by an educated English person that a falling birthrate would reduce the nation’s power and international standing). In practice, I don’t see how the global birth rate can be reduced below the death rate, which is what it amounts to.

So there we are. Resources are running out (oil, water, arable land); other species are being crowded out by ourselves and our animals and crops; the ecological balance slips further out of control every day. So does pollution. Oh, we’re very clever, but we’re not really convinced or motivated. We still imagine that the earth and the oceans are big enough to absorb our impact.

If we could arrest the birth rate right now, we would have an ageing population for a while. How bad is that? People remain active much longer than they used to; in part it balances out. But in any case, it’s not as though young populations are problem-free. A young population may cost more in education and job creation, an older one in health care. The young may have to support the old. But in an emerging country like my own, you have high unemployment and a low tax base; a similar situation, but we look forward to better days.

If we can start arresting the birth rate now, attention could shift to a better quality of life. Education and other social services could  start catching up. Better technology would enable us to repair the ravages to our planet.

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Each year over 40 million unborn human beings are slaughtered by abortion around the globe. Historically low birth rates are the root cause of declining and aging populations in the vast majority of industrialized nations. Such demographic trends in turn cause strains on various entitlement programs (such as nationalized health care, old-age security, etc) and contribute to economic recessions.

My predictions is that as the population continues to age, stock markets and economies around the globe will continue to slide and perhaps even collapse. 50 years from now, the world will be much different from what it is today, all thanks to this generation’s reluctance to reproduce itself and acceptance of widespread massacres of unborn children.

There’s been a lot of discussion of  “populism” in American politics recently, particularly when it comes to the corporate media covering for the Tea Baggs.  It seems all of the current populists are pissed-off Republicans and people on the left calling for the Democrats to be more populist.  Pop-pop-pop-pop-ulists!!

There’s only one problem with all this new-found populism – it doesn’t exist because we Americans don’t do populist.  We all love our elites too much to go for that kind of stuff.  That’s right, I said ELITES and I mean left and right too.

What got me started on this was a movie trailer online I stumbled across a while back and the populist talk brought it back to mind.  The movie being advertised was one of those rightwing ‘documentaries’ that was supposed to mock Michael Moore’s methods in his films.  The point the movie was trying to make is that liberals are hypocrites because they are concerned about the poor and middle class…as they climb into their limosines and private jets.

OK, let’s get past the conservatives’ odd view that being a liberal Democrat concerned about the less privileged and middle class means that they have to become monks who take a vow of poverty (guess they never heard of noblesse oblige).  The Republicans, in their way, lay claim to those same concerns and none of their supporters hold them to the same standards as they do for wealthy Democrats.

The point is that movie could have just as easily been made by a liberal about conservatives and both would still miss the real issue by a mile which is, down deep, we REALLY like rich and powerful people a lot and we keep voting them into office.

Blame it on American guilt over being thrown out of all of the good countries when we were founded and that we really do miss royalty.  Lord knows we try hard to create our own – singers, actors, athletes – but they come up short and are discarded as quickly as they were crowned.  See, the thing about royalty is that they are what they are no matter what.  A Duchess doesn’t lose her title because she loses it in a beauty salon and shaves her hair off.  A Baron can go out drinking heavily and trying to take all the drugs nightly then go in and out of rehab like he has his own personal revolving door and he’s still a Baron.  American royalty substitutes don’t get that kind of a break – go a little too crazy in public, start to lose your voice a bit, be unable to hit those homers or make those touchdowns anymore and it’s the French Revolution again and off goes your head.

So where do we go for our royals?  Why, politics of course.

I’m not talking about any individual here, individual politicians are often subject to the same rules that all of the other royalty substitutes rise and fall by.  The royalty I’m talking about is who we always look to as ready to either represent us or lead the nation.  Who are our populists, our kings and queens?  Rich people, plain and simple.

You may be brilliant but if you don’t have the bucks, either earned or inherited, kiss off politics. Look around:  Sarah Palin and her family are worth at least a million dollars.  The last nominee for President for either major party that didn’t come to the race already wealthy was Bill Clinton but he wasn’t exactly hurting either and he’s made up for that since.  Ross Perot ran for President as an independent with tons of coin in the bank to back it up.  More examples abound and we even do the jobs of fooling ourselves about these people by dressing up our worship of the wealthy in the words like ”success” i.e. successful business man/woman etc. etc.

Our self-delusion is so complete that we consider these people “populists” and “ordinary folks who understand our problems.”  Then we act surprised when they act for their interests and not ours as if it wasn’t as obvious as hell that’s exactly what they were all about from the get-go.

So please, don’t talk to me about today’s populism until you’re ready to elect that intelligent janitor and send that mediocre-minded CEO packing.  Until then, GOD SAVE THE KING!!

http://ranting-liberally.blogspot.com

You have to wonder who these guys were talking to for the years they had to plan the Vancouver games.

I am still glad to have them though no matter. Now if we could just get some of that snow from Washington D.C.!

Bad weather, a fenced-off flame: It’s one problem after another at a limping Olympics

VANCOUVER, B.C. – From fire to ice, nothing seems to be going right at the Olympics.

The torch malfunctioned. Warm weather turned the slopes and the event schedule to slop. A Zamboni had to ride to the rescue from Calgary following a meltdown at the speedskating rink.

By Tuesday, the Glitch Games were in full swing: 20,000 standing-room tickets for the snowboarding venue were voided because fans had fallen between the bales of hay under the melting layers of trucked-in snow.

Want to take a picture of the Olympic cauldron? Make sure that camera is pressed up against the chain-link fence – provided there’s room to squeeze in and a Vancouver 2010 banner isn’t in the way.

Organizers expect to unveil a plan Wednesday to address the rising public outcry and bring people closer to the flame, the most distinguished and enduring symbol of any Olympics.

“Perhaps,” conceded Renee Smith-Valade, a spokeswoman for the organizing committee, “we did underestimate the degree to which people would want to get close to it.”

Perhaps. At a news conference, a Canadian TV reporter asked organizers why the flame was hidden behind “a ratty-looking prison-camp fence.” And the Globe and Mail newspaper chose to allude to another Olympic city – Berlin.

Addressing the head of the Vancouver Games, the paper cried: “Mr. Furlong, tear down this fence!”

Of course, no scheduling or logistics issue – or sporting event, for that matter – seems significant in light of the death of a Georgian luger on the first day of the Olympics.

And, to be fair, there have been bright spots. Moguls skier Alexandre Bilodeau gave Canada its first gold medal in three home Olympics. NHL superstar Sidney Crosby has the Canadian men’s hockey team looking for gold. NBC ratings have been strong.

But aside from that, it’s been one problem after another for a games governed not so much by the Olympic creed as by Murphy’s Law. Shades of Atlanta.

The cancelled tickets at Cypress Mountain – 28,000 in all – mean about $1.5 million in lost revenue for the games, and disappointment for people who spent $50 to $65 to see events like the halfpipe and snowboardcross.

They’ll get refunds, although anyone who bought secondhand may be out of luck. Fans whose tickets were still good, and who went up the mountain Tuesday to see events, were treated to blinding snow.

Athletes weren’t spared, either. Timing foulups marred both biathlon events Tuesday. A Swedish woman was held up at her start gate for 14 seconds, and two of the men went off too early. Officials later corrected for the errors.

“It is embarrassing,” said Norbert Baier, the International Biathlon Union’s technical delegate. “Why do we have this incompetence?”

The events schedule, meanwhile, looks like it’s been run over by a bobsled.

On Tuesday alone, the men’s super-combined, up in the mountains at Whistler, was postponed because of an overnight snowstorm. The snowboardcross finals were rescheduled. Women’s downhill training was cancelled.

This after downhill training was postponed repeatedly earlier in the Olympics because of wet weather that messed with the snow. It’s been so mild that locals have jokingly called it the Vancouver Summer Olympics.

“It’s getting ridiculous, for sure, how much changing of the schedule and shuffling around has been happening,” said Thomas Vonn, husband and coach of Lindsey Vonn, a multimedal favourite.

Then again, each day of cancelled training gives Vonn’s badly bruised right shin more time to heal. For everyone else, the delays are a mounting annoyance.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 the worst, this is a 10. That’s for sure,” said Patrick Riml, head coach of Canada’s women’s Alpine team.

“Wouldn’t mind racing already,” American Alpine skier Ted Ligety tweeted.

Indoors, there are the ice escapades. At the Richmond Oval, the speedskating venue, the resurfacing machine went on the blink Monday. Instead of a track as smooth as glass, it left piles of slush and pools of water.

So the Olympics, which has a sponsorship deal with Olympia ice resurfacers, had to call in a replacement – a Zamboni from a whole province over in Calgary, specifically designed for the size of a speedskating oval.

Vancouver organizers say they’re responding as best they can to problems mostly out of their control.

“It’s a little like losing your luggage,” Smith-Valade said at a news conference where she was bombarded by questions about all that’s gone wrong. “It’s not whether the luggage gets lost – it’s how you deal with it.”

All this started on Friday night, at the opening ceremony, where the traditional climax, the lighting of the Olympic flame, was a bust because of a hydraulic failure.

One of the four legs of the indoor cauldron failed to rise out of its trap door in the floor, leaving the structure weirdly unbalanced and one of the final four torchbearers standing around awkwardly with nothing to do.

It’s been enough to draw comparisons to the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the gold standard of glitchy games. The press in Britain – which gets the next Olympics, in London – has questioned whether these are the worst games ever.

The International Olympic Committee insists it has no second thoughts.

“If we had the decision again, we would take the same decision,” IOC spokesman Mark Adams said. “It would come to Vancouver.”

Copyright © 2010 Canadian Press

What has been a surprise to me is that Iran is still an issue, at least to the United States.  It’s all about nuclear weapons and whether Iran has any, so let’s take a look back at how we got here.

It’s four months after the biggest act of terrorism ever on U.S. soil and it’s clear that the 9/11 attackers were foreign based, not domestic like the Oklahoma City bombing of a federal building.  The country is the most united it’s been for a while and with bipartisan support the invasion and initial defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan takes place.   Now it’s 2002, time for the State of the Union speech to the nation and a new term is introduced into the national debate:  The Axis of Evil. 

Who are the three nations who Bush names as members of this Axis?  Iraq, North Korea and Iran.

Plans go into motion to build up support for a second invasion and war in the Middle East, this time supposedly to stop development, storage and possible terrorist use of what the Bush administration claimed were stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein.  The Republicans successfully use this as a campaign issue against the Democrats in 2002 as the ‘threat’ from Iraq is sold to frightened Americans. 

In 2003, Bush makes good on his threat to invade Iraq and we’re pretty familiar with what happens after that.

While a majority of Americans applaud the invasion of Iraq, the other two ‘members’ of the ‘Axis of Evil’ get worried that they will be next.  What becomes clear very soon is that the Bush administration is quick to invade a nation that was essentially defenseless after the first Gulf War but when a possible opponent shows that they have the means to fight back, the Republicans shift to just wanting to talk. 

Case in point:  Iraq is invaded, North Korea with it’s nearly 6 million member armed forces and potential to build nuclear weapons gets a good GOP talking to.  The talking continues during the Bush era even when North Korea does their first nuclear tests and test fires the missiles to deliver them. 

Would any of these three have a chance in hell of defeating an all-out conflict with America?  Of course not, but if the case for having one is weak on the U.S. side, any support vanishes rather quickly when a lot of Americans die or get maimed for what the country sees as an unworthy war.  If a party wants to build it’s war cred, pick someone weak to fight so you can win fast and get out.

Iran gets this message loud and clear.  Iran has armed forces but nowhere near the reported size of North Korea so what can they do to prevent invasion by the Bushies?  Announce loudly that they are close to making nuclear weapons.  Sure enough, the Republicans back off and instead of sending troops they send sanctions.  Despite much saber rattling on both sides that’s about where things stay until the election of Barack Obama.

Unfortunately, even with a President who has expressed no desire or interest in following the neocons’ plans for constant war in the Middle East, that’s where things still stand.  If you followed Iran’s rhetoric, you’d think Bush was still in the White House. 

The reason for this is now the Iran regime finds the threat of a foreign invader useful not on the international stage but the domestic one.  Iran is facing a major movement to reform it’s quasi-democratic form of government and as usual the people in power don’t want their power reformed away.  Attacking reform protestors in the streets, even executing some, isn’t getting the job done for the Iranian establishment.  So they are going for what works for every country – convince enough Iranians that they are in danger from outside attack and that silly reform thing goes by the wayside.

Now, the boogeymen in the case of the United States are hard to find here.  Sure there were the usual neocon war pimps howling for war with Iraq that they could watch from the safety of their homes but they are no longer in power.  Remarks from the Obama White House only vaguely spoke of further action and that looks to remain more sanctions than military.  So who steps in to take our place as a friend of the rulers of Iran who are seeking a foreign threat?  Israel, who openly talks of bombing raids of Iran.

OK, now what’s the problem from the side of the people in the U.S. and Israel for their desire to attack Iran?   Well, a couple of things:

First, the reports on where Iran actually is in developing a nuclear weapon is sketchy and contradictory, even as to whether they actually have an interest in actually making one.  Some reports say a nuclear Iran is months away, others say it’s still years off.  Iran wants to have its cake and keep it secret too – they claim they are close for the sake of bluster but never say for sure.

Second, the real threat from a nuclear weapon isn’t that anyone just has one – it’s whether they can get it to a target.   So far, Iran hasn’t shown much capability in delivering such a weapon anywhere beyond their underground labs.  Being afraid of a nuclear weapon without the means of it being delivered anywhere is like being afraid of a box of bullets.  Both have the potential for harm but that requires a gun to shoot them out of or a missile to launch them on.

With domestic uses for a Iran ‘threat’ in three countries now, unfortunately not much is going to change.  The Republicans want Iran around so they can make their usual “Democrats are weak on defense” argument for election time, a new conservative government in Israel wants to show their people that they will protect them and the Iranians want to have the threat of foreign attack to shut down that reform movement. 

And so it goes…..

http://ranting-liberally.blogspot.com

Rather ominous story to follow here from timesonline.co.uk 

Yesterday’s events in Tehran display clearly the need for a tiered posture with the present Iranian state. Ahmadinejad spoke to a massive crowd on Azadi Square, the opponents of his election nowhere to be found. He exploits the reasonable expectations of UN members for inspection of the Iranian nuclear program to verify it’s peaceful usage, to incite us-verses-them nationalism. His message quite obviously is that Iran will not bow to outsiders on his watch.

He had a bit easier time of it whilst George Bush was around to saber rattle about attacking Iran, and never distinguished between peaceful nuclear power development and weapons development. Not so now with Obama nor Gordon Brown, whom by willingness to deal on that point,  help isolate Ahmadinejad as the saber rattler he indeed resembled yesterday.

There always however in the last year, has been the undercard of diplomats negotiating as the leaders engaged in the visible row. Ahmadinejad popping off usually seems to precede news of agreement on some point. And then of course there’s the fact he is not legitimately elected by many accounts. What is not well known is how effectively, if at all, the West is engaging and backing what is quite clearly a massive groundswell for Iranian modernisation under a far more secular government  

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I’m not making this up… they do have a plan… here’s the link to an article in National Underwriter Life and Health.

Here’s the link to the letter from the Congressional Budget Office.

Points from the article:

• Medicare and Medicaid would be completely revamped
• As a result of the changes to Medicare and Medicaid, beneficiaries would likely be able to get a good plan, and thus will have access to only a very basic form of coverage.   Beneficiaries will also have to settle on a plan for themselves…that sounds like that very confusing drug plan where it was difficult for seniors to make informed decisions about what plan would be best for them.
• The last paragraph says it best:

“It is difficult to predict how such a sweeping change in federal spending on health care would affect the behavior of insurers, health providers, and individual consumers,” Elmendorf writes. “In particular, how spending would be reduced for physicians, hospitals, advanced technological treatments, drugs, or other health care is uncertain. However, it is likely that fewer services would be provided and treatments would be less technologically advanced compared with the circumstances that would exist under the alternative fiscal scenario.”

But then, who knows what the Democrats have to offer us?

Surprised not to see anyone screaming about the SCOTUS decision.  Me, I was seriously considering a retirement move out of the U. S.  Like Chile or some other Godforsaken place far off the radar screen.

Matters didn’t improve this morning, the day after Obama’s State of the Union address when the Republican in the household mused that it was believable in his lifetime (he’s in his mid-forties) that the U. S.  evolves into a dictatorship.  This is an Eisenhower Republican who hated Bush & the neo ~ cons.

Can’t you just see it though?  Our new corporate citizens invoking a war to protect their interests…and the gov doesn’t move fast enough, so they kinda sorta help it along…bloodless coup?

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Unquantified disaster situation now in the impoverished nation of Haiti.
See the Clinton Foundation website for ways to support the worldwide response,
as well as to obtain or submit survivor information.

Video summaries below of 2000-09, during which the U.S. Republican party was in power and proceeded to wreck the world diplomatically and economically.  Non-U.S’ers will be pleased to know that they’re now a (very vocal) minority, effectively a regional party of the Southeastern U.S., with shifting demographics which portend further marginalization in the upcoming decade. Especially as the fixes implemented by a
more Progressive agenda under Obama, begin to correct the damage done at home
and abroad.

2010 will IMO begin the first decade in which we truly move away from the previous century. The first decade in which communications technologies which have shrunk the world and connected it’s people in direct ways, begin to become a political factor.
The decade in which the concept emerges that a globally-connected economy makes nations interdependent and therefore compelled to negotiate, and also puts workers in
a single boat – with shared interests & an increasingly unified voice to demand socio-economic progress on a world scale. That’s a bit hard to visualize at the ’10’s inception, but will be on the radar by it’s close I predict. Recessions on one continent pull the others in it, as we have seen. Governments need to act in coordinated ways to counter it – as they did with the present one – and social safety-nets need to be strengthened where inadequate to cover human suffering, which is most nations of course.

The global economy is not to be feared, only regulated.

That allows us to not only create new wealth and prosperity, but also share it. At least moreso than in decades and centuries prior. Click on the links in B/P Favored at right
to learn how Bill Clinton and Bill & Melinda Gates and Kiva.org, have already begun enfranchising people without regard to national boundaries. They will go down as pioneers of positive globalized change – whereas proponents of laissez-faire neglect, dereliction and vast inequality will hopefully close the decade even more on the scrapheap of history than they are at present.

I’m pleased to have launched Balkingpoints.com into these dawning prospects for
our planet.

I find it very curious that in the last couple of months Americans are finding it necessary to tell Canadians how to run their country.  First it was Michael Moore telling us that we are ruining our Health Care system….then Al Gore telling us that the “Alberta Oilsands jeopardize the survival of our species” and now the worst of all…..Sarah Palin saying “Canada needs to dismantle its public health-care system and allow private enterprise to get involved and turn a profit.”.

The only comment above that doesn’t surprise me is Palin….. I expect comments from her to be out in left field.  So what has changed – ususally Americans don’t even know who we are or even care what we do…… Is it the Health Care debate going on…… is it that they don’t feel they can change their own country?  Does it have to do with us pulling out of Afganistan in 2011?

Meanwhile the US will continue to be our largest energy and water consumer……  Go figure!

The press had it leaked last week, but last night U.S. president Obama gave a speech in front of West Point military cadets, telling them that around 34,000 more of their type will be going to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan. Those cadets are all officer prospects and will not bear the brunt of hostile fire if I have that correct. But the point is he is sending more, on a claim of vital national interests.

And when he says that he is talking about the western world and NATO countries also. He said pressure is being applied to allies for more troops, even while Canada is backing out. I get and can pretty much agree with the argument, that it’s protection for the west to defeat or weaken gihad crazies. This is the invasion westerners first backed, before Bush crazies attacked Iraq. Letting the Taliban get back into power in Kabul or remain around Kandahar in force gives them more ability to train and operate their terror networks with a carte blanche. But there are several similar things to the U.S. war in Vietnam to be worried about:

• historically resistant to invaders
• corrupt and illegitimate government in power
• guerilla enemy on it’s home turf, able to attack and disappear
• strategy of limited engagement, supposed to hand off war later to government forces that are inept so far
• pretty much of a quagmire already

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Individual Liberty is threatened by concentrations of power (power = ability to make people do things). Unbridled Government is ever the biggest source of threats to liberty. Companies that are “too big to fail” and the “mainstream press” with their incessant pro-big-government propaganda, and the super-rich are other centers of illegitimate power. If “the people” do not harness all sources of illegitimate power, individual liberty may die.

A lot has been said about reduction of CO2-emissions the past decades. Little has been done in effect.

There is strong scientific evidence that continued CO2-emissions at current levels -or even increased emissions- might harm global climate.

In my opinion the discussion has been far too narrow-minded.

We are talking about depletion of resources with applications that might be crucial for future technology.

We are talking about introducing large amounts of a biologically active substance into an evolutionary balanced system of co-existing species that took thousands to millions of years to develop.

Apart from climatological concerns, I see many compelling reasons to reduce the use of fossil fuels ASAP!

Already now we can see that carbon-technology has an enormous potential as future building material. Houses, offices, roads, bridges, cars, trains, planes etc etc. can be manufactured from carbon-based technology. Such building materials could easily become several orders of magnitude stronger and lighter than currently used materials. Just think what this could mean for areas with high probability of severe earthquakes!

But if we are to base our future infrastructure on carbon-technology, we better make sure we have sufficiently large reserves of cheap coal.

Our current use of coal is irresponsible and short-sighted.

Another argument is food-production. If we are to limit the detrimental effects of life-stock on our global climate, we better find new ways to produce proteins. Oil and maybe also gas could be used by bacteria or algea to do exactly this job!

Burning such resources is madness!

We often hear the argument that increased CO2-levels are good for argiculture.

Yes, but those increased levels are equally good for virusses, bacteria, algea, insects etc.

We risk giving evolution a vitamine shot that will harm us in the worst possible way. Just think of all the new pandemics that can break out. By raising CO2-levels, you raise biological activity, so you raise the rate of mutations. This is seriously bad news!

Another point is, that climate science is still in its infancy. We just don’t know enough to be 100% sure what the result will be of any given change.

We might need to emit huge amounts of CO2 or soot in the atmosfere one day in the future to stabilize global climate. If we burn up most of it now, we deprive future generations of access to a resource that might be very hard to replace.

I really do hope that Copenhagen will be a break-through, but I doubt it. Humanity has never shown signs of foresight, unless confronted with an immediate crisis.

I am very happy not to have produced children. I foresee that current stupidity will have serious negative effects for future generations.

Here’s a little something for your imagination. It is half proposal and half prediction.

As we well know, taxes are rarely enjoyed by anyone. They are simply tolerated more by some and less by others. Part of the reason for this is that the tax system represents a great hole in our democratic influence. We vote for our politicians; but we can’t vote for what they actually do, day to day. We are mandated to pay tax, but even less are we able to influence what happens to that money.

Now that commerce is increasingly global, and money has so many ways to be liquid, this represent an ever more atrocious lack of control every passing day. And so it makes sense that some acknowledgement of this is seen at local levels, where citizens can vote on property tax budgets.

Well, folks, I propose that this be expanded to larger local, then state, and eventually federal levels. The more inclusively higher levels, the better, and the more specific the control, the better.

The advantages of this would be immediate in terms of proactively reinvesting people in their government. There are certain harms that discourage people above all else about the government’s use of their money. For red voters, it is often about funding for abortion or birth control, or for social programs, or inefficiency. For blue voters, it is about war funding, or about misapplication due to diluted policy. These things often lead people to be 1-issue voters, and this only cedes more predictability and control to the “incumbent” parties, contributing to their misrepresentation.

I imagine that if a citizen-controlled tax system were set up, its most simple and therefore likely form to take would be that of denying funding for certain agencies. One would still have to pay their entire tax burden, but they would have some choice in the distribution. So, suddenly, no red voter would have to pay for anything religiously objectionable, and no blue voter would have to pay for elective war. This would mean far more engagement in the process, since a cynical resignation would no longer have to dominate. Paying your taxes could be like shopping at a department store.

So, what are the disadvantages? For one thing, any government agency would feel far less of a sense of security predicting its budget. This could lead them to clean up their act and be accountable, so as to look favorable and deserving. But it could also lead to a raging false-advertising environment. However, the agencies would soon be denied advertising money, and so all advertising would fall to the parties. But the parties would be somewhat marginalized now, since people wouldn’t have to worry as much about electing representatives into full control for 2 to 4 years, since every year they would have the tax referendum. The party would have to worry about its agencies and its reputation every year more than its own culture and identity, since it is now more of just a manager or adviser while the citizen is more the contoller of the treasure.

I’m not enough of a futurist to know how well all that would play out on the internet, the advertising media, or ultimately, the whole information-age.

But time and again, we have learned that it is better to distribute power, rather than keep it concentrated, or worse yet, allow it to concentrate for its own sake. I cite nothing other and nothing less than the whole loose and varied concept of western democracy. Plus we have learned that, when given the choice between evolving and stagnating, evolving is better. Waiting till we are “more ready” doesn’t bear fruit. Think civil rights. What could have been more needed, yet waited longer for, than that?

So, like many types of change, there would be pain. But ultimately it would be worth it.

One more direct yet long-term effect, partly a disadvantage, would be that at first, the agencies would probably still hold a practical monopoly over each of their own core services. Noone’s going to be able to do va like the VA. Noone is going to be able to do forest service like the Forest Service. So if someone in the agency screwed something up, and it led to a giant punishment of the agency come tax time, it could be too hobbled to successfully carry out its services, and the result would be that average citizens had punished each other severely for the fault of “some guy”.

Well, here is some more evolution for you. Possibly even the very first time something like that happened, another agency would see an opportunity to step up and either take over that service for the year, or directly fund the punished agency. The opportunist agency would probably poll its funders to test for approval first. If all went well, it could be a great “coup” for the opportunist agency.

When I mentioned “monopoly”, that gave a hint of what could come, from further in the future. Movements in the culture could naturally prevent monopolies by gravitating to different styles of agency function.  Agencies could eventually become accustomed to occasionally selling / buying functions from each other, they could specialize to a degree yet also generalize for versatility and safety. We could end up with “brands” of government, operating colocally and contemporaneously! Again, I’m not enough of a futurist (by far) to see where that could lead, but perhaps just perhaps, people could terminate their contract and funding of one government and transfer their account to another, all without moving or getting a medical checkup, much as people do now with cellphone carriers. Maybe they would get slightly different services, experience a slightly different beaureaucratic culture, and possibly even be subject to different laws! If pulled over for speeding, you would show the officer your card for your govbrand, which has a 5 mph higher limit for a safer driving record. What this would mean is that different types of government would be in competition with each other, trying to serve a target demographic, or trying to be a general moderate for all. They would seem like corporations, but a different type of corporation, much as there are types now: wholesale, service, retail, extraction.

This could be a natural step from the government side just as we have natural steps from the corporate side. Corporations try to get government contracts. Corporations have been becoming stronger than government in many ways. If the future dominant genre is more corporate, then this vision could be a favorable result – government and corporate coopt each other, rather than government weakening to a point of no return, leaving corporate to become a field of robber barons.

So, if you like that scenario and think it is likely… or you think it would lead to apocalypse and are excited by that, then start agitating for distribution choice in a reformed tax code!

P.S. – An interesting question would be, how would laws be legislated in govbrands, and what would be the relevancy of Congress?  But, you know, people regularly ask that now already.

There seem to be 2 lines of thinking. 1) The Norwegian Nobel Committee is making a criticism of the administration of George Bush about how they handled world affairs  2) They are telling Obama that world peace is what is now expected of him to live up to. The official statement from their website follows, and is posted at  http://nobelpeaceprize.org/en_GB/home/announce-2009

CGI ANNUAL MEETING / 22-25 Sept 2009

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting 2009 is the only venue where business, government, and civil-sector leaders work together to plan and launch specific projects – Commitments to Action – to address global economic, environmental, and social challenges. This year, the financial crisis is making it more important than ever for us to reimagine the world we want to build.

To respond to the economic challenges facing our members and the broader global community, CGI has identified four Action Areas – points of collaboration and intervention – that will help create economic value for our members and society:

Harnessing innovation for development

Strengthening infrastructure

Developing human capital

Financing a sustainable future

Each Action Area will allow CGI members to focus their shared knowledge, resources, and skills to find economically sustainable solutions to global challenges in the areas of education, energy and climate change, global health, and poverty.

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The World in Financial Crisis :

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With all the reform debate the insurance corps are being as quiet as mice. Oh they are all sending people to DC to talk with Senators and Represenatives. Each Corporation, even the third party administrator companies, are entering offices and speaking directly to our politicians. More at stake then mere health Ins. reform. Products/policies that are sold without SEC review. Those products may yet fall under banking oversite rules and regulation. In the future requiring lisenced brokers rather than agents slinging them out for public purchase. Just wanted you to know that behind the scenes the Insurance Mice are moving in the dark.

The vocal group with much umbridge are the practicing doctors of today. In the USA they have precarious history. They claim direct rite to the itellect of Rhode Scholar, paying huge educational costs which entitle them to practice in issues of life and death, but to manage their profits as a business entity. If we question their decisions or the effectivness of their treatments. some become irrate, while others from a newer scope allow such verbality by mere laypersons.

That we have allowed them to become arrogant and spoiled is maybe a notion of schooling or perhaps Mom & Dad should have just raised nicer children. Should you question them on a blog, or in a opinion piece expect to get an earful. I am accustomed to it. having been a nurse for many years. Being a patient of a certain age puts you in a position to see some of the myths, being ill places you in a vulnerable place outside of any geography you may have known.

I once identified Doc.’s as people with a head to toe definition of diseases. Able to weave a cause and treatment together. Today they are a much more disjointed group. Neither a God nor hero, doctors don’t much like joining the working world. When I describe them as talented technicians the sky falls.

The huge numbers of accessory staff are often completely ignored as doctors lay claim to low pay, long hours, bad conditions, over-priced education, and dealing with life & death decisions.

In truth the accessory staff does all those things too. In fact the doctor is brief in the encounters with such things, relying on the skilled professionals to lead them into decisions, implement the course of action, and to educate and explain out-comes.

Allow me a small rant as I say your kind hearted Doctor does not make your appointment with the specialist, does not call you with the result of a test, nor catch you as you go south after surgery. He or she does not call with orders as you enter the hospital, nor complete the majority of assessments that tell the medical model where to look for a problem. The doctor relies on staff, testing and patient complaint to do that.

Do we sympathize with this new technician? To some extent we do. And it is hard to define why. Like the master rope maker that is finding the craft becoming archaic, or the interchange of idea’s outside of pen to paper, the doctor is adrift. Squeezed between a discerning consumer and the reimbursements of Corporations. A doctor finds powers of awe diminished, and scope in question.

I am always reminded of the movie. ‘In the Heat of the Night.’ You feel something is slipping away, and that it might not be so bad to see it go.

The Doctor enters my hospital room and asks, “What should I call you?”
Oh, that all depends on what name you go by Doctor? For now I am using all my energy to just be a ‘patient.’

These past days, weeks have gone with an intensified debate on health care reform in which president Obama is trying to pass in the US. Actually, looking in from outside the states i do not see any debate at all taking place. All i see is blood on the street….by this, I mean the mean spirited stance the opposition has taken on this very important issue.

We have all watched the town halls meetings being distrupted by so called protesters not giving any view or opinion of theirs but, portraying the president of the country as a socialist, nazi, Hitler and all other rubbish… It is indeed shameful. And this attitude, sentiments i dare say, has been whipped up by some of the republican leaders such as Senator Grassley, Sarah Palin with her “death panels” talk and conservative presenters on radio and television like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh et al.

One thing is clear about this, the arguement really seems not to be about health care for these people, rather, they want to see Obama fail in his duties as the commander in chief. Some republican politicians, conservative writers have actually expressed such sentiments. And if that’s the case the question arises…who is the health care reform for?

Listening to the then senator..Obama that is, in his campaign for the White house, he stressed all along the need to reform the health care system and to help the millions of uninsured Americans to become insured, where it will be free for the individual to choose whatever option (public or private) they prefer…only now, the difference is that getting more people into the system will involve government participation and rightly so considering the less fortunate ones in the society. And yes health care for all and not for the rich few. America should emulate other western countries such as France, Germany, Great Britain, Scandinavia etc in providing affordable health care for its people. Health care provision should in a better world be decided by the doctor and patient and not by insurance men….and there is no death panel anywhere in the west where “free health care” is enjoyed by it’s citizens.

In the UK where i live and having spent several years in Sweden, we look in astonishment that a country like the US cannot guarantee health care services for its people. And if that is socialism, then i’ll take that. To be fair though, if the opposition were to be wise in debating this, a good angle is asking how it will be funded. But at the end of the day, a healthy nation will be beneficial to the country on the long run. Conclusively, health care is for people and not the politicians who enjoy first rate health care together with there insurance cronies.

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As of July 24 2009 minimum wage increased to $7.25 an hour. A person working 40 hours would make $290, after 52 weeks would gross $15,080 a year. Comparisons of  income  in table below.       

Yearly Income                       Hourly Wage                  # of $7.25 hr. workers

$1 million                                  $480                                       66

$10 million                               $4,800                                  662

$20 million                              $9,600                                  1,324

$100 million                           $48,000                                6,620

The arithmetic I understand . Economist using political mathematics to justify these liberal wages as capitalism confuses me.

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I am always surprised that with all the killings of humans we never consider how war destroys small creatures.

So who will speak for them?

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  I think Americans have heard for years now how they are the only modernized nation to not guarantee health insurance for all their citizens. Yet you guys don’t rise up! Can you not see how your system costs you more, leaves millions with no way to pay for medical care when they need it, and lines the pockets of private companies like United Health Care, Humana, Merck and Pfizer? Don’t you get how they’ve bought up inside influence with your Congress, and time and again stopped reforms from ever happening? It is amazing to a Canadian.

Oh, what? We wait for years for appointments under socialized medicine? No we don’t. The Canadian government issues insurance under a single payer system, and we use it to visit private health care providers. We don’t let private insurers get involved except for some supplemental coverages. It’s obvious that is the difference in the 2 systems, and the problem in yours. You’re basically slaves to the free-enterprise spin of your Conservative wing.

We can wait a few weeks for a specialist or a surgery, but so do you. The Reform (conservative) party here tried to sell us an overhaul of single payer and have more like an American profit-based insurance system, and they got blown out of the water by the Canadian people.

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At the outset let me state that I think it is clear to anyone who has been around for more than a couple of decades that the weather, at least in the northern temperate latitudes has changed decisively in recent decades. Personally I remember vividly the snows of my childhood; snowball fights, chilblains (we called them “hot-aches”), and building snow forts on the school playing fields of the Midlands of England, where today snowfalls are extremely rare and most of today’s schoolchildren, in the Midlands at least, have never thrown a snowball.

In spite of this however I remain skeptical on the climate change issue. Changes in the weather don’t necessarily mean changes in the climate . . . . . . . . .

My skepticism can be divided into two separate “skepticisms” as follows:

1.Skepticism that the current warming trend is outside of the normal range of climate variation.

2.Skepticism that anything we will do can effect a change in the current warming trend.

Let me take a minute or two with each of these:

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This is where I’ve been browsing…I typed Vitamin C Cholesterol into my browser earlier this week & found articles that suggest that Vitamin C naturally acts in the same manner as statins to regulate cholesterol.

Didn’t you ever wonder why your vet never tested your dog or cat for cholesterol levels? Dogs and cats make their own vitamin C. They do it naturally. It’s been a long time since college biology, but I think its only primates (including us) and guinea pigs. I swear to God, I thought the blue footed booby also needed to supplement, but I couldn’t find anything to support that, right now.

The only drawback is that we need way more C than we would normally take. And not being a physician (not even masquerading as one), I couldn’t recommend a dose.

But that gives us 3 anti – pharm choices to modulate our cholesterol, the other two being niacin and fish oils. I wonder if there could be natural, bodily feedback to indicate that our cholesterol is in a target range?

Finally, to raise your good cholesterol, the HDL, check out pantothenic acid. Don’t go on my word, check it out yourself.

I’m rushing through this…gotta go and trim that skinny, drought – struck asparagus!

Obama started out with great promise. He banned Bush’s torture program and scheduled Guantanamo Bay prison to close. Then he complied with a court ruling to release the Bush memos about the torture, and said he wouldn’t appeal it when the ACLU won again to get the photos released.

Now he has decided to appeal that order and stall the release since his generals think it will jeopardize troops. And he has decided to restart Bush’s prisoner trials at Guantanamo.

Some media here are already saying Obama is backpedaling and not a lot different than Bush was. If he keeps this up he is going to lose the good will that he started with in other nations.

I am still amazed that Americans never stood up to stop Bushco. Something is very different from the 60’s-70’s. I know, after all of this, I am ashamed of what my country has done.

I am wondering what the rest of the world sees? I am also curious about how the world sees the changes taking place under Obama.

Former CIA (Director), Michael Hayden condemned President Obama on April 19, 2009 for releasing four Bush-era memos, stating Obama compromised national security releasing (them).

“The memos outlining terror interrogation methods emboldened terrorist groups. What we have described for our enemies in the midst of a war are the outer limits that any American would ever go to in terms of interrogating an al-Qaeda terrorist. That’s very valuable information.”

“By taking (certain) techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult — in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine — for CIA officers to defend the nation.”

But Sens. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, and Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said certain techniques should not have been allowed in the first place. McCaskill called them “a great recruitment tool for those who want to do harm to our country.” Source credit: WASHINGTON (CNN)

How amazing is this > harsh judgment given to our new president all the while no judgment for former President Bush and his administration for disregarding the 8th amendment (No cruel or unusual punishments are allowed according to this 8th amendment.)

Many experts have advised and spoken out against torture only to have their expertise fall on deaf ears with President Bush. These leaders who break the law(s), disregard the amendment(s) are not patriots but traitors who creates terrorists, a dangerous world and sets the stage for others to follow.

It’s not a wonder those responsible and involved don’t want anything exposed to the public arena and point the finger to others innocent of no wrong doing i.e. our new President Obama.

Without justice our country, the world can’t have peace. We as a member of one body, one country, one world should  be offended when injustice and suffering takes place even when hidden away in their secret prisons.

This makes me  angry to think former CIA, Michael Hayden could spin the spin to the  public, yet, another time.

I know it sounds like a movie; but we are the “best of the best” not to sound too egotistical, just honest… Our seals should be (because they’re the elite in this concert) swimming up underneath the Somali pirates as we speak, and “diffusing” the situation in their method. Wouldn’t that broadcast a message to the pirates? Just a thought…

Foreign policy decision-makers should give far greater credence to the views of country experts.  Their expertise should trump expertise on the Big Picture issue of the day, such as the War on Terror.  Had we done this in the past, we would not have fought in Vietnam; Afghanistan might have had a very different recent history, without the Taliban and al Qaeda; and we either would not have fought at all or would have employed very different strategies in Iraq.

Historically, most of our major foreign policy decisions – especially those that failed – were made by amateurs, by people with only a cursory understanding of the past or current situation of the country concerned.

Vietnam.  Take Vietnam as an example.  In the 1950s and early ‘60s, the few Americans who were experts on this country knew of Ho Chi Minh’s high regard for the US after World War II, when he even based their declaration of independence almost directly on ours.  They knew that his communism was only skin deep, that he was primarily a nationalist.  They knew of Vietnam’s historic animosity towards China, and recognized that any alliance between the two was of a pragmatic nature only – one that would easily be severed when the situation changed.  They knew that the historic relations between the Vietnamese and other Indochinese peoples made laughable the idea that Vietnam might serve as a ‘domino’, causing other countries to follow it into Communism.

But no-one paid attention to these experts.  Instead, both Democratic and Republican presidents relied on advisors whose major international expertise concerned communism, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War.  These advisors believed in a Big Picture – that International Communism was expanding from country to country and had to be stopped.  They assumed that a little country like Vietnam would simply fit into this Big Picture, and that knowledge of the specifics of its history, culture, and leaders would be of minor concern.

The advisors were wrong.  The decisions made by our presidents were wrong.  Thousands died.

Afghanistan.  Another, more recent example concerns Afghanistan.  During the 1980s, after Soviet troops had invaded and installed their own Afghan government, our Big Picture experts touted the same Cold War message: We needed to stop the spread of International Communism.  They knew nothing of Afghanistan, its history, its culture, or its relationship with its neighbor, Pakistan.  Focusing only on defeating the Russians, our experts decided that we should send huge quantities of arms to the mujaheddin who were attempting to fight them.  The conduit for these arms had to be Pakistan, as this was the only plausible route for sending rifles, hand-held rockets, and other arms to the mujaheddin. 

After making this decision, our experts disregarded the process that followed.  They completely ignored the fact that Pakistan’s main interest did not coincide with ours: we wanted to see a free and stable Afghanistan; they wanted to ensure the weakness of a post-communist Afghan state (primarily out of fear that a strong Afghanistan would prove attractive to Pakistan’s own Pashtun population).  To our Big Picture decision-makers, this was a minor issue, not worthy of their time or energy.  So Pakistan had its way; it helped create a series of competing armed groups, knowing that these groups would eventually fight among themselves.  The mujaheddin succeeded in kicking out the Russians.  Then – as Pakistan had intended – they fought amongst themselves, ensuring a weak government.  When that happened, the Taliban came along spouting reform and took over the country extraordinarily quickly, primarily because the Afghan people were sick and tired of the mujaheddin groups’ infighting.  And we all know what the ascendancy of the Taliban in Afghanistan led to.

But in the 1980s there were Americans knowledgeable about Afghanistan and its history, who were saying that we were making a terrible mistake, that Pakistan was not a country on which to rely, that our support for multiple groups would create chaos in Afghanistan and lead to a situation worse than Russian control. 

The country experts’ predictions came true.  The Big Picture experts were wrong.  Thousands died.

Iraq.  Our invasion of Iraq was a similar situation.   By 2003, the Big Picture issue had changed from the Cold War to the War On Terror.  For the neo-cons in power under George Bush, a subsidiary Big Picture issue was Democratizing the Middle East.  But neither the President nor any of his top advisors knew anything about Iraq, the country.  To them, it was simply next in line on their Big Picture quest.  To Cheney and Rumsfeld, Iraq was intended to follow Afghanistan as a successful element of the fight against the perpetrators of 9/11.  To Wolfowitz and his neo-con gang, Iraq would be the domino that would topple other Arab countries into democracy. 

To the extent that they relied upon anyone with real knowledge of Iraq’s history and culture, they chose people like Ahmed Chalabi, who had his own very obvious reasons for misleading our leaders.  They paid no attention to the views of neutral American experts on the country of Iraq – and certainly not to anyone who might have suggested that our occupation of the country would prove difficult. 

Our Big Picture experts were wrong.  Thousands are dying.

*     *     *

Decision-making.  In these examples, there were individuals with long-term, in-depth understanding of the country – people who knew the country before it made headlines – who recognized in advance that we would fail, and knew why we would fail.  Had we listened more carefully to them we would have made much better decisions – and thousands of Americans and others would still be alive.  But these experts were not the people who made the decisions.

Instead of country experts, foreign policy generalists craft our policies.  They usually claim that they listen carefully to country experts, but they don’t.  In reality, they base their decisions on how they think other people and countries ought to act, rather than how the specific people and country actually act.  And usually they believe that countries ought to act within the framework of their own Big Picture understanding of the world.  But every country has its quirks: generalizing across national borders is bound to lead to errors.

To improve our foreign policy decision-making, the decision-makers need a lesson in humility – to recognize that their own understanding and prediction of other people’s behavior might be completely wrong.  By the time someone becomes a Deputy Secretary or Secretary of State or Defense, or a National Security Advisor or the Vice President or President of the country, he or she has certainly developed a considerable amount of expertise.  But that expertise is usually in areas very different from the topic of the day: being an expert in one area does not make one an expert in all areas.  To some extent, top decision-makers do recognize this dilemma: for example, they generally have no qualms about relying on outside, neutral experts concerning technical, scientific, or engineering topics that are beyond their own realm of expertise.  Unfortunately, this humility is not carried over to issues of human behavior.  Political leaders and their top advisors tend to believe that they know how people will behave; they see their own political success as verification of this conclusion.

But people in other countries are not Americans.  They think and act differently.  Foreign policy that ignores this fact is bound to fail.

Our country’s leaders believed that they knew how the Vietnamese and the Afghans and the Iraqis would act.  Surprise. 

*     *     *

The Big Picture issue of the day often is very relevant.  But it is not the only issue.  Country expertise is usually of greater import than Big Picture expertise.  Our foreign policy decision-makers need to pay at least as much heed to neutral national experts who have a long-term relationship with the focused country.  Their expertise will be crucial to the success of our country’s foreign policy decisions and success.

                                           Dreaming of Diamonds by Swamibu

On the following videos we can see and hear about the situation the Gujarat diamond polishers in India are facing. As the world recession and economic crisis affects their industry, thousands are laid off. Unable to feed their families, pay bills or send their children to school, they have to adjust to living hand to mouth, many are turning to suicide as their last resort. The following video, in English and Hindi was uploaded by students of the IIM Ahmedabad as part of their Socio Cultural Environment of Business course explains the role the diamond polishers of Surat in Gujarat had in the industry, and how they’ve now been cut off the process, leaving formerly bustling factories empty of diamond polishers and replaced with embroidery industry, of which they know nothing about. Highly skilled specialized workers find themselves having to find jobs in different industries, earning much less than before. Their children, who used to attend private schools are now finding themselves barred from presenting exams due to lack of payment:

The situation in Surat is quite serious, as approximately 50% of the diamond cutters and polishers have been laid off. The government is trying to get scholarships to the children of the workers so they can continue their studies. In an Hindustani Times blog, an editorial reads

The impending crisis has another dimension in Surat — while laid-off workers around the world can usually depend on their families to help tide them over, most of the workers here have entire families in diamond polishing, and all risk losing their jobs or having pay cut drastically at the same time. 

On Pragoti.org the number of suicides due to the diamond industry crisis is said to be 71:

Even as Modi’s trumpeteers are jumping in joy over the investment figures, at least 71 diamond polishers have committed suicide in Gujarat over the last few months following their laying off due to the global meltdown severely hitting the industry. Modi, who loves to present himself as a ‘common man’, refused to bail out the diamond workers who remained at the mercy of the shrewd traders…

… Apart from the 71 suicides across Gujarat, the situation among the diamond workers has become so grim that there was near stampede outside the Surat Diamond Association where forms for school fees exemption were being distributed.

Diamond polishing is an exact art, on which the rough stone is transformed intro the brilliant gems that grace jewelry all over the world. In the following video, we see a young diamond polishing apprentice polishing his very first diamond after a three month unpaid apprenticeship:

If you would like to know more about the industry, Jobanputra, on the next videos, gives us a tour of the Sanghavi Diamond processing factory where we see and he explains the whole process from rough stone to gem. On the comprehensive four part video tour of the factory he explains how they follow best practices, don’t hire children and ensure their diamonds come from reputable sources and are not “blood diamonds“

Nine secret legal opinions, written by former Office of Legal Counsel attorneys John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty, were recently released by the Justice Department. Overall, they reveal that the Bush administration brought the United States close to executive tyranny after the September 11^th, 2001 attacks.

Neil A. Lewis wrote in the New York Times, “The opinions reflected a broad interpretation of presidential authority, asserting as well that the president could unilaterally abrogate foreign treaties, ignore any guidance from Congress in dealing with detainees suspected of terrorism, and conduct a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants.”

One of the opinions, written by John C. Yoo and dated October 23, 2001, stated that the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures was not relevant in wartime, “The Government’s compelling interest in protecting the nation from attack and in prosecuting the war effort would outweigh the relevant privacy interests, making the search and seizure reasonable.” Regarding the need for a warrant, Yoo wrote, “Warrant and probable cause requirements… are unsuited to the demands of wartime and the military necessity to prosecute a war against an enemy.”

In addition, the October 23, 2001 memo asserted that “First amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” The memo further declared that, “The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

According to Scott Horton, an International Human Rights Attorney, writing in Harpers Magazine, “He [Yoo] concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights, with respect to anything he chose to label as a counter terrorism operation inside the United States.”

In a statement made on MSNBC, Michael Isikoff remarked, “We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001 – January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering a commission of inquiry to investigate the Bush administration’s controversial counter terrorism tactics. The Chairman, Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vermont) proposed a “truth commission” to probe the use of torture, domestic surveillance, and other contentious policies enacted during Bush’s Presidency.

Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (Democrat, Illinois) and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, Rhode Island) have also called for the release of a report prepared by the Justice Department, based on a 4½ year-long inquiry into whether three former OLC lawyers – including Yoo and former OLC chief Jay S. Bybee – violated professional standards in preparing these opinions.

More documents are expected to be released.

Climate Science in A Tornado

by George F. Will

Friday, February 27, 2009

Few phenomena generate as much heat as disputes about current orthodoxies concerning global warming. This column recently reported and commented on some developments pertinent to the debate about whether global warming is occurring and what can and should be done. That column, which expressed skepticism about some emphatic proclamations by the alarmed, took a stroll down memory lane, through the debris of 1970s predictions about the near certainty of calamitous global cooling.

Concerning those predictions, the New York Times was — as it is today in a contrary crusade — a megaphone for the alarmed, as when (May 21, 1975) it reported that “a major cooling of the climate” was “widely considered inevitable” because it was “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.” Now the Times, a trumpet that never sounds retreat in today’s war against warming, has afforded this column an opportunity to revisit another facet of this subject — meretricious journalism in the service of dubious certitudes.

On Wednesday, the Times carried a “news analysis” — a story in the paper’s news section, but one that was not just reporting news — accusing Al Gore and this columnist of inaccuracies. Gore can speak for himself. So can this columnist.

Reporter Andrew Revkin’s story was headlined: “In Debate on Climate Change, Exaggeration Is a Common Pitfall.” Regarding exaggeration, the Times knows whereof it speaks, especially when it revisits, if it ever does, its reporting on the global cooling scare of the 1970s, and its reporting and editorializing — sometimes a distinction without a difference — concerning today’s climate controversies.

Which returns us to Revkin. In a story ostensibly about journalism, he simply asserts — how does he know this? — that the last decade, which passed without warming, was just “a pause in warming.” His attempt to contact this writer was an e-mail sent at 5:47 p.m., a few hours before the Times began printing his story, which was not so time-sensitive — it concerned controversies already many days running — that it had to appear the next day. But Revkin reported that “experts said” this columnist’s intervention in the climate debate was “riddled with” inaccuracies. Revkin’s supposed experts might exist and might have expertise but they do not have names that Revkin wished to divulge.

As for the anonymous scientists’ unspecified claims about the column’s supposedly myriad inaccuracies: The column contained many factual assertions but only one has been challenged. The challenge is mistaken.

Citing data from the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, as interpreted on Jan. 1 by Daily Tech, a technology and science news blog, the column said that since September “the increase in sea ice has been the fastest change, either up or down, since 1979, when satellite record-keeping began.” According to the center, global sea ice levels at the end of 2008 were “near or slightly lower than” those of 1979. The center generally does not make its statistics available, but in a Jan. 12 statement the center confirmed that global sea ice levels were within a difference of less than 3 percent of the 1980 level.

So the column accurately reported what the center had reported. But on Feb. 15, the Sunday the column appeared, the center, then receiving many e-mail inquiries, issued a statement saying “we do not know where George Will is getting his information.” The answer was: From the center, via Daily Tech. Consult the center’s Web site where, on Jan. 12, the center posted the confirmation of the data that this column subsequently reported accurately.

The scientists at the Illinois center offer their statistics with responsible caveats germane to margins of error in measurements and precise seasonal comparisons of year-on-year estimates of global sea ice. Nowadays, however, scientists often find themselves enveloped in furies triggered by any expression of skepticism about the global warming consensus (which will prevail until a diametrically different consensus comes along; see the 1970s) in the media-environmental complex. Concerning which:

On Feb. 18 the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that from early January until the middle of this month, a defective performance by satellite monitors that measure sea ice caused an underestimation of the extent of Arctic sea ice by 193,000 square miles, which is approximately the size of California. The Times (”All the news that’s fit to print”), which as of this writing had not printed that story, should unleash Revkin and his unnamed experts.

©2009 The Washington Post Company

The realty sector is still going strong in Indirapuram

Even though real-estate market is facing crunch time across the country, this engine of growth is still going strong in Indirapuram. While it is true that the slump has also hit this bustling place, it has managed to withstand the onslaught of slump, though. Visit any the office of any realty developer or realty consultant on Saturday, Sunday or for that matter on any public holiday, you will see a flurry of activities. Prospective buyers are visiting them in order to either survey flats in various projects or finalizing their deals.

As of now, projects of several builders like Gaursons, SVP Group, Mahagun, Amrapali, Ashiana, Parsvnath, Express Builders, Krishna Apra, Jaipurias, Agarwal Associates and SVP Group are in various stages of completion or already completed. The best thing about Indirapuram is that all these facilities be they malls, hospitals or schools are all in a radius of a few kilometres.

While making a township or building apartments, a developer must heed one important aspect is there a school in the vicinity? It has been found that this is the first question an end-user poses before finalizing a deal. This is followed by a question on the distance of the nearest hospital or mall? However, developers have fast caught on to these finer details while coming up with a project. Yes, the developer should come up with his project in an area where these facilities are available at a stones throw, says Sunil Jindal, director of SVP group. We take special care in our projects so that the buyers do not have to worry about these things. Indirapuam is still seeing activity in the realty market, owing principally to the prices, which are lower than those prevailing at Noida and Gurgaon, says Amit of Supertch. Generally, in societies the prices start from a range of Rs 2,900 to Rs 3,200 per sq ft.

Ajay Rathore, country head of realty consultant Century 21 India, says that Indirapurams road connectivity is OK if not good. Reaching there in peak hours is a difficult task, but then, no place in Delhi or in the NCR is free from traffic woes. Hardcore commercial places like Connaught Place, Nehru Place and South Extension are just at a 40-mintute drive. Big-ticket software companies and educational institutions are right across the highway, while Kaushambi and Ghaziabad are at a 10-minute drive. I think that due to its proximity with all these and other areas, prospective buyers are visiting here in order to finalize flats, Rathore concludes. Sunil Jindal says that as State Bank has reduced home loan rates to 8%, it will further lift the realty market of Indirapuram. We are already seeing positive signals to the loan rate cut. The number of queries we are receiving from prospective customers have shot up, all of a sudden.

Realty experts say the upcoming 2010 Commonwealth Games has triggered a lot of action in infrastructure development, retail and hospitality sectors in and around Indirapuram. What sets Indirapuram apart from other places is the availability of basic infrastructure in the vicinity.

There are no dearth of hospitals, clinics, malls and schools in and around Indirapuram. Moreover, there are several plans in the pipeline to widen NH-24 and develop Habitat Centre on the lines of India Habitat Centre in Delhi. Authorities would do great service if they develop NH-24 sooner rather later.

While it is true that it is place worth living, the only sore point is the public transport, which is appaling. A person has a problem, if he doesn’t own a vehicle. More or less you remain at the mercy of the three-wheeler drivers. They are even worse then their Delhi counterparts!

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http://www.propertynice.com

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

By ROBERT F. WORTH
Published: February 11, 2009

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai’s fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.

Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse.

“I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.”

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.

Instead of moving toward greater transparency, the emirates seem to be moving in the other direction. A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000). Some say it is already having a chilling effect on reporting about the crisis.

Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai’s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher.

“At the moment there is a readiness to believe the worst,” said Simon Williams, HSBC bank’s chief economist in Dubai. “And the limits on data make it difficult to counter the rumors.”

Some things are clear: real estate prices, which rose dramatically during Dubai’s six-year boom, have dropped 30 percent or more over the past two or three months in some parts of the city. Last week, Moody’s Investor’s Service announced that it might downgrade its ratings on six of Dubai’s most prominent state-owned companies, citing a deterioration in the economic outlook. So many used luxury cars are for sale , they are sometimes sold for 40 percent less than the asking price two months ago, car dealers say. Dubai’s roads, usually thick with traffic at this time of year, are now mostly clear.

Some analysts say the crisis is likely to have long-lasting effects on the seven-member emirates federation, where Dubai has long played rebellious younger brother to oil-rich and more conservative Abu Dhabi. Dubai officials, swallowing their pride, have made clear that they would be open to a bailout, but so far Abu Dhabi has offered assistance only to its own banks.

For many foreigners, Dubai had seemed at first to be a refuge, relatively insulated from the panic that began hitting the rest of the world last autumn. The Persian Gulf is cushioned by vast oil and gas wealth, and some who lost jobs in New York and London began applying here.

A car salesman in Dubai on Wednesday sat without customers. Lack of credit and a glut of cars on the market are cutting sales

But Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi or nearby Qatar and Saudi Arabia, does not have its own oil, and had built its reputation on real estate, finance and tourism. Now, many expatriates here talk about Dubai as though it were a con game all along. Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out.

Hamza Thiab, a 27-year-old Iraqi who moved here from Baghdad in 2005, lost his job with an engineering firm six weeks ago. He has until the end of February to find a job, or he must leave. “I’ve been looking for a new job for three months, and I’ve only had two interviews,” he said. “Before, you used to open up the papers here and see dozens of jobs. The minimum for a civil engineer with four years’ experience used to be 15,000 dirhams a month. Now, the maximum you’ll get is 8,000,” or about $2,000.

Mr. Thiab was sitting in a Costa Coffee Shop in the Ibn Battuta mall, where most of the customers seemed to be single men sitting alone, dolefully drinking coffee at midday. If he fails to find a job, he will have to go to Jordan, where he has family members — Iraq is still too dangerous, he says — though the situation is no better there. Before that, he will have to borrow money from his father to pay off the more than $12,000 he still owes on a bank loan for his Honda Civic. Iraqi friends bought fancier cars and are now, with no job, struggling to sell them.

“Before, so many of us were living a good life here,” Mr. Thiab said. “Now we cannot pay our loans. We are all just sleeping, smoking, drinking coffee and having headaches because of the situation.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Secretary of State Travels to Asia, 15 Feb

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In her first trip abroad since taking office, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Asia, departing Washington, DC on February 15. Secretary Clinton will visit Japan (February 16-18), Indonesia (February 18-19), the Republic of Korea (February 19-20), and China (February 20-22).

In all capitals, Secretary Clinton will be discussing common approaches to the challenges facing the international community, including the financial markets turmoil, humanitarian issues, security and climate change.

In Tokyo, Secretary Clinton will meet with senior Japanese officials for discussions on the strategic bilateral alliance and cooperation with Japan on regional and global issues.

The Secretary then will travel to Jakarta to hold consultations will senior Indonesian officials to discuss the close and growing partnership with Indonesia and perspectives on common interests in Southeast Asia.

In Seoul, Secretary Clinton will meet with senior leaders to discuss our expanding global cooperative partnership with our ally, the Republic of Korea.

The Secretary will conclude her trip in China where she will meet with senior officials in Beijing to further develop a positive, cooperative relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2009/02/116159.htm