“If the guy is such a sure loser in 2012, why all the attacks? In his quiet way, Paul must have tapped into something. And you can get an idea of that something from what Pat Buchanan wrote the other day about the CPAC poll.
After asking “how do conservatives justify borrowing hundreds of billions yearly from Europe, Japan and the Gulf states — to defend Europe, Japan and the Arab Gulf states?” Buchanan answered his own question by making the case that such policies are not conservative at all.
“Ron Paul’s victory at CPAC may be a sign the prodigal sons of the right are casting off the heresy of neoconservatism and coming home to first principles,” Buchanan concluded.
Buchanan has put his finger on why the unemotional Texas congressman produces such an emotional reaction. The party establishment has to dread the prospect of a candidate who can unite the youthful libertarian conservatives with the Buchananite America-first types. Such a character might win a plurality running against Romney, Huckabee and neocon Barbie doll Sarah Palin.
And Paul might have the most money of them all, thanks to the support of those young voters who actually understand how the internet works. I suspect this is what all the shouting is about, even though the subject of it all never raises his voice.”
Sibel Edmonds On Traitors In High Places
“Sibel Edmonds: The Traitors Among Us,”
by Brad Friedman, Hustler Magazine, March 2010
“Edmonds’s most disturbing allegations, however, may be against high-ranking appointed officials in the Bush Administration. Elaborating on testimony she laid out in her sworn deposition, Edmonds told American Conservative magazine’s Phil Giraldi—a 17-year CIA counterterrorism officer—very specific details of alleged traitorous schemes perpetrated by top State and Defense Department officials. As already noted, these included Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and, perhaps most notably, former Deputy Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, the third-highest-ranking official in the Bush State Department.
Edmonds said that Feith and Wolfowitz were involved in plans to break Iraq into U.S. and British protectorates months prior to 9/11. She also claimed that the duo shared information with Grossman on how to blackmail various officials and that Grossman had accepted cash to help procure and sell nuclear weapons technology to Israel and Turkey—and, from there, on to the foreign black market. There the technology would be purchased by the highest bidder, such as Pakistan, Iran, Libya, North Korea or possibly even al-Qaeda.
Additionally, Edmonds claimed that Grossman, the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey before taking his State Department post, had tipped off Turkish diplomats to the true identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson’s front company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, a full three years prior to their being publicly outed by columnist Robert Novak. That in itself, according to George H.W. Bush, would be an act of treason carried out by “the most insidious of traitors.”
Former CIA counterterrorism officer Giraldi summed up Edmonds’s disclosures to me in blunt terms: “This was a massive coordinated espionage effort directed against United States nuclear secrets engineered by foreign agents who successfully corrupted senior government officials and legislators in our Congress. It’s that simple.”
According to a declassified version of a 2005 Department of Justice Inspector General’s report, Sibel Edmonds’s allegations are “credible,” “serious” and “warrant a thorough and careful review by the FBI.”
Perhaps more damningly, the FBI’s John Cole recently confirmed a key element of Edmonds’s claims when he revealed the existence of “the FBI’s decade-long investigation” of the State Department’s Grossman. Edmonds claimed that Grossman was perhaps the top U.S. ringleader for the entire foreign espionage scheme. The probe, Cole added, “ultimately was buried and covered up.”
More at Antiwar by Philip Giraldi, on Edmond’s credibility.
Here is an op-ed written by Sibel Edmonds about the role of foreign agents in “hijacking” the country.
I should note that Edmonds herself has been seen by some as playing a sophisticated role of disinformation by overemphasizing Arab involvement in 9-11.
Frankly, I don’t know enough about her to argue if that’s plausible or not. In any case, even if her revelations serve an ulterior purpose, they are bad enough as they stand….
Vandana Shiva on Nishkama Karma
Physicist and environmental activist Vandana Shiva on the practice of Right Attitude, or in Hindu terms, devotion to work without attachment to reward (nishkama karma):
“If you do anything with a narrow mindset, it makes you think according to a calculus of success and failure. Obviously when you are up against powerful interests, there are greater chances of failure than success. But when your work is inspired by a way of life and thinking, that process becomes a reward unto itself. That’s also what the Gita says, that you don’t count the results, you do the right thing according to your context. A spiritual outlook helps you see what the right thing in your context is. What matters is fulfillment, and that cannot be measured by the yardstick of society and its view of you, but by how your soul feels. Then the awards don’t matter, the brickbats don’t matter, the lousy rumors don’t matter. Nothing affects you.”
Mercedes Sosa Sings Solo Le Pido A Dios
Argentine singer Haydee Mercedes Sosa (July 9, 1935 – October 4, 2009) was dubbed “the voice of the voiceless ones” for her socially conscious music. She became popular through out Latin America as a leading exponent of nueva cancion , a type of song that combined Latin American folk music, rock rhythms, and highly politicized lyrics, and was often associated with left-wing politics. Many nuevo cancion artists went into exile in the 1970s and 1980s, when right wing military dictatorships came to power in their countries. Sosa herself went into exile in Spain.
Solo le pido a Dios
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el dolor no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to pain
Que la reseca muerte no me encuentre
May death never find me indifferent
Vacio y solo sin haber echo lo suficiente
Empty and alone without having done enough
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que lo injusto no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to injustice
Que no me abofeteen la otra mejia
So I don’t turn the other cheek
Despues que una garra me arane esta frente
When a claw has already scratched my face
Chorus:
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que la guerra no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to war
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
It is the great monster that tramples
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente
The poor innocence of the people
Es un monstro grande y pisa fuerte
Toda la pobre inocencia de la gente
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el engano no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to deceit
Si un traidor puede mas que unos quantos
If one traitor is stronger than the rest of us
Que esos quantos no lo olviden facilmente
May the rest of us not forget too easily
Solo le pido a Dios
I only beg God
Que el futuro no me sea indiferente
To let me not be indifferent to the future
Deshauciado esta el que tiene que marchar
Helpless are those who are forced to leave
A vivir una cultura diferente
And live in a foreign land..
Robert Byrd On The Abuses of Majorities
“Minorities have an illustrious past, full of suffering, torture, smear, and even death. Jesus Christ was killed by a majority.”
— Senator William Ezra Jenner of Indiana speaking in opposition to invoking cloture by majority vote on January 4, 1957, cited by Senator Robert Byrd, Senate speech on March 1, 2005, warning against a procedural effort being considered by some senators to shut down minority voices in senate debates.
Random Thoughts On My Return
My thoughts on the last leg of my schlepp back to the US were mixed….how did my 4 month jaunt get stretched to double the length, for starters..
And why does a continent as rich in natural resources as South America have poverty of any kind….and why is customer service such a difficult concept for some cultures….
But let me rewind a bit.
I left you in Salta, where I spent a two days recovering from a 33 hour bus trip from Montevideo sans any food.
That wasn’t provoked by an attack of asceticism. When I got to Buenos Aires, I had no Argentine pesos on me, the banks were closed, the ATM wouldn’t take my card for some reason, and it was pouring too heavily for me to venture out into the city. The restaurants at the station wouldn’t accept Uruguayan pesos or a card. So, between Friday morning in Uruguay and late Monday in Salta I literally ate nothing, except for a soggy white bread sandwich with watery cheese and ham. I didn’t really feel hungry, though, until I got off at Salta….
But more on all that in another post, when I’ll give you my impressions of my trip back..
Today, I’m still catching up and will just leave you with a few random thoughts….
1. The infrastructure and organization of the United States is still unparalleled and impressive in every way, in spite of deterioration and neglect…
2. Americans should get over their love affair with politics. They’re bad at it, it doesn’t suit their style, and it annoys everyone else. America is at her best making things happen. The business of America really is business.
3. I love the English language. With a smattering of Asian and European languages for comparison, I still find everything I want in English.
4. You can lead a rich, well informed, and not uncomfortable life without a car or a bicycle, without air conditioning, a fan, internet, a phone, an I-Pod, a blackberry, wireless, a TV, or even a radio.
5. If you’re willing to drink tap water and eat stall food, you can eat every meal out on 2 dollars a day in Peru, and have meat/fish at least once a day. If you cooked at home, you could eat well for under 15 dollars a month.
6. America has been a unique experiment in history, made possible because several favorable elements lined up in one spot on the globe. One of those elements – in fact, one of the cardinal ones – was the puritan work ethic. What it does it say that our intelligentsia, by and large, despises it.
7. A man can be free with just economic freedom. Even if he cannot act politically, or speak his thoughts, he can think them. If he can think his own thoughts, he is still his own man. But a man without economic freedom can think only his master’s thoughts….and his master will be the state.
8. It isn’t the politicians we need to worry about. They have to stand election. It isn’t even the financiers. They have to reckon with bankruptcy.
But the media faces neither elections nor a balance-sheet. There you have the tyrant.
Lost In the Andes..
Well, no. I’m not really lost. But I’m in the Andes alright. And my computer cable is lost, although lost isn’t the right word. Swiped is. As in, swiped by some blighter who grabbed it out from me while I was, of all things, trying to check my stuff into the left luggage. May it blow up his laptop and may his descendants be Internet addicts who run up his DSL bill and send him to the poor house…
So that is why I’ve been remiss in my blogging. And will continue to be a while, until this is all sorted out.
Which may not be for a bit, because right now the main puzzle I am trying to work out is how to bus it from the Andes into Colombia in the safest and cheapest way possible. I want to avoid visas, but it seems I cannot. Apparently, from Salta, which is where I am now, you have to take a bus that either gets you to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile, or across the Bolivian border. One route I am looking at is Salta to Arica and from Arica to Lima.
Does this work out fiendishly cheaper than a bargain flight from Buenos Aires? Probably not. But then the Argentines have gone and introduced a visa charge of some kind, effective from January. Something like a hundred dollars or so. It’s a reciprocity fee (that means it’s tit for our government’s tat – and who can blame them) but it means I’m trying to avoid airports, which is where they levy such things.
So far the past several days, it’s been buses and terminals…33 hours of them, and day long layovers. And on top of that I’ve been a little ill…and developed some kind of rash or allergy that makes my scalp crawl literally. I’ll never use the phrase casually again. And no, it was not cooties or dandruff, it was my new Argentine shampoo that did it…I have a sensitive skin and new anything on it is always a bit of a risk.
Which is all much more than you should know.
But on the up side the scenery here is spectacular.
I fed the ducks on the pond on San Martin Avenue right outside the bus terminal, had myself three empanadas with goat cheese – which felt like manna from heaven after two and half days without food..
The hills are verdant and rise high. And in the summers, the temperatures reach up to 50 degrees celsius, I’m told.
Which is what the temperatures are in my home town in India. There the hills are much lower and have been denuded over centuries. And of course, the town is overpopulated, noisy and polluted. But in a strange way, in its bare bones, it has some similarities…
The food in India is, of course, way, way better.
After 7 months of the rather stodgy South American diet, I am positively ravenous for rasam, curry, pappadams, pilafs…
I shouldn’t have started…..
Financiers Used 9-11 Diversion of FBI to Loot American Middle-Class
Great interview at Forbes, between Steve Forbes and Senator Ted Kaufman on the capital markets, naked short selling, the uptick rule, sponsored access, HFT (high frequency trading) and digitalization, dark pools, and fraud…
“Forbes: Finally, Fraud Enforcement Recovery Act.
Kaufman: Yeah, yeah.
Forbes: You’re proud of it.Kaufman: Yeah, I am.
Forbes: What it does, and what will it do?
Kaufman: OK, here’s what it did. After 9/11, we moved a lot of FBI agents over to cover terrorism, which we should have done. But we left only like 250 FBI agents in the country to cover financial fraud. We did more financial fraud cases in 2001 than we did in 2007, can you believe that? So, what we did with this financial and regulatory forum, with Pat Leahy, who is chairman of judiciary committee and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican. It’s a bipartisan bill and we got a bill passed to give us more FBI agents, give us more prosecutors and to go after these folks. And so that’s basic what we passed, and we’re getting organized. Had a really good hearing of the judiciary committee. Rob Khuzami at the Securities Exchange Commission, Lanny Breuer’s head of the criminal division, Kevin [Perkins] from the FBI financial thing.
And we’re really, we’re going after this thing. And I know you agree with me. You know, if you, the folks that committed crimes while this thing was going on, we can all argue about what caused it or not, anybody who took advantage of this situation and lined their own pocket for it should go jail.”
The Corporate Media: Suffering From Truth Emergency
We have an elite that has a stranglehold on what gets heard through its grip on professional societies and the major print and TV news. Prizes, media attention, peer approval go to very few media outlets. It’s well- known that only reporters and columnists at a handful of papers get serious attention. That’s a truly dangerous state of affairs and we’re suffering the fall-out from it. What makes it even worse is that news itself is more and more swept aside by trashy, sensation-seeking reporting, which leaves the audience with misinformation or simply a great black hole of ignorance.
Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips analyze the “truth emergency” ravaging the corporate media in the West (and to a lesser degree, everywhere):
“Truth Emergency: Keeping the Facts at Bay
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
– Rabindranath Tagore
What are some of these truths, that not knowing them creates a literal state of emergency for human society? Here are two of many possible examples. A 2008 report from The World Bank admitted that in 2005, over three billion people lived on less than $2.50 a day and about forty-four percent of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas of so-called developing nations. Simple items Americans take for granted like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.6
In another ignored but related story, Starvation.net logged the increasing impacts of world hunger and starvation. Over 30,000 people a day (eighty-five percent of children under five) die of malnutrition, curable diseases, and starvation. The number of deaths has exceeded three hundred million people over the past forty years. These stories should be alarming headlines, certainly more significant than celebrity tripe and tabloid hype.7
Continuing on the theme of human poverty and its ramifications, farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up four percent from the year before, yet, billions of people go hungry every day. The website Grain.org describes the core reasons for continuing hunger in a recent article “Making a Killing from Hunger.” It turns out that while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control the global food prices and distribution. Starvation is profitable for corporations when demands for food push the prices up. Cargill announced that profits for commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were eighty-six percent above 2007. World food prices grew twenty-two percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. This results in erratic food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread.“
My Comment:
Some of this commentary of course paints speculation with too broad a brush. Futures markets can, and do, provide efficient allocation of resources if they function as they should. The problem is not the futures market but the corruption of the market and the constant meddling in it by the state, which blunts the normal checks that the market would otherwise provide.
And again that goes back to public culture and professional standards that have become debased. The deeper question is how they became debased.
Which, of course, leads us to the government’s manipulation of the interest rate. That is where the problem lies.
But meanwhile, where is the media in all this? Providing the context so people can understand what’s going on?
No. It’s rooting around in John Edward’s trash can……
Soros: Gold In Bubble; But Keep Stimulus Going…..
Always nice to see people talk out of both sides of their mouth.
Here is currency speculator George Soros (ex of legendary hedge-fund Quantum) at the World Economic Forum at Davos:
“When interest rates are low we have conditions for asset bubbles to develop, and they are developing at the moment. The ultimate asset bubble is gold.”
So far so good. Mis-price money (cheap interest rates) and people don’t want to keep their savings in it. They want it in something that isn’t subject to mis-pricing (so they hope) – hence gold.
But then Soros shows how disingenuous he’s being by adding this:
“I think that since the adjustment process to the recession is incomplete, there is a need for additional stimulus. Some countries, like the US and European countries, have plenty of room to increase their deficits. The political resistance to doing so increases the chances of a double dip in the economy in 2011 and after that.”
That is, he’s suggesting running more deficits and keeping the money spigot going, just the thing that’s caused the gold price to rise.
So how do we understand this?
Gold is due for a technical correction, but it’s also probably responding to deflation in the general economy. It’s not going down that fast, because a lot of people are also buying it speculatively.
That’s the tug of war.
Meanwhile, who know what Soros’ holdings are and who knows what his motivations are in making such contradictory statements.
But anyone who takes these sorts of pronouncements as any kind of lead for their own investments/speculations, should be prepared to part fairly soon from their money.