Ethel the Blog
Observations (and occasional brash opining) on science, computers, books, music and other shiny things that catch my mind's eye. There's a home page with ostensibly more permanent stuff. This is intended to be more functional than decorative. I neither intend nor want to surf on the bleeding edge, keep it real, redefine journalism or attract nyphomaniacal groupies (well, maybe a wee bit of the latter). The occasional cheap laugh, raised eyebrow or provocation of interest are all I'll plead guilty to in the matter of intent. Bene qui latuit bene vixit.

The usual copyright stuff applies, but I probably won't get enraged until I find a clone site with absolutely no attribution (which, by the way, has happened twice with some of my other stuff). Finally, if anyone's offended by anything on this site then please do notify me immediately. I like to keep track of those times when I get something right.

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"When they say, 'Gee it's an information explosion!', no, it's not an explosion, it's a disgorgement of the bowels is what it is. Every idiotic thing that anybody could possibly write or say or think can get into the body politic now, where before things would have to have some merit to go through the publishing routine, now, ANYTHING." - Harlan Ellison JOLLY OLD PALS Other stuff of mild interest to some: unusual literature scientific software blog physical oceanography glossary computer-related tutorials and texts Friday, April 19, 2002 THE LIBERAL MEDIA IN VENEZUELA The media, which had been calling for the overthrow of the Venezuelan government for months, was in on the failed coup attempt up to their necks. Ask yourself what the present unelected leader of the U.S. and his neo-fascist cohorts would do if the major media outlets called for his overthrow. As Venezuela's coup began to collapse last weekend, a handful of the country's media barons were summoned to the presidential palace. A day after Friday's ouster of President Hugo Chavez, the self-declared "transitional government" was losing its grip. The media were its last hope. What happened next is disputed. Chavez loyalists say coup leaders, in a desperate bid to hang onto power, persuaded the media executives to suppress coverage of the unraveling coup. Several of the executives flatly deny any such agreement. But this much is certain: On Saturday, as protesters packed the streets and the presidential palace changed hands for the second time in two days, Venezuelan TV viewers were left in the dark. Instead of news, most got cartoons, reruns and Pretty Woman. The next day, with Chavez safely back in the palace, none of the country's main Sunday newspapers appeared. "It was a media coup, a complete blackout," said journalism professor Antonio Almeida, who teaches at the Central University of Venezuela. "Instead of informing the public they covered up the facts." ... posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 05:08:39 PM | link ROUND 'EM UP Uh oh, we'd better start rounding up the old Italian guys, seeing how much they hate our freedoms. And the tanks should be rolling towards Italy which, after all, has been harboring the guy for 68 years now. A small private plane flying in clear skies crashed into Milan's tallest high-rise today, killing the pilot and at least two people in the building and triggering global fears that terrorists were seeking to repeat the devastation of Sept. 11. But Italian officials quickly said that the crash appeared to be an accident, and that the pilot was a 68-year-old Italian man who was flying alone -- not the victim of a suicide hijacking. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 04:59:48 PM | link FRESHWATER AND MARINE IMAGE BANK Sweeeeeeeeeeeet (via the Scout Report). posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 03:58:53 PM | link VIBRANT NEW RUSSIA Fred Weir describes the entrepreuner's paradise the former Soviet Union has become thanks largely to the gentle ministrations of those in the IMF and World Bank. Hey, but at least they're all free to enjoy their poverty, substance abuse, disease and other ills, as well as to exercise their right to vote for former Soviet apparatchiks who've learned how to sound almost sincere when they speak of freedom to the proles. Russia is facing a demographic crisis so dire that its population could shrink by half within 50 years. The only obvious solution - to encourage youthful immigrants from overpopulated Asian neighbors such as China - is so politically sensitive that Russian leaders refuse to even discuss it. Russia's challenge is a double whammy. Like most of the developed world, birthrates have fallen far below levels that would sustain the population. At the same time, Russian death rates, particularly among working-age males, have skyrocketed due to post-Soviet poverty, substance abuse, disease, stress and other ills. Russia's population has fallen from 149 million a decade ago to just over 144 million today. Male life expectancy now stands at 59 years, with the average Russian woman living 72 years. Demographic experts say that the country is losing one million of its population annually, and the nosedive is accelerating. "Whole regions of Siberia and the Russian far east are already depopulated, and new deserts are appearing even in former 'black earth' regions of central Russia," says Lev Gudkov, a demographer with the independent Russian Center for Public Opinion Research. "We will not be able to maintain our industry, agriculture or our armed forces." Since the USSR's collapse, mortality rates among young males have risen to levels never before seen in peacetime. Mr. Gudkov predicts that there could be one pensioner for every worker in Russia within 20 years. "Not even a rich economy could survive that kind of strain," he says. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 03:47:49 PM | link JENIN The BBC describes the devastation in Jenin. A United Nations envoy has said that the devastation left by Israeli forces in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank is "horrific beyond belief". Terje Roed-Larsen, who toured the Jenin refugee camp on Thursday, said it was "morally repugnant" that Israel had not allowed emergency workers in for 11 days to provide humanitarian relief. The UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has asked the Security Council to consider sending an armed multinational force to the region, under Chapter Seven of the UN Charter which authorises military force to impose council decisions. ... Israel didn't let emergency workers in for 11 days and also did everything it could to prevent the media or independent observers from seeing the area. Thus the only witnesses were those being terrorized by the Israeli "security" forces, i.e. Arabs who the usual lapdogs will almost certainly claim are lying about the deeds of God's chosen people. Consider what would have happened had President Chavez of Venezuela sent the troops in to a refugee camp and done exactly what Israel did in Jenin for 11 days. The U.S. military forces that were apparently ready to mobilize would have indeed mobilized and invaded Venezuela. The Cabal damned near justified doing so on the "evidence" of psychotic Cuban expatriate Otto Reich claiming that Cuban troops were being ordered by Chavez to fire on his opponents, a claim that has thus far been "substantiated" no further than via repeated assertion by Reich and those who mindlessly parrot him. posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 03:25:04 PM | link MAKING FRIENDS, WORKING HARD, ... We've got new Leisure Town as of April 8. posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 09:06:47 AM | link DVD OF THE MONTH I got through the first four episodes contained within MASH: Season One last night, and they're as good as I remember. I'll be snagging all of these up to probably season four, after which the declaiming that "war is hell" got a bit tiring. The dialog in later seasons got to the point where it started sounding like: Hawkeye: Gosh, Beej, war is hell. B.J.: Yep, war sure is hell. Hawkeye: What say we go clue Henry in on the "war is hell" thing, or has he been replaced by Colonel Potter? B.J.: I think that's next season. How about giving Radar a lecture vis a vis "war is hell"? Hawkeye: Naw, he's gotten way too namby-pamby since season two. What was a neat, subversive midget has turned into a lamb-raising, hyper-sensitive wookie. B.J.: How about torturing ferret-face, then? Hawkeye: Hasn't he morphed into Winchester yet? B.J.: We could call up Sidney for another poignant, Emmy-winning episode. ... But the first season has all the card games, the general played by Boss Hogg, Marcia Strassman before she became Mrs. Gabe Kotter, gas passer Ugly John, the sudden appearance of Klinger in episode three, the irregular appearances and vanishing of Spearchucker Jones, the original Father "Dago Red" Mulcahy before William Christopher took over the role in episode three, etc. The original film's also available on DVD, with commentary by erratic genius Robert Altman. An interesting note about the film: the word Korea was never used in a movie based on a book obviously set in Korea. Why? It was made in 1970. posted by Steven Baum 4/19/2002 08:57:22 AM | link Thursday, April 18, 2002 STOCK OPTIONS Dean Baker, in a review of a NYTimes article in which GWB supports the current accounting method for stock options, explains as well as anyone has why that's a bad idea. It is important to note the system currently in place will not produce an accurate measure of corporate profits. This can be easily demonstrated. Suppose that a firm is just covering its costs, so that it is making zero profit, and is expected to continue to do so for the indefinite future. In principle, this firm could cut its wage bill by 10 percent, if it provided its workers with enough options that they were willing to accept this pay cut. If the firm engineered such a shift in compensation, then it would be showing a profit (an amount equal to 10 percent of the wage bill), using the current accounting method, even though the true cost of its labor compensation had not changed at all. Adding the new shares to the base, when calculating earnings per share, will reduce the overstatement of profits, but it does not prevent an unprofitable firm from still showing profits in this scenario. The Federal Accounting Standards Board has insisted that options should be treated as an expense at the time they are issued -- just like any other form of labor compensation -- in order to prevent this type of deceptive accounting. Baker also comments on a Washington Post article bashing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. This article reports on a strike by the managers of Venezuela's state owned oil company, over President Hugo Chavez's plans for the company. At one point it reports that Chavez rejected the company's plans to double production. Instead, he wanted to restrict production, and encourage other OPEC members to do the same, in order to raise prices. The article includes the comments of a former president of the oil company, who denounced this decision by Chavez, and argued that it was taking the country on a path to communism. It would have been appropriate to include comments from someone with economic expertise. It is very plausible that Venezuela will get more money from its oil if it restricts production -- especially if it succeeds in getting other OPEC members to do the same -- than if it tries to maximize its oil output. This is the reason that even non-OPEC members, such as Norway and Mexico, have opted to limit their oil production. Those damned clever commies, using capitalism to surreptitiously turn their countries into socialist nightmares. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 01:59:19 PM | link CONFLUENCE Joshua Marshall at Talking Points Memo had the same reaction as I to a Washington Post item. ... If a "U.S. Diplomat" -- a good catch-all phrase for someone who wants to remain both very anonymous and very credible -- knows that two of the key coup plotters got paid off for turning against Chavez, and that the money came from a US bank account, isn't this worth looking into? posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 01:43:10 PM | link BSD NIRVANA For those interested in the various BSD flavors and who have a completist urge, FreeBSD Services has released FreeBSD on DVD, a cornucopia of things BSDish. This release contains 2 discs. The first is a bootable DVD-ROM that can be used for system installation and includes 5,683 pre-built packages. It can also be used as a system recovery disc and a live filesystem. The second disc is double sided. On one side is a DVD-ROM image containing a full ports tree, including 6,746 distribution archives and which can be mounted directly as /usr/ports. The other side contains a CD-ROM image that can be used as a system installation and recovery disc in those situations where a DVD-ROM drive is not available. It has the same layout as the first DVD-ROM disc but with fewer pre-built packages. New in this release is a complete history of the FreeBSD project, including the full CVS repository from the initial import of 386BSD and the patchkit in June 1993. In addition, the CVS repositories of NetBSD and OpenBSD have also been included for reference as well as the BSD releases all the way back to 3BSD. This makes it one of the most complete distributions of BSD sources ever released. The price? A mere 40 British pounds or about 58 US dollars at today's exchange rate. I get nothing out of this beyond the knowledge that I've done my bit today to throw a monkey wrench into the Microsoft cogs. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 01:31:37 PM | link OPENWALL Security Focus (via RootPrompt) tells about the Openwall security patch for Linux kernels. The most desired features is the non-executable user stack area, more about which can be found in the README file. Most buffer overflow exploits are based on overwriting a function's return address on the stack to point to some arbitrary code, which is also put onto the stack. If the stack area is non-executable, buffer overflow vulnerabilities become harder to exploit. Another way to exploit a buffer overflow is to point the return address to a function in libc, usually system(). This patch also changes the default address that shared libraries are mmap()'ed at to make it always contain a zero byte. This makes it impossible to specify any more data (parameters to the function, or more copies of the return address when filling with a pattern), -- in many exploits that have to do with ASCIIZ strings. However, note that this patch is by no means a complete solution, it just adds an extra layer of security. Many buffer overflow vulnerabilities will remain exploitable a more complicated way, and some will even remain unaffected by the patch. The reason for using such a patch is to protect against some of the buffer overflow vulnerabilities that are yet unknown. The Openwall project contains numerous other goodies. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 01:19:02 PM | link CODGER TURNS 50 A certain chap who has quite an elegant way with the bloggage stuff turns 50 today. And it's not true that I'm only extending congratulations because he's one of the very few bloggers older than myself. Ari Fleischer will back me up on that one. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 01:08:41 PM | link MORE BRIBE MONEY The folks at the Emperor's New Clothes have dug up an interesting tidbit from the Congressional Foreign Operations Appropriations Act of 2002: "Not less than $200,000,000 shall be apportioned directly to the United States Agency for International Development [USAID], to be used for economic and social programs [in the Andean region]: Provided further, That of the amount appropriated under this heading, up to $2,000,000 should be made available to support democracy-building activities in Venezuela." posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 11:00:28 AM | link POETIC JUSTICE Debra McCorkle relates a tale of poetic justice. It starts with Chris Hill, a staunch GOP advocate and businessman, who was (at least temporarily) chosen as one of the 500 top businessmen of the year in 2001 as chosen by the National Republican Congressional Committee. So what did he sell? Bongs. And what did the reactionary Supreme Court outlaw in 1994? Uh huh. Sure enough, a federal prosecutor charged Chris Hill with distribution of paraphernalia last September. Postal inspectors and the DEA inspected three stores in Iowa and found Chills pipes among their inventory. The feds padlocked Chills' warehouse in Sarasota and seized his home and vehicles. The trial was set for February in Des Moines, but Hill is working on a plea bargain. Although all paraphernalia charges fill us industry people with dread, Hill was not a beloved figure, unlike many of the Grateful Dead-following old-timers who had screwed together metal pipe parts since the 1970s. "[The government] has lumped me in with some liberal longhaired dopers," Chris Hill told In These Times in mid-March of this year. "That's not the kind of crowd I run with." So what now, Mr. Hill, as you face a sentence of up to 20 years if convicted of a paraphernalia charge? The Republicans, extremely embarrassed by almost giving an award to one of their wayward own, have quickly done an about face and rescinded the honor. Hill has distanced himself from the "liberal dopers" whom he suggests are the real problem in the industry. In my opinion, the problem is the Supreme Court decision of 1994 (U.S. vs. Posters N'Things) which outlawed "bongs," and the powers that be who seem hell-bent on enforcing this interpretation. ... The only funnier thing than hearing Hill attempt to blame those to whom he sold the bongs for his problems is the thought of Hill spending 20 years in jail because of the decision of a Supreme Court he undoubtedly supports wholeheartedly. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 10:23:28 AM | link SPIN-O-RAMA The Washington Post is still attempting to put a positive spin on those who failed to overthrow the elected Venezuelan government. The article starts with: One reason Pedro Carmona, a bookish economist and alleged insurrectionist, was selected to run the interim government after a coup here last week was that he was one of the few people who didn't want the job. I guess they just plumb forgot how the first act of the "bookish" Carmona, who really didn't want the job, was to announce, in his undoubtedly Solomon-like manner, the abolition of the Supreme Court, the legislature and the constitution, those traditional impediments to a true democracy. If you can find the hip-waders and get through the first part of the article, you eventually end up at: That group, according to a Western diplomat here, included Molina, Air Force Col. Pedro Soto and several other officers who in February publicly demand Chavez's removal. The U.S. diplomat said Soto and Molina each received $100,000 from a Miami bank account for denouncing Chavez. ... In his role as head of the business association, Carmona traveled to Washington in November with a delegation of seven business leaders. He said the delegation met with John Maisto, Bush's national security aide for Latin America, Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Otto J. Reich, then Bush's nominee to head the State Department's Western Hemisphere affairs division. Reich, a conservative Cuban exile who has expressed his deep concerns over Chavez's leftist agenda, now holds the post under an appointment. That is, the Post decided that the really hard-hitting, newsworthy part of this article, which deserved the lead paragraph, was an attempted hagiography of a man who'd just proved by his actions what a truly undemocratic despot he was. Only after the attempted whitewashing of Carmona did they see fit to add "incidental" details like massive bribes sent to the conspirators from the U.S., and a November meeting in the U.S. between Carmona and the Cabal officials who basically ran things on the U.S. end. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 09:51:35 AM | link WHITMAN PROTECTING SPOUSE Those avowed marxists at the Washington Times tell of EPA director Christie Whitman abusing her office to protect her husband. The Environmental Protection Agency today will begin confiscating files that may be embarrassing to its administrator, Christie Whitman, according to an agency investigator. Ombudsman Robert J. Martin is investigating a possible financial conflict of interest between Mrs. Whitman's husband and polluters at two cleanup sites, said Hugh B. Kaufman, chief investigator for the ombudsman. Mr. Martin's investigative files have been under a protective court order since Jan. 11, but the order was rescinded April 12. Mr. Martin sought continued protection of the files in an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, but that decision will not be made until Friday. "Whitman's office told the inspector general to seize [Mr. Martin´s] files immediately, and that's what they are in the middle of right now," Mr. Kaufman said, accusing officials of using the small window of opportunity during which the files are unprotected to see what the ombudsman has uncovered. Mrs. Whitman has ordered a bureaucratic shuffle, combining the independent ombudsman's office with the inspector general's office, effectively ending the ombudsman's investigation. ... No doubt in the name of "efficiency", Whitman is nuking the job of the man investigating her husband. So just what did Henry Cisneros, whose independent counsel is still going like an Energizer rabbit, do that's worse than what Whitman is doing? posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 09:45:39 AM | link TIME FOR ANOTHER ATTEMPTED COUP We learn from the Straits Times that Japan's economy is accelerating towards hell in a handbasket. Ministers reacted with a mix of contrition and resentment yesterday after ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) cut Japan's sovereign credit standing to the same level as Malta's. S&P cited stalled reforms and the flagging popularity of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi for its decision to lower Japan's long-term local and foreign currency ratings by one notch to AA-minus, the lowest among major industrialised nations. S&P said it is keeping its negative outlook on Japan, putting it at risk of a further downgrade, due to the delays in structural reform. ... Given the "reasons" given by the usual apologists to justify the attempted and failed coup in Venezuela, why isn't Japan, with a leader with "flagging popularity", a "negative" economic outlook, and "delays in structural reform" next on the coup list? posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 09:24:35 AM | link NO CONFLICT OF INTEREST HERE Openflows reports on how some folks plan to make a shitload of money. Frank Washington, the CEO of System Integrators Inc. until the Sacramento newspaper-software company was sold in June 2000, heads a new company these days called Moon Shot Communications. And his new goal is to make a lot of money in the next several years by buying TV stations across the country, waiting for their value to increase, and then selling them to the highest bidders. Washington and four partners are working with investors and the Carlyle Group of Washington, D.C., a major private-equity firm, to line up stations they might buy. They figure they can assemble groups of TV stations for good deals now, by purchasing TV stations owned mostly by small companies outside large U.S. markets. Washington counts on the sellers not seeing the same potential in their properties that he does. Washington believes the stations will command higher prices if the Federal Communications Commission loosens rules limiting the number of broadcast TV stations a media company can own in the same market -- a change he expects to happen over the next few years. The change would uncork a consolidation-driven buying frenzy like the one that began in radio 10 years ago. By buying now and selling later, Moon Shot would try to pocket some fat capital gains. The potential buyers once the rule changes, he says, include radio, cable, newspaper and other media companies. Eventually, he predicts, a handful of companies will probably own all the TV stations across the country. Aside from the dubious utility for a supposed free press of having a handful of megacorporations owning all the major media outlets in the country, this entails a major conflict of interest. The current president's daddy is a major component of the Carlyle Group, and Frank Carlucci, the current head of that shadow government, treks to D.C. regularly to "consult" with the Cabal. Oh yeah, I almost forgot that Colin Powell's son currently heads the FCC. If "links" like this were found vis a vis Al Qaeda and any country, the planes and tanks would roll. Well, except for Pakistan, of course. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 09:18:03 AM | link HITCHENS REBUTTED One of the reasons I posted yesterday's Christopher Hitchens excerpts was to obtain comments thereon from a specific person. Here they are. Chris is a wee bit loose with the facts. A close reading of the increasingly voluminous revisionist literature discloses many further examples of events that one thinks cannot really be true, or cannot be true if the quasi-official or consecrated narrative is to remain regnant. Against which nation was the first British naval attack directed? (Against a non-mobilized French fleet, moored in the ports of North Africa, with the loss of hundreds of French lives.) That would be (mainly) the attacks at Oran. Hitchins' choice of words ("non-mobilized" as if that was an issue) is strange. He simply can't know that little about what happened. Minor point: There had been naval battles between British and Nazi units in the norway campaign well before this. And the battle of the River Plate was in 1939. Major point: these attacks have never been a secret, get a full chapter in Churchill's memoirs, and I've seen them described on the History channel, for lackofgod's sake. There is nothing either that unusual or discreditable about them, sad as the whole thing was. "One thinks they cannot be true"? Impossible for a Brit of Hitchins' age. As a matter of survival, when the French surrendered their fleet it was, as much as possible, eliminated to keep it out of Nazi hands (as it was the Nazis never did get any French naval vessels, since the French scuttled them in 1942 when the Germans closed down the Vichy regime, but it would have been foolish to bet on that in 1940). Churchill explicitly told Darlan, the French minister of Marine, that this would happen if France surrendered "This would mean not only blockade but bombardment of French ports"). The local French commander was given the option of sailing to a neutral port for the duration. Naturally his orders did not allow this and he did not choose to join the Free French, the other option. A nasty business, but essential in the circumstances of 1940. If other nations with naval vessels had surrendered, this could have happened many times. But the Norwegians, Dutch, Belgians, etc, did not surrender even when their homelands were occupied. Only France surrendered. (A few days before Darlan had been saying he would take the fleet to North Africa and fight the war from there. It was when he changed his mind that the above comment was made, I believe). In 1807 the British burnt down a third of Copenhagen to keep the Danish fleet out of the hands of, ironically, the French. Britain stood alone only if the military and economic support of Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, and the rest of a gigantic empire is omitted. Quite true, but this is a straw man being attacked unless Jenkins has really gone downhill (see below). In his books Churchill always speaks of "the british empire" as standing alone, not "the UK". In fact he usually said "empire and its commonwealths" to separate out the independent states. Which air force was the first to bomb civilians, and in whose capital city? (The RAF, striking the suburbs of Berlin. I suspect the Germans managed to be first if we allow Warsaw to be considered. There really was no difference between bombin civilians and industry, given the accuracy of bombs in those days. In any event it is pretty irrelevant. Indiscriminate bombing of enemy cities goes back at least to the siege of Paris in 1870 (by long range artillery, totally unaimed). London had been bombed by dirigible in WWI, Paris shelled again. I bet that on Sept 3 1939 RAF types jumped for joy now that they had Berlin within range (could be wrong, but I don't think they could hit it with dirigibles in WWI, Germans were ahead in this and allied bases too far away). They made a point of bombing Berlin when Soviet foreign minister Molotov was visiting. Just a friendly calling card. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that when the war broke out, cities would be bombed. The only surprise was that cities proved more resistant to bombing than many (e.g. British PM Stanley Baldwin) had predicted. Also see the first chapter of Olaf Stapledon's "last and first men". If nothing else, I suppose that Gurenica had convinced people of what would happen. Which belligerent nation was the first to violate the neutrality of Europe's noncombatant nations? One could almost say with some fairness that the Nazis never violated the rights of a neutral nation in the war. Once you attack them, they are no longer neutral. (The British, by a military occupation of Norway.) Now this I know nothing about. Occupy Norway? How? There were no British there when the Germans attacked Norway in 1940 - the delay in getting British troops there after the attack contributed to the debacle (which was the proximate cause for Chamberlain resigning as PM). Also, why? And why wouldn't the Norwegians resist? Considering the fight they put up against the vastly stronger Germans, the British would have had a major struggle on their hands, just when they didn't need one. There was some talk of violating Norwegian and Swedish neutrality to put an allied army into Finland to defend against the USSR (what a wonderful idea, while at war with Germany, attack the USSR!) but nothing ever came of that. I do recall that the British put mines in Norwegian coastal waters, but these were being used by German military vessels to get out of the Baltic. That's fairly standard practice: if you cannot patrol your own neutrality you lose the benefits thereof, which is why Sweden forced down 200 allied and German aircraft which violated its air space in WWII and why the Netherlands, neutral in WWI, interned allied and German troops who crossed the border. If you are neutral and allow either combatant to use your territory to further its war interest, that territory is no longer neutral. But these details, not unlike the navels and genitalia in devotional painting, are figleafed in denial. Unless it is the mining thing, the Norwegian bit has seriously escaped me. On the other hand the sinking of the French vessels at Oran and other places was simply not concealed at all. At the time, among other things, it was a message to the Nazis and the world that the allies intended to fight on. Everyone knew that it was a hard thing to order, particularly for the francophile Churchill. No point in doing it if you are going to make peace any time soon. It is good to see Chamberlain getting a bit of rehab, though. A careful reading of Churchill's memoirs shows a better Chamberlain than his popular image (if perhaps not as positive as it should be), but nobody reads that any more (3,000 pages!). A.J.P. Taylor did a lot to rehabilitate him in "origins of the second world war" but this brilliant book, despite being 40 years old, is still contested on both serious and the most specious grounds. The postwar bio by Fieling contains a rebuttal of the usual charges but I haven't read it. Munich, according to C.P. Snow, produced more hate in British political circles than any other event of his time. R. A. Butler, known sometimes as "The best prime minister Britain never had" lost, it is said, his chance to be PM in the early 1960s owing to his being a "Man of Munich". Twenty four years later! With this level of hate it's not surprising that NC doesn't get a fair hearing, even today. Lord Jenkins, by the way, is a former Labour Finance minister. It might be fair to call him a liberal now, as he left to form the Social Democrats in the early 1980s. But labour was very far left at the time. The Jenkins of 1980 would probably find Tony Blair to be too right wing. Unless age and Alzheimers have gotten to him, he is a bloody brilliant biographer, mostly of Liberal figures from 1850-19xx. I've read his biographies of Asquith (several times), Gladstone, and this history of the struggle between the commons and the Lords in the early years of the century, "Mr Balfour's Poodle". And a biography of Dilke, a man framed in a scandal and also called "the best prime minister the UK never had". I'll have to get a copy of the book. Another 1,000 pager, at least. Hitchins makes some good points, but enough of the others are sufficiently dubious that I wonder what he is doing. Time to take some wine away from French children. Another No-Prize for the origin of that last line. posted by Steven Baum 4/18/2002 09:00:52 AM | link Wednesday, April 17, 2002 GIORDANO CASE DISAPPEARING Why isn't Philip Giordano's name in screaming headlines on a daily basis? If his name were Condit he'd probably have a life sentence in prison by now, and he'd certainly have the usual suspects screeching "Are you guilty?" in his face on the news every night. Who is he? Philip A. Giordano was the former U.S. Marine who parlayed a Mr. Clean image into three terms as mayor of Waterbury, the fifth largest city in Connecticut. Giordano, to no one's surprise in a city known for its tawdry corruption, turned out to be a run of the mill crook. The federal authorities were investigating him for (yawn) a kickback scheme involving city contracts. In the course of monitoring Giordano, however, they discovered something else, something so bad that they eventually had to stop their corruption probe: Giordano was having sex, regularly, with girls aged 9 and 11. The girls were the daughter and niece, respectively, of a prostitute whom Giordano had once, before being mayor, represented in court and one with whom he had, as was revealed after the scandal broke, fathered a son. Could a scandal be any more disgusting than this one? So, why the national silence about it? While I'll let you decide that for yourself, here's one thing that is the undeniable truth: were this a Democrat, the story would have led nightly on FOX News Channel for several months. Be that as it may, Giordano faces both federal and state charges now. However, his trial is having a hard time getting going. Could it be because the federal judge is a GOP appointee and the GOP wants this trial put off indefinitely? Nah, couldn't be. So why, nearly a year after his arrest, has Giordano not been put on trial? How come the judge just moved to dismiss 12 of the 14 counts against him? Why is he being held in an undisclosed location and why has his family moved out of the state? How come, if he's such a choir boy, he has been denied bail on two separate occasions? Why is he considered "dangerous and a flight risk"? To repeat myself: this was the guy who represented the Republican Party in one of the most visible Senate races in the United States of America in the year 2000. As Al Gore put it the other day, we have "had enough" of this GOP-funded bullshit. Put the man on trial. Let him face those children in a court of law. Let him face his community, the one he stole from, humiliated in front of the world and arrogantly disrespected on a daily basis during his tenure. All this dissembling, all these machinations, all these press conferences to avoid facing the reality of the situation: an adult man, an ex-Marine no less, who was the standard bearer for the Republican Party in the state of Connecticut, forced two girls, 9 and 11, to have sex with him. Not once, or twice, but numerous times. This arrangement was set up by a prostitute by whom this Republican family values candidate had an illegitimate child. ... Wait a minute ... there's Gary Condit.... posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 04:27:43 PM | link COCA-KARMA Guerilla News investigates a trial you most likely haven't even heard of. At the heart of the story is an independent marketing consultant named Bob Kolody who claims he owns the copyright to an image that has been used on Coke Classic cans since 1993. The basic facts of the case are as follows: Back in 1989, Kolody pitched Simon Marketing (Coke's ad agency) on a game concept that involved a graphic collusion of Coca-Cola and automobile memorabilia. Kolody heard nothing back from Simon but, nine months later, learned that aspects of his campaign were being disseminated through Coke's new Cherry Coke can designs. When Kolody attempted to discuss the matter with Simon's executives he was rebuffed and they claimed to have lost his story-boards. Even more interesting is that at the same time that Kolody was pitching Simon, Coke failed to renew their copyright on a very famous image that appeared on their first soda can in 1961: the contour bottle on the Coca-Cola can' image. When Coke failed to renew the 1961 copyright (as they must do after 28 years) Kolody, the suit claims, became the de facto rights holder because he had created a derivative work of the image for his pitch with Simon. This was all unbeknownst to Kolody, who was still trying to fight Simon on his infringement suit. Then, in 1993, Coke resurrected the 'contour bottle' image for their Classic Coke cans and, the suit documents, filed a fraudulent copyright application in order to protect it. This is the legal crux of the case and demands elaboration. A fundamental precept of intellectual property law stipulates that an entity is not allowed to file for a copyright on an image that has already been published and then released into the public domain or adopted by someone else. In the case of the 'contour bottle', Coke either forgot to renew their copyright or did not understand the law. When they re-filed in 1993, the copyright office warned them that to file for a copyright which has already been published is fraud. Coke went ahead and did it regardless. In 1994 Kolody saw the 'contour bottle' on a Coke Classic Can in a Chicago airport and realized what that Coke had now adopted another of his original concepts. For three years he could not get a lawyer to file his case against Coca-Cola and Simon Marketing. Finally, in 1997, he got John De Camp - a one-time Nebraska state senator and friend of former CIA-head Bill Colby - to file. But De Camp could not afford to continue on contingency so Kolody was forced to forge on pro se (without legal representation). Kolody learned the law from every conceivable source and fought his case in court against one of the country's top intellectual property lawyers (Jerold Jacover). Using every imaginable legal dirty trick, Coca-Cola's legal team hampered Kolody's case and successfully avoided publicity on what has evolved into a $4 billion lawsuit. Furthermore, Judge Blanche Manning (the judge in this case) refused to compel Coca-Cola to demonstrate that they held the legal registrations of copyright on the contour bottle. When Kolody attained the application independently from the U.S, copyright office, Manning would not allow him introduce the document as new evidence. This was a crushing blow to Kolody who had finally discovered proof that Coke failed to renew its copyright and then filed a fraudulent copyright application to protect themselves. In 1999, Kolody successfully retained renowned Arkansas federal attorney Dan Ivy to fight his case. As soon as he came onto the scene, Ivy discovered a series of judicial improprieties emanating from the bench. In response, he filed several motions of 'judicial perjury' - a motion that accuses the judge of committing fraud upon the court in her blatantly favorable rulings for Coca-Cola. This is the first time in Chicago judicial history that a lawyer has leveled such a serious charge against a federal judge. But Judge Manning, instead of stepping aside to have her improprieties assessed by an independent Judge, ruled on these charges herself - a practice that defies the principles of Anglo-Saxon law. ... I can already hear Ari Fleischer describing this as the evil Kolody and the sinister trial lawyers picking on poor little Coca Cola and the American Way. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 04:00:31 PM | link THE 10 HABITS OF HIGHLY DEFECTIVE CORPORATIONS Scott Klingler's report "Titans of the Enron Economy: The 10 Habits of Highly Defective Corporations" is a sobering read. ... Much of the 1990s stock market boom was fueled by Enronesque accounting tricks that are perfectly legal. More than a third of corporate earnings growth from 1995 to 2000 stemmed from the practice of not treating stock options as expenses. For example, Lucent's earnings would have been reduced by 30% from 1996 to 2000 if stock options had been expensed. Corporate political contributions and lobbying encouraged lax rules, with Enron's price-gouging energy deregulation being only one example. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 03:49:58 PM | link LOVELY LINDA The first paragraph of Angela Carter's review of Linda Lovelace's bio Inside Linda Lovelace: "Some people," our Lady of Hard-Core Porn reflectively begins her memoirs, "are born to greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them.' [...and some have it thrust in them ... sorry ... couldn't resist] Her own fame devolves partly upon her own sexual virtuosity but, more, upon the demands of a society that utilises limited libidinal gratification as a soporific in a time of potential social disruption. She, the archetypal swinger, is the product of the 'permissive' society she eulogises; but the notion of 'permissiveness' can only arise in a society in which authoritarianism is deeply implicit. Now I am permitted as much libidinal gratification as I want. Yippee! But who is it who permits me? Why, the self-same institutions that hitherto forbade me! So, I am still in the same boat, though it has been painted a different colour. I am still denied authentic sexual autonomy, perhaps even more cruelly than before, since now I have received permission to perform hitherto forbidden acts and so I have acquired an illusory sense of freedom that blinds me more than ever to the true nature of freedom itself. Ah, the lady had a way with words. This can be found in the collection Shaking a Leg (Penguin, 1997). posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 03:42:05 PM | link READING GRAHAM David McFarlane writes an exceedingly entertaining column about Graham Greene and books, two things I really like. I am reading one of my favourite novels, The Comedians, by Graham Greene. It's one of those books -- Greene's A Burnt-Out Case and The Heart of the Matter are others -- that I would have on my shortlist were I ever forced to get rid of every book I own, but one. Reading Graham Greene always feels to me like the literary equivalent of drinking a very dry, perfectly chilled martini: a serious pleasure that I enjoy only occasionally but that I wouldn't want ever to give up. For there are times when only a martini will do. There's nothing superfluous to Greene's bracing prose -- no bubbly soda pop, no exotic fruit juice, no little umbrellas, no maraschino cherries. His gin comes right out of the freezer. He uses the vermouth very, very sparingly. I sometimes think that if you wanted to learn how to write, you could do worse than to study a single, seemingly ordinary paragraph of Graham Greene's. His artful economy of language is much on my mind these days. So much so that the other night, as I lay in bed at the optimum reading hour of 3 a.m. and returned with Greene to the Haiti of Papa Doc Duvalier, I realized that one of the reasons I am so fond of The Comedians is that it takes up so little space. I have an old Penguin edition that is still in excellent condition. (I wish the computers and the coffee-makers around here lasted a 10th as long as the average, well-thumbed Penguin paperback.) And for all that is contained between The Comedians'sdog-eared covers, it is still not much bigger than my wallet was before I dumped out all the receipts for the accountant last week. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 03:32:09 PM | link OLDER THAN PANGAEA The Economist tells of a supercontinent that preceded Pangaea. MANY organisations use a map of the world as their logo. So does the journal Gondwana Research-but its logo consists of a bunch of unfamiliar blobs snugly cuddled against each other. This image represents the earth as it is thought to have looked 200m years ago, when all the continents were clustered together in a "supercontinent" known as Pangaea. Gondwanaland was the name given to the southern half of this landmass, the part that includes modern-day Africa, Australia, South America, Antarctica and India. In the latest issue of the journal, a pair of geologists present their idea of what the planet might have looked like long before Pangaea and Gondwanaland had formed. According to John Rogers, who works at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and Santosh, an Indian geologist at Kochi University in Japan, geological evidence suggests that, a billion and a half years earlier, another supercontinent existed. They have dubbed this continent "Columbia", because some of the best evidence for its existence comes from the Columbia river region of the north-western United States. While the Economist doesn't supply a map of the posited "new" old continent, one can be found at Johns's site. Those interested in such things will find his Columbia paper in "Gondwana Research" fun reading, as well as his earlier review paper "A history of continents in the past three billion years" (Journal of Geology, V. 104, 1996, 91-107). posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 03:18:10 PM | link THE MEDALS OF HIS DEFEATS Christopher Hitchens, one of the exceedingly few evil liberals who received favorable mention in a recent "Which liberals do you respect?" poll at the Freeper site, will probably lose those fans after (or if) they read The Medals of His Defeats, his review of recent Churchill literature in the April 2002 Atlantic Monthly. Here's a few paragraphs to whet the appetite. In the fateful spring and early summer of 1940 the people of Britain clustered around their wireless sets to hear defiant and uplifting oratory from their new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. On May 13, having just assumed the burden of office from a weak and cowardly Neville Chamberlain, Churchill promised a regime of "blood, toil, tears and sweat." On June 4, after the evacuation of the defeated British army from Dunkirk, he pledged, "We shall fight on the beaches." On June 18 he proclaimed that even if the British Empire were to last for a thousand years, this would be remembered as its "finest hour." Over the course of the ensuing months Britain alone defied the vast conquering appetites of Hitlerism and, though greatly outclassed in the air, repelled the Luftwaffe's assault with a handful of gallant fighter pilots. This chivalric engagement-"The Battle of Britain"-thwarted Nazi schemes for an invasion of the island fortress and was thus a hinge event in the great global conflict we now call World War II. Now that's enough to bring tears to anyone's eyes. And I'm talking big, manly, chest-thumping, Randian, Heinleinian tears, not the sort of wimpy, pomo, self-loathing tears you'll see being gushed forth by namby-pamby liberals when the brie's gone off. But wait a minute, there's a hitch. The foregoing paragraph could appear without much challenge in almost any English or American newspaper or magazine, and versions of it have recently seen print in the reviews of Churchill: A Biography, by the British Liberal statesman Lord Jenkins of Hillhead. One might, however, call attention to some later adjustments to this familiar picture. The three crucial broadcasts were made not by Churchill but by an actor hired to impersonate him. Norman Shelley, who played Winnie-the-Pooh for the BBC's Children's Hour, ventriloquized Churchill for history and fooled millions of listeners. Perhaps Churchill was too much incapacitated by drink to deliver the speeches himself. Britain stood alone only if the military and economic support of Canada, Australia, South Africa, India, and the rest of a gigantic empire is omitted. As late as October of 1940, furthermore, the Greeks were continuing to resist on mainland Europe and had inflicted a serious military defeat on Mussolini. Moreover, the attitude of the United States, however ostensibly neutral, was at no time neutralist as between a British versus a German victory. The Royal Air Force was never seriously inferior, in either men or machines, to Hermann Göring's Luftwaffe, and at times outgunned it. British pilots were mainly fighting over home territory and, unlike their German opponents, could return straight to duty if they parachuted down. The RAF had the advantage of radar and the further advantage of a key to the Nazi codes. The Royal Navy was by any measure the superior of the Kriegsmarine, and Nazi surface vessels never left port without exposing themselves to extreme hazard. The German High Command never got beyond the drawing-board stage of any plan for the invasion of Britain, and the Führer himself was the source of the many postponements and the eventual abandonment of the idea. A close reading of the increasingly voluminous revisionist literature discloses many further examples of events that one thinks cannot really be true, or cannot be true if the quasi-official or consecrated narrative is to remain regnant. Against which nation was the first British naval attack directed? (Against a non-mobilized French fleet, moored in the ports of North Africa, with the loss of hundreds of French lives.) Which air force was the first to bomb civilians, and in whose capital city? (The RAF, striking the suburbs of Berlin.) Which belligerent nation was the first to violate the neutrality of Europe's noncombatant nations? (The British, by a military occupation of Norway.) But these details, not unlike the navels and genitalia in devotional painting, are figleafed in denial. They cannot exactly be omitted from the broader picture, nor can they be permitted any profane influence on its sanctity. Meanwhile, who made the following broadcast speech to the British people in 1940? "We are a solid and united nation which would rather go down to ruin than admit the domination of the Nazis ... If the enemy does try to invade this country we will fight him in the air and on the sea; we will fight him on the beaches with every weapon we have. He may manage here and there to make a breakthrough: if he does we will fight him on every road, in every village, and in every house, until he or we are utterly destroyed." That was Neville Chamberlain, who (albeit in his rather reedy tones) delivered the speech himself. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 02:54:21 PM | link QUOTE OF THE WEEK "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not just by a majority of the voters, however." Unnamed Bush Cabal official on the Venezeula crisis, quoted in the New York Times, April 16, 2002 True. It must be additionally conferred by large Italians in black robes, especially in cases where it hasn't been conferred by a majority of the voters. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 02:42:40 PM | link THE GREAT NEST EGG ROBBERIES Robert S. England writes about a topic of interest to most, or what should be given recent events in the corporate world of crime. If numbers were any indicator, private pension and welfare plans would receive as heavy protection as society could muster against civil and criminal fraud and pilferage. Not only do their assets top $3 trillion, but the vast majority of US citizens - an estimated 200 million in all - either actively participate in or receive benefits from them, according to the General Accounting Office. In 1974, ERISA established a group of federal investigators within the Department of Labor who are charged with investigating cases of diverted, expropriated, and misapplied pension assets, and with helping prosecutors to fine and/or jail wrongdoers. Sadly, the resources federal authorities need to protect pension assets are lacking. The chief enforcer for ERISA plans is the Department of Labor's Pension Benefit and Welfare Administration. The PWBA has 382 investigators, whose job is to uncover potential wrongdoing at 750,000 pension benefit plans and 4.5 million welfare and health plans. Another 112 investigators at the Office of Labor Racketeering (OLR) focus on organized crime, but they must cover the entire field of labor law-not just pension fund abuses. ... Trillions for Holy Wars on Drugs and Terrorism, and a few million for guarding the pension funds from Enron and their ilk. Cheer up, when you're living in a cardboard box, all you have to do is light up a joint or commit a ThoughtCrime to get three square meals a day. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 02:29:34 PM | link GOOD 'UN A Mark Weisbrot editorial begins with a good 'un. Q: Why has their never been a military coup in the United States? A: Because there's no U.S. embassy here. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 02:13:44 PM | link REALITY DYSFUNCTION Compare and contrast the headline: U.S. diplomats flee Venezuela amid growing violence and the article: The United States has authorised the voluntary departure from Venezuela of all non-essential diplomats and their dependants amid fears of renewed political violence. The article also contains an entertaining bit about our favorite pathological liar. The White House has confirmed US officials and a variety of Venezuelan leaders met during the past few months. One of those involved in discussions was coup leader Pedro Carmona, but spokesman Ari Fleischer emphatically denies any US support or involvement in the coup, in which President Chavez was removed by the military. "There's nothing that I can find to substantiate any of those charges, I think it's just the opposite," Mr Fleischer said. Even the NYTimes won't call a spade a spade. A front page (4/17/02) article "U.S. Cautioned Leader of Plot Against Chavez" starts with: The Bush Administration, under criticism for its role in the ouster of President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, acknowledged today that a senior administration official was in contact with the man who succeeded Mr. Chavez on the very day he took over. Otto J. Reich, assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere affairs, phoned the incoming president, Pedro Carmona Estanga, to plead with him not to dissolve the National Assembly on the grounds it would be "a stupid thing to do," and provoke an outcry, a State Department official said. And what has the Times got to say about the absurdity of administration officials meeting with Chavez's opponents for months, and then claiming that their only substantial role was to encourage their chosen "democratic" successor not to dissolve all the components of a democracy once the coup was underway? Administration officials cited the call as evidence that they had sought to uphold democratic processes in Venezuela, but the disclosure raised questions as to whether Mr. Reich or other officials were stage managing Mr. Carmona's takeover. Whew!!! What a unlucky administration. All Clinton got was eight years of the Times badgering and accusing him of any rumor that popped up on the Drudge Report, while the Bush Cabal gets slammed hard with the vicious phrase "raised questions." Another accusation made by the usual useful idiots is squashed in the article, albeit buried n the final two paragraphs. In the closed door briefing, Mr. Reich said the administration had received reports that "foreign paramilitary forces" - suspected to be Cubans - were involved in the bloody suppression of anti-Chavez demonstrators, in which at least 14 people were killed, a Congressional official said today. Mr. Reich, who declined to be interviewed today, offered no evidence for his assertion, the official said. As to the "bloody suppression of anti-Chavez demonstrators", NarcoNews reports a slightly different version of those events. With the five TV chains running free advertisements every ten minutes urging the citizenry to join the march, the 40,000 member oil workers union, the National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Catholic Church hierarchy pulling out all the stops to create the illusion of a popular revolt, they only got between 50,000 and 150,000 people into the streets of Caracas to protest against Chavez. (Caracas has more than two million citizens and Venezuela, 24 million.) The demonstration, purportedly in support of the business-backed oil workers strike, was initially advertised to march to the state oil agency's offices. But once the leaders - with the help of the TV stations (upset with Chavez, as we reported on Saturday, over having to pay taxes like any other business for the first time in their history) - had the crowd assembled, they switched the parade route and marched their own lambs to a pre-plotted slaughter. The march - puny in size compared to the multitudes that would take to the streets to oppose the Coup in coming days - was detoured by the coup plotters to head to the presidential palace known as Miraflores, where several thousand supporters of the Chavez government were already assembled. As universally reported by the English-language media - including the Four Horsemen of Simulation; AP, Reuters, the NY Times and CNN - shots were fired, between 10 and 30 people died, and another 100 or so wounded. The question of where those shots came from looms explosively. Eyewitness in Caracas Greg Wilpert reported on Friday in an article for commondreams.org - and linked immediately by Narco News - that the majority of killed and wounded were Chavez supporters. Wilpert has subsequently reported that, now that the Constitutional government of Chavez is restored, he expects the list of martyrs to finally be released (interesting, how the coup never released the names of the dead), and the list will show that the majority of those killed were Chavez supporters. Wilpert also comments that he expects videotapes to be released in the coming days that show the true culprits behind the shooting provocation: an extreme anti-Chavez group titled "Bandera Roja." But AP, Reuters, the NY Times, CNN and many other English-language media sources reported, without sourcing their claim, that the shots came from the Chávez government. They repeated that unsubstantiated speculation as fact over and over and over again. And White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer claimed that Chavez "ordered" the shootings. All of this will come out in the wash in the coming days. Suffice to say, the mainstream media got the story wrong, intentionally wrong, to blame violent acts by Chávez opponents on Chávez. For those confused about the issue, Wilpert was an eyewitness reporting from the scene, while Ari Fleischer - the spokesman for a government that at the very least supported the coup - made repeated assertions about something that happened 6000 miles away from him. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 01:39:09 PM | link BLEAKER THAN AN ANTARCTIC WINTER The Country Watch Economic Overview of Venezuela provides further confirmation of the Gulag it's become under twice-elected President Chavez. Bear in mind that this assessment was written before the recent coup and counter-coup, and was also not written by someone with a political axe to grind against Chavez. The real GDP decreased to 3.22 percent in 2000 compared to negative 6.09 percent in 1999. The inflation rate decreased to 16.21 percent in 2000 from 23.57 percent in 1999. The unemployment rate declined to 11.48 percent in 2000 from 14.5 percent in 1999. The rise in oil prices was able to pull Venezuela out of the recession it was in a year earlier. Venezuela's gross domestic product, or GDP, grew 3.22 percent in 2000, according to the International Monetary Fund. The report indicates growth was primarily fueled by a 3.4 percent recovery of oil activity and 2.7 percent growth in the non-oil sector. The economic trend was favored in 2000 by superlative expansion in the world economy, in particular by the dynamism of the global energy demand. These factors also influenced recovery of crude oil prices. Another factor that influenced GDP growth was the 5.8 percent increase in domestic demand, which was in part due to the boost in public spending at 5.6 percent and the gradual decline of interest rates. Consumption grew 4.8 percent, while investment increased two percent compared to a 16.4 percent drop in 1999. Investments were boosted by deregulation of the telecommunications sector and oil profits, according to the Central Bank of Venezuela, or BCV. Meanwhile, the trade sector grew 5.1 percent, and the construction sector fell 4.9 percent for the year. Manufacturing grew 3.6 percent due to a 4.2 percent rise in private manufacturing. Inflation, which closed November at 14.2 percent, fell from the 20 percent posted in December 1999. The central government recorded the largest increase in expenditure, within the public sector. Expendituresrose because of a 20 percent increase in wages and pensions. As a result, the central government's accounts ended the year with a deficit of slightly more than one percent of GDP. At the end of October 2000, the monetary base registered a year-on-year increase of about 25 percent, which was similar to the increase of narrow money, or M1, and broad money, or M2. Interest rates, which were also affected by the decrease in inflation, continued to drop. Lending rates fell by 4.5 percentage points over the first three quarters of 2000 to 23.7 percent. The Venezuelan economy, which is dependent on the oil industry, grew at an annualized rate of 3.4 percent in the first half of 2001, following a 3.2 percent growth in 2000. According to the BCV, the economy grew by 2.9 percent in the second half of 2001. Sectors that grew during the second quarter were construction (20.9 percent), telecommunications (12.9 percent), manufacturing (5.3 percent) and trade (4.9 percent). The oil industry suffered a setback over the first six months as the value of goods and services dropped some 2.3 percent. The drop in value of goods and services was due partly to the Organization of Petroleum and Exporting Countries' decision to cut oil production. The inflation rate in August was 0.6 percent, resulting in an annualized rate of 12.9 percent. The August rate indicates a slowdown in the increase in prices from the July figure of 1.5 percent, attributed to the sluggishness of prices for necessities such as chicken, eggs, beef, onions and potatoes. Note how the report looks favorably on the increase in public spending as a component of GDP growth, i.e. Chavez's increases in public spending on health and education aren't the "bad thing" they're being painted as by biased commentators. The horrifying summary is: Venezuela would not be helped by the slowing of world economies, especially that of the United States. Venezuela would benefit by the initiatives it is taking to promote trade within the region. Gee, pack up the kids and run like hell. Contrast the above with an excerpt from a post-countercoup assessment from the bislam community. "Investors returned to their negative assessment" of Venezuelan sovereign debt instruments, said investment bank ABN Amro economist Carlos Janada, a leading emerging market strategist. "Clearly, the significant rise in the (risk premium) index, which is a measure of the country's capacity to service its debt, is due to the return of Chavez who is distrusted by investors." Even though Chavez has clearly improved the economy while in office, while operating in the same worldwide recession, post-9/11 uncertainty and oil price constrictions that the Bush Cabal uses to justify or excuse their economic performance, the bislamists jack up the "country risk" factor because of not much more than personal dislike. So much for dispassionate assessments of economic factors by the supposed professionals. Here's another excerpt: Furthermore, Venezuela had a relatively good debt position, with public debt at no more than 26 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2001 and servicing at 10 per cent of GDP. But investors distrusted Venezuela because of the political uncertainty and the president's economic measures. That is, the "dispassionate" investors dislike Chavez's economic measures, i.e. public spending on education and health, so despite a good debt position and debt servicing, they distrust Chavez. So much for the ostensibly justifiable economic reasons for attempting to overthrow an elected leader. It's also worth commenting that the supposed "political uncertainty" was largely fomented by the Bush Cabal and their Wall Street cronies, i.e. the folks decrying the supposed bad effects of "political uncertainty" on the Venezuelan economic outlook helped create that uncertainty. The most telling example of the bias of the Wall Street ghouls can be found in the following, though. The vice president of one large Wall Street investment firm even said immediately after the coup against Chavez that it was "the happiest day" of his life. Let's see, a glorified bean counter who probably invests in thousands of stocks in dozens of countries claims it's the happiest day of his life when he believes the legally elected government of just one of the countries has been overthrown. posted by Steven Baum 4/17/2002 11:41:05 AM | link Tuesday, April 16, 2002 ACTIONS VS. WORDS Frida Berrigan contrasts what the Bush Cabal has promised various thuggish regimes in the way of weapons with the listing for that regime in the State Department's "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices." Georgia Military Aid: The United States is offering $64 million to train and equip four 300-strong battalions of Georgian forces to help them combat terrorists hiding in the Pankisi Gorge near the Russian border. The program would equip the units with light weapons, vehicles and communications. Human Rights Record: The government's human-rights record remained poor and worsened in several areas. Several deaths in custody were blamed on physical abuse, torture or inhuman and life-threatening prison conditions. Reports of police brutality continued. Security forces continued to torture, beat and otherwise abuse detainees. Indonesia Military Aid: Indonesian military forces will be trained in Hawaii, and the FBI will be given the task of tracking down terrorists in this vast multi-island state. The administration is also working to persuade Congress to loosen restrictions on transfers of military hardware that have been in place since the Indonesian army's rampage in 1999 and widespread atrocities in East Timor. Human Rights Record: The government's human-rights record remained poor, and it continued to commit serious abuses. Security forces were responsible for numerous instances of, at times indiscriminate, shooting of civilians, torture, rape, beatings and other abuse, and arbitrary detention in Aceh, West Timor, Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya) and elsewhere in the country. Yemen Military Aid: The Bush administration is planning to send at least 100 U.S. troops to train local forces and has hinted at aiding in the creation of a maritime force. Human Rights Record: Members of the security forces tortured and otherwise abused persons, and continued to arrest and detain citizens arbitrarily, especially oppositionists in the south and other persons regarded as 'secessionists.' Uzbekistan Military Aid: U.S. Green Beret troops are training the Uzbek military in marksmanship, infantry patrolling, map reading and other skills. The United States has provided "nonlethal" equipment such as helmets, flak jackets, Humvee transport vehicles and night-vision goggles to the Uzbek military and border guards. For fiscal year 2003, the Pentagon has requested $1.2 million in training and $8.7 million in foreign military funding. Human Rights Record: The government's human-rights record remained very poor, and it continued to commit numerous serious abuses. Citizens cannot exercise the right to change their government peacefully; the government does not permit the existence of opposition parties. Security force mistreatment resulted in the deaths of several citizens in custody. For some cheap thrills, I looked up the State Department's Venezuela Report, and found it makes for most entertaining reading when the criticisms therein are contrasted with another nation in the western hemisphere. There continued to be concern during the year regarding the use of the armed forces in traditionally nonmilitary roles in government and society. ... Severe overcrowding in prisons continued to decrease; however, general prison conditions remained harsh due to underfunding, poorly trained and corrupt staff, and violence and overcrowding in some prisons so severe as to constitute inhuman and degrading treatment. ... Security forces continued to commit illegal searches. ... Some critics charged that the Government intimidated the media, and self-censorship reportedly was widespread. Concern over freedom of association remained high and increased among human rights organizations. ... Violence and discrimination against women, abuse of children, discrimination against persons with disabilities, and inadequate protection of the rights of indigenous people remained problems. ... The Constitution and the 1999 COPP provide for freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention; however, the security forces continued to arrest and detain citizens arbitrarily at a decreased rate. ... The law provides for public defenders for those unable to afford an attorney; however, there are not enough public defenders to handle the caseload. ... Constitutional provisions prohibit arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence; however, the security forces continued to infringe on citizens' privacy rights by conducting searches of homes without warrants, especially during anticrime sweeps in impoverished neighborhoods. There were no complaints during the year by human rights NGO's of illegal wiretapping by the security forces. ... Authorities use firearms, tear gas, and billy clubs against demonstrators. ... Women and minorities participate fully in government and politics; however, their percentage in senior leadership positions and national elective offices does not correspond to their percentages of the population. ... Indigenous people traditionally have not been integrated fully into the political system due to low voter turnout, geographic isolation, and limited economic and educational opportunities. The 1999 Constitution reserved three seats in the National Assembly for indigenous people, and these seats were filled in the July 2000 election. .. Human rights groups remained concerned about the Chavez administration's lack of a human rights agenda and lack of support for the national human rights agenda formulated by the previous Government in a 1997 symposium with NGO's. There have been no meetings between President Chavez and NGO's to discuss human rights issues since 1999. ... Violence against women continued to be a problem, and women faced substantial institutional and societal prejudice with respect to rape and domestic violence during the year. Domestic violence against women was very common and was aggravated by the country's economic difficulties. .. The Constitution provides workers with the right to a salary that is sufficient to allow them to live with dignity, and provides them and their families with the right to basic material, social, and intellectual necessities; however, the minimum wage is not sufficient to provide a decent standard of living for a worker and family. Yep, it's just a living hell down there. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 02:03:33 PM | link RELEVANT HISTORY Christopher Reilly provides a most relevant history lesson about Chile. The unsuccessful efforts by the United States government to block the democratic process, followed by its successful campaign to remove Chile?s elected president Salvador Allende from office in 1973, through U.S. sponsored violence, was one of the most blatant examples of foreign election manipulation perpetuated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Nixon Administration. Now, more than 25 years later, the Administration?s illegal and amoral actions in Chile may finally be catching up with some of the individuals identified in court papers as villians in the plot to stamp out democracy in Chile. ... The details further on down sound like they could almost have been ripped from last week's headlines. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 11:17:12 AM | link FREE TRADE: OXYMORON Wole Akande tells us why the phrase "free trade" makes those in the ostensible "third world" roll with laughter. Hint: Any time you hear the word "tariff" you can bet that trade is getting less rather than more free. Or, to put it another way, those who blather on and on about how all the third world needs to develop and lift themselves up by their own bootstraps is a little more capitalism are either utterly deluded or so full of shit it should be coming out of their ears. Many may be surprised to learn that it was Adam Smith, not Karl Marx, who noted in 1776 that the affluence of the very rich was contingent upon the misery of the very poor. Given massive increases in the accumulation and concentration of wealth, that truth is far more potent today than it was in Smith's time. Two years ago the world's leaders, perhaps gripped by millennial fever, offered bold promises to cut global poverty by 2015 - including halving those living in extreme poverty; universal primary education; and reducing by two-thirds the child mortality rate. Accordingly, the U.S. and the E.U. surprised the world last month, during the United Nations conference on financing development in Monterrey Mexico, by pledging to increase foreign aid. Thankfully, the conference has put aid back on the diplomatic agenda after years of neglect. The goals set for the year 2015 are fine goals, but they are in danger of not being realized. Although both the U.S. and Europe have promised billions of dollars more in aid in coming years, their pledges fall far short of the $100bn the UN says is needed to cut poverty in half by 2015. Perhaps the time is right to help poor countries, African countries in particular, help themselves. Cutting rich nations' agricultural subsidies will boost international trade for many African countries. Presently, these subsidies are six times what the rich countries provide in foreign aid to the developing world. More importantly, it is these expensive subsidies that rob poor countries of the opportunity to sell their products in truly open markets. While mouthing the glories of laissez faire capitalism, protectionist schemes are wantonly invoked to protect private interests with powerful political influence. Although trade barriers imposed by OECD countries are quite low on average, high tariffs are imposed on products such as agriculture and textiles. These industries are important sources of export earnings for emerging market economies. Tariff barriers, on commodities like rice and sugar, are largely to blame for the least developed countries having a share of world trade equal to only about 0.4 percent of the world total. This result occurs despite the fact that classifications by the UN indicate that there are almost 50 "least developed" countries, twice the number in that category 30 years before. Subsidies paid by rich countries to their farmers amounted to about 37 percent of farm receipts in 1998. Global subsidy payments to farmers are worth at least $327 billion each year. Again, this means that agricultural subsidies exceed the value of foreign aid offered to poorer countries by a factor of six. With so much spent by these countries each year, the distortion effects upon the global agricultural sector are enormous. Trade liberalization, its proponents promise, will bring benefits to all countries. The World Bank, for example, calculates that "full" trade liberalization could bring between $200 billion and $500 billion in additional income to developing countries. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 11:10:10 AM | link THE ICE AGE Chris Cook takes a fascinating look at the world oil market and how recent machinations are deliberately making it less transparent to end user producers and consumers. For those who've not been paying attention, market transparency is one of the cornerstones of a supposed fair and equitable market system. ... The market in physical oil is both complex in the diversity of crude oils and oil products and simple, in terms of its trading mechanism where for instance, it is a little known fact that the majority of physical crude oil deals are now negotiated in Yahoo instant messaging "Chat Rooms." There are essentially two types of physical oil market contracts used to secure supply: "spot" and "forward" contracts. Until the advent of OPEC, little oil was freely traded and what spot and forward deals there were took place on the telephone in the shadows. Oil producers took the prices they were given, and gasoline customers paid whatever prices the "Seven Sister" oil giants could get away with. The oil price was locked into stable and profitable long-term relationships. All that changed with the massive rise in oil prices in the 1970s and the rise of non-OPEC production, exemplified by the UK's North Sea "Brent" field. This volatility gave rise to a requirement for derivative "futures," options and "swap" contracts used to secure price and avoid the risk of adverse market movements. This requirement was met in the early 1980s by the formation of two key derivatives Exchanges: the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and in London, the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE). Some 65 percent of global crude oil - including most OPEC production - is now priced against the benchmark Brent Crude Oil price. The IPE's Brent Crude Oil futures contract, allied to the Platt?s physical oil price reporting service, constitute the key tools in global oil price formation. Transparency is the enemy of profit to the giant oil traders who still dominate the markets, and these exchanges have long been a thorn in their side since they provide a transparent marketplace with equal open access to all constituencies of the oil market. ... The oil market got more transparent and the oil traders didn't like it. That is, one of those things that ensure a fair system got in the way of their profits. So what did they do? They created ICE. ... ICE is the creation of perhaps the two single most sophisticated and powerful investment banks: Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman Sachs. They acquired and funded the development of an electronic trading platform capable of handling forward physical and over the counter "OTC" derivatives traded "off-Exchange." Their master-stroke was then to invite key players such as BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell to join ICE on the basis that they received shareholder equity in return for a commitment to provide liquidity by trading on the system. The resulting ICE consortium is estimated to command some 60 percent of liquidity in the oil derivatives market. In order to acquire the global oil market customer base they are targeting, ICE first approached NYMEX in late 2000. NYMEX, which is dominated by independent "local" traders rather than brokers, turned down the ICE proposal and ICE therefore turned their attention to the IPE, which had demutualized in April 2000. ICE has now completed its acquisition of the IPE. A few of the IPE brokers were big enough to stand their ground and overtly oppose this remarkably one-sided deal. Note, for instance, that Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Goldman Sachs each now have more ICE shares than the entire IPE membership. But any profit generated from their ICE shareholding is merely a profitable side-effect of the game these players are in. Having accessed the global oil market customer base by acquiring IPE; the next stage of the ICE strategy is about to be implemented. Both NYMEX and IPE continue to operate "open outcry" trading whereby traders physically present in a trading "pit" conduct a continuous auction to generate the dynamically changing market price. This archaic, but transparent, method of trading is now about to be replaced, on the IPE at least, by the ICE electronic trading platform, which will trade the IPE's flagship Brent Crude Oil and Gas Oil contracts. At the same time, in a direct assault on NYMEX, ICE will list on its platform U.S.-based "swap" derivative contracts in natural gas and the key West Texas Intermediate (WTI) Crude oil quality. And make no mistake about it, as NYMEX implodes, darkness will then descend upon the "wholesale" oil market as it reverts to a magic circle of major traders, the only differences being that the ICE trading system will have replaced the telephone, and that the brokers who have historically facilitated trading will be excluded. For it is here, in the arcane, complex - but currently transparent - transatlantic "arbitrage" relationship that maintains between complementary NYMEX and IPE contracts that the threat to oil producers and gasoline consumers will lie. Because in the hands of the ICE consortium who dominate liquidity in the derivatives markets, the trading mechanism will be both inaccessible and totally opaque to "end user" producers of crude oil and consumers of gasoline. ... And what underlies all of this? The lack of regulation. You know, the same sort of "evil" regulation that would have gone a long way towards preventing the Enron debacle. New forms of money and commodity shuffling are invented damned near daily to get around current regulations, and people like Phil Gramm are always there to ensure that the new shuffles aren't regulated. There are other examples, too. So, on a global basis, we have returned to a regulatory vacuum - exemplified by successive debacles such as the Sumitomo copper scandal, the extraordinary story of Long Term Capital Management and no doubt more to come: because no-one is looking at what the traders are doing. In the absence of a global regulatory framework the traders who have quietly taken over the market simply cannot be trusted with it. Fortunately the derivative market tail does not wag the physical market dog. So in the medium and long term the absolute oil price level must be set by underlying supply and demand. However, the actual effect of this coup led by the Investment Banks will be a reduction in price transparency and market access leading to a substantial increase in the margins they extract from oil market movements at the expense of 'end user' producers and consumers. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 10:59:27 AM | link NORTON'S CONTEMPT FOR THE LAW Stephanie Mencimer writes about Interior Secretary Gale Norton's utter contempt for the law. Six years ago, nearly 300,000 Native Americans filed a class-action suit against the U.S. Department of the Interior alleging that the department had grossly mismanaged trust funds holding more than $3 billion owed to them from oil and gas leases on Indian land. During the course of the litigation, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth instructed Interior to shore up the abysmal state of computer security for the funds. In response, for almost two years, the department dutifully sent the judge quarterly reports describing the tremendous progress it was making to that end. Upon receiving those reports, most judges would have passed them to a clerk, duly noted, and moved on to other business. But Royce Lamberth is no ordinary judge. Suspicious, he decided to check out the government's claims and hired some hackers to break into Interior 's computer system to see whether, in fact, the trust-fund security had been upgraded. Turns out, not only could the hackers get into the system with techniques available to any second-rate high-school computer geek, they were able to set up a trust account and make adjustments to it undetected. The department's computer systems were so vulnerable that on December 5 last year, Lamberth ordered the department to disconnect the trust fund accounts from the Internet until firewalls could be established to protect the Indians' money. Typically inept, Interior reacted by disconnecting all its Internet links. Soon, outdoors types found themselves unable to find camping reservations at national parks. Indian Health Service doctors had their email cut off. And Interior Secretary Gale Norton found herself on trial for contempt of court. Testimony during the contempt trial has revealed that attorneys from Norton's office massaged reports to the judge. They also allegedly pressured Interior staffers to change critical facts to cover up the fact that, for two years, the department had done almost nothing the judge had ordered, hoping that the appeals court would throw the Indians' suit out all together. Late last year, when Norton's own staffers testified that they wouldn't sign off on her reports to the judge because they were so misleading, Lamberth urged Norton to "throw herself on the mercy of the court." Instead, as Lamberth has noted, "The Secretary has decided to contest everything and throw down the gauntlet." Consequently, Lamberth said, he was ready for the fight. "I can give them their worst nightmare." ... Since the Cabal probably can't blame Clinton for this one, look for Judge Lamberth to be labelled a "liberal" who's just out to get them for purely political reasons. Not quite, as the following quite clearly demonstrates. ... Norton's handling of the trust-fund case suggests that, despite Lamberth's warnings, she thought she had nothing to fear from a fellow Republican appointed by her party's greatest hero, Ronald Reagan. Norton, perhaps, can be excused for believing Lamberth was on her team. After all, he is the very same judge who, for eight years, dogged the Clinton administration with a ferocity only seen in independent prosecutor Ken Starr. In 1993, Lamberth socked the Clinton administration right out of the gate, fining Ira Magaziner nearly $300,000 for lying in court about the makeup of Hillary Clinton's health-care task force. Lamberth allowed Judicial Watch bulldog Larry Klayman to depose everyone from George Stephanopoulos to famous fundraiser John Huang in suits against the administration that most judges would probably have thrown out as frivolous. In one of those suits, the judge accused President Clinton of criminal behavior and asked the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate the president's alleged violation of the Privacy Act. And in 1999, he fined former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin more than $600,000 and found them in contempt of court in the same suit in which Norton is now under fire. ... Yep, that Judge Lamberth is one flaming liberal. He's probably got a hammer and sickle in his chambers. Look for the dirty tricks squad of the Cabal (i.e. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, etc.) to come up with some variation of the "Bob Dole is the Manchurian Candidate" ploy they pulled in the South Carolina primary in early 2000. If he's really as conservative as he seems, he's probably got a sexual or other pecadillo or two in his closet. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 10:37:34 AM | link CHEMICAL WARFARE = SAVE THE (U.S.) CHILDREN James Bovard takes some well-deserved shots at the Holy War on Drugs. ... But how will the DEA change the laws of agricultural economics that encourage farmers to grow crops disapproved by the U.S. government? Afghan farmers can easily earn ten times more from growing opium than from growing wheat or other crops. The effort to persuade Third World farmers to abandon illicit crops will be about as successful as trying to persuade stockbrokers and law-firm partners to abandon their high-paid jobs, move to Mexico, and scratch out a livelihood assembling toilet brushes for sale at Wal-Mart. If the Bush administration is really serious about defunding terrorist groups, it should summon the courage to look at drug laws themselves. The falling price of cocaine and heroin in recent decades is proof of the failure of drug warriors to close the borders. Federal officials have admitted that the government fails to interdict up to 90 percent of the drugs being smuggled into the United States. This failure rate is absolutely intolerable when illicit drugs finance terrorism. ... He left out a detail here. The feds know that well over 90% of the drugs coming over the Mexican border are transported in the tens of thousands of trucks that cross the border each day at the legal crossing points. They could search them all thoroughly and interdict that 90%, but they don't. Why? Their corporate masters won't allow them to slow down the commerce across the border. That, and it's easier, i.e. more politically expedient, to go after peasant farmers in South America. ... The futility of government drug bans was made stark by one White House anti-drug ad that purported to show the different costs that go into a drug smuggler's operation. One item that flashed briefly on the screen was thousands of dollars for bribes. The ad did not mention who was being bribed - whether it was the U.S. Coast Guard, or the Customs Service, or perhaps foreign government officials. It is ironic for the drug czar's office to complain that drug users help finance bribes to government officials - but to say nothing about the G-men who take bribes. American policymakers make a careful distinction between the financing of terrorist activity by selling illicit drugs and the U.S. government's financing of terrorist-like activity to suppress drug cultivation. While Bush went ballistic over "terrorists" mailing anthrax to government offices, the United States is conducting a chemical warfare campaign in Colombia, fumigating much of the countryside with deadly herbicides to suppress coca production. Unfortunately, the U.S. campaign has devastated the crops of many law-abiding farmers and left children gasping and ill. ... See the TNI Report Vicious Circle: The Chemical and Biological 'War on Drugs' for further details. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 10:10:22 AM | link IDF USING CIVILIANS AS SHIELDS The self-loathing crowd at Ha'aretz is once again undermining Ariel Sharon's peace march. Israel Defense Forces soldiers are forcing Palestinians to enter and search houses that are suspected to be booby-trapped, according to recent testimony by soldiers participating in such actions. In other cases, the Palestinians are forced to pick up suspicious objects so that soldiers can proceed along the roads these objects were blocking, soldiers said. The army has repeatedly denied the existence of such procedures. ... The outcry would be deafening if an official enemy were to do such a thing, but since the Palestinians are the official enemy in this situation it's just hunky-dory. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 09:52:33 AM | link WOLFOWITZ RAGES Deputy Defense Secretary and raging sociopath Paul Wolfowitz sent the CIA after the Swedes in an attempt to facilitate his compulsive/obsessive need to invade Iraq. In an unusual move, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz earlier this year asked the CIA to investigate the performance of Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, chairman of the new United Nations team that was formed to carry out inspections of Iraq's weapons program. ... Officials gave contradictory accounts of Wolfowitz's reaction to the CIA report, which the agency returned in late January with the conclusion that Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" as chief of the Vienna-based agency between 1981 and 1997. A former State Department official familiar with the report said Wolfowitz "hit the ceiling" because it failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program. But an administration official said Wolfowitz "did not angrily respond" when he read the report because he ultimately concluded that the CIA had given only a "lukewarm assessment". The official said the CIA played down U.S. criticism of Blix in 1997 for closing the energy agency's books on Iraq after an earlier U.N. inspection program discovered Baghdad had an ongoing weapons program. ... One wonders if the "administration official" was pathological liar Ari Fleischer or another of the professional prevaricators populating the Cabal. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 09:46:38 AM | link THE DOGS OF WAR Esther Schrader tells of another group of companies that are more than just surviving the recesssion. These dogs of war aren't eating Gravy Train. ... MPRI, founded in 1988 by former Army Chief of Staff Carl Vuono and seven other retired generals, has trained militaries throughout the world under contract to the Pentagon. It counts 20 former senior military officers on its board of directors. The firm operates from a bland office building in Alexandria, Va., its halls as hushed as those of an insurance firm. But the decor betrays the tough credentials of its founders. A statue of a knight in armor stands in a corner of the lobby. MPRI's emblem is an unsheathed sword. "These guys are not about to destroy reputations they've spent 30 years building just for a buck," said Soyster, who once headed the Defense Intelligence Agency. "We go someplace because we are either sent there by the U. S. government or we're contracted by another government. We do it for the money, I'm not ashamed to say. But we do it right." The financial rewards presumably beat Pentagon salaries. Since Sept. 11, the per-share price of stock in L3 Communications, which owns MPRI, has more than doubled. The top five executives at Science Applications International Corp. of San Diego made between $825,000 and $1.8 million in salaries in 2001, and each held more than $1.5 million worth of stock options. Revenues from the global international security market, of which the firms are a part, are expected to rise from $55.6 billion in 1990 to $202 billion in 2010, according to a 1997 study by Equitable Services Corp., a security industry analyst. ... The major U. S. firms in the field include MPRI, Vinnell, BDM International Inc. of Fairfax, Va., Armor Holdings Inc. of Jacksonville, Fla.; DynCorp of Reston, Va., and SAIC. Armor Holdings was among Fortune magazine's 100 fastest-growing companies in 1999 and 2000, one of the few firms on the list not related to technology. ... But even the most polished of the firms have blemished histories. Employees of DynCorp were fired after being accused two years ago of keeping Bosnian women as concubines. Companies hired by the CIA in the 1980s trained foreign fighters later charged with atrocities in El Salvador and Honduras. ... posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 09:32:48 AM | link DISC FILLAGE Sorry if anyone had access problems. I got lazy and the disc filled up last night. posted by Steven Baum 4/16/2002 09:22:38 AM | link Monday, April 15, 2002 BLAMING THE RECESSION A Feb. 13 Petroleum World article about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez shows us how that cowardly bastard is willing to blame anything or anyone but himself for his country's sixth-world status. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Tuesday announced major adjustments in the 2002 budget, revising the 26.443 trillion bolivars (1$VEB=792.50) budget down to VEB20.567 trillion. The new budget is now based on an average oil price of $16 a barrel, instead of the budgeted $18.50/bbl, in tune with new economic perspectives, Chavez said. Chavez explained in a nationwide televised speech that the terrorist attacks, the Argentine crisis and ongoing world recession forced the government to make these adjustments. ... I'll bet he's trying to blame the previous administration too, the shameless coward. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 04:55:01 PM | link VENEZUELA'S ECONOMIC "HELL" Just about all the publications that have articles about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez having returned to his elected office (just a few days after a coup attempt to put an unelected man in his office failed) make sure to begrudge him his return to his elected office by tacking on some verbiage about his "leftist", "anti-capitalist", etc. policies that have supposedly turned Venezeula into a living hell, and how the experience may have or should have "taught him a lesson." I decided to look for some less biased viewpoint of the recent economic history of Venezuela, deciding that getting lectures on economics from the same people who probably touted Enron until the day before it collapsed wasn't a terribly good way to get a grasp on economic reality. I found a most interesting economic summary of the Chavez years in Venezuela in the World Bank's Venezuela Country Brief. The government of President Hugo Chavez, in office since early 1999, inherited an economy heavily dependent on the oil sector with major structural imbalances, including a growing fiscal deficit, a deficit in the external current account, and high unemployment. The scale of the crisis made it necessary to act quickly. The government adopted a set of economic policies that included: reducing the rate of public expenditures by limiting public sector wage increases to an average of 17.5% and by cutting investment outlays of the government and public enterprises; increasing public sector revenues by, among other things, reducing the sales threshold of firms subject to VAT; cutting back oil production in agreement with other oil exporters to increase the oil price in the international market; and, maintaining a strong exchange rate policy in the context of the existing exchange rate band system. On August 2, 2000, Mr. Chavez further outlined his plans for the economy going forward. The program, intended to be implemented by an "Economic Constituent Assembly" similar to the body which rewrote the nation's constitution under President Chavez's guidance last year, included measures to reactivate economic growth, promote private investment and alleviate poverty and inequality. To read the grudging tales of Chavez's return, you'd think he'd run an economic paradise into the ground but, according to the World Bank, he started with an economy "with major structural imbalances, including a growing fiscal deficit, a deficit in the external current account, and high unemployment." Okay, so he inherited a nasty economy. But, being a godless Marxist (and probably a closet Stalinist), he quickly made things worse, didn't he? Yep, he proved his utter hatred for all the tenets of capitalism by engaging in such perfidious socialist acts as reducing public expeditures, cutting oil production to raise revenue, and enforcing a strong exchange rate policy. Mylackofgod! There's just no hell deep enough for Chavez! So what happened after a couple of years of this living hell? In the year 2000, GDP grew by 2-3% year-on-year in the second quarter (following an expansion of about 0.3% in the first quarter), suggesting that an economic recovery is underway after a decline of 7.2% in 1999. Inflation slowed to 15% in August, a 14-year low and well within the government's target of 16% for the year 2000. The decline in inflation has been at the cost of an economic recession and a fall in consumption and investment, and the government estimates that unemployment reached 13.5% in July. A combination of an overvalued exchange rate and low real interest rates has created conditions for some pressure on the external sector. However, there is no immediate balance of payments constraint, capital outflows have been more than offset by the expansionary effect of high oil prices on export revenues, while imports have been kept in check by the recession. The average price of Venezuelan Oil Basket was about US$28 through mid-September, compared to about US$16 for the whole of 1999. Let's see: the economy grew and inflation hit a 15-year low. Oh sweet Jesus! Isn't anyone thinking of the children! Aha! But wait! This was all at the sinister "cost of an economic recession and a fall in consumption and investment", with unemployement reaching 13.5%. If this doesn't prove how evil the bastard is, then what does? Especially seeing how that's exactly what Paul Volcker and the Reagan Regime did to the U.S. economy in the very early 1980s to reduce inflation. I'll try to continue through the tears of shock and dread. So how did Chavez next oppress the masses? Foreign reserves have risen to more than US$18 billion, including US$2.3 billion set aside in the macroeconomic stabilization fund, the equivalent of 16 months of imports. The exchange rate reached 690 Bolivars to the dollar by end-August and it is likely to remain stable for the rest of the year, as the Central Bank still has full control of exchange rate movements. Even after the recent monetization of the non-oil fiscal deficit, international reserves cover at least 2.1 times the monetary base and more than 75% of M2. As a result of high oil revenues, the overall public sector was in surplus in the first semester of 2000. However, key government actions early in the year, such as a 1% reduction in the VAT rate, the elimination of the bank debit tax, and increased current expenditures together with low tax collection and revenues due to low economic growth, have led to a deterioration in the non-oil fiscal deficit. AHA!!!! We've finally identified what he did to destroy the Venezuelan economy! He cut taxes which, which combined with public spending (e.g. giving money to no good, lazy bums for medicine and other luxuries, putting an additional 1 million children in schools, etc.), and low tax revenues due to low economic growth, led to the deterioration of the non-oil fiscal deficit. I don't know about you, but I just don't have the words strong enough to condemn someone who cuts taxes and runs up deficits in times of low economic growth. This man should be tortured before he is killed. You can read the rest of the report if your stomach is strong enough. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 04:15:08 PM | link THE SITUATION IN A NUTSHELL Intel Briefing summarizes the current Middle East crisis pithily, althoug I can't quite figure out whether they're anti-semitic or self-loathing. Given that the U.S. and Israeli armies combined can basically defeat the combined armies of all Arab countries, if the Bush Cabal continues to kowtow to Israel on pretty much everything, a combined takeover of the entire Middle East is becoming less and less of a fantastical scenario. It's fairly obvious by now that Israel wants the entirety of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and they're going to take it no matter what. This will provoke more than one other Arab country to attack, at which point the U.S. will most likely get on with the Iraq invasion for which the Cabal has a really big stiffy. The only countries left with any sort of military power would be Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and they've got at most second-rate equipment, be it from the U.S., Russia or Europe. But hey, at least the thugs installed as leaders in the various countries will be officially approved U.S. thugs. Or, to use Kirkpatrickspeak, they'll be authoritarian rather than totalitarian. Those slaughtered by the new thugs will no doubt thank their god(s) for the refreshing change. There is one slight problem, though. An even larger number of militarily powerless people will looking for alternate avenues by which to punish their perceived oppressors. The Israeli Army has temporarily disrupted the Islamic terrorist bombing campaign and can probably inflict considerable damage if the campaign is allowed to continue for another two weeks or so. The damage done to the Palestinian authorities ability to control the security situation in its territories is possibly fatal and will make demands from the Governments in Jerusalem and Washington for Yasser Arafat or his successors to crack down on the militants virtually impossible to implement. This alone will result in Israel being forced to once again become the major instrument of 'law and order' in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip once that area has been subjected to the same form of military action, with all the consequential and possibly disastrous results for the United States relations with other Arab countries and any chance of maintaining a workable coalition against Iraq, Iran and Syria. Unless the international outcry and the growing unrest in the Arab world against Israeli tactics and open American support persuades Washington to once again try to pressure Sharon to accept that military action only creates a hundred new suicide bombers for every one killed in the present campaign and seek a just settlement with the Palestinians, President Bush may well be left with no alternative but to act unilaterally in any future action it takes the Middle East. However, the United States would be very unwise to appear to be taking on so much of the world in a fight, unilateralism can soon become isolation and even the worlds only superpower may well find that untenable in the long run. The United States is in great danger of appearing openly anti-Muslim and leading a new Crusade against Islam. Even the inclusion of Turkey in US plans presents a problem as few in the Arab world would forget that they were only liberated from 800 years of Turkish rule in 1918 and even fewer would welcome the sight of Turkish troops once again in Baghdad or on any other Arab land. Opportunities for the use of Israel's massive military power are even fewer, unless Washington is seriously considering dumping its relations with the Muslim world and opt for open and very likely long-term Arab hostility as the price it must pay to defeat the 'axis of evil' once and for all. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 03:05:04 PM | link MORE ABOUT THE SPOOKS The murderous Stalinist thugs at Intel Briefing concur with their commie friends over at Stratfor, although the former have found and provided quite a bit more in the details department. The one important thing to be learnt from the Venezuelan coup is that the United States has not changed its view that only Governments acceptable to Washington can be allowed to survive in Latin America and that like it or not, the United States will undermine and help overthrow even legally elected administrations if it so chooses. This became obvious when Pentagon sources gleefully revealed that the United States provided critical military and intelligence support to the Venezuelan military coup against President Hugo Chavez on Friday 12th April. Under the cover of the COMPTUEX and a Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) training exercises in the Caribbean the US Navy provided signals intelligence and communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military. Particular focus by US Navy SIGINT vessels was on communications to and from the Cuban, Libyan, Iranian, and Iraqi diplomatic missions in Caracas. All four countries had expressed support for Chavez and the plans for US military and intelligence support for the coup d'etat were brought upto date following President Bush's visit to Peru and El Salvador in March 2002. The National Security Agency (NSA) supported the coup using personnel attached to the US Southern Command's Joint Interagency Task Force East (JIATF-E) in Key West, Florida. NSA's Spanish-language linguists and signals interception operators in Key West; Sabana Seca on Puerto Rico and the Regional Security Operating Centre (RSOC) in Medina, Texas also assisted in providing communications intelligence to US military and national command authorities on the progress of the coup d'etat. From eastern Colombia, CIA and US contract military personnel, ostensibly used for counter-narcotics operations, stood by to provide logistics support for the leading members of the coup. Their activities were centred at the Marandua airfield and along the border with Venezuela. Patrol aircraft operating from the US Forward Operating Location (FOL) in Manta, Ecuador also provided intelligence support for the military move against Chavez. Additional USN vessels on a training exercise in the Outer Range of the US Navy's Southern Puerto Rican Operating Area also stood by in the event the coup against Chavez faltered, thus requiring a military evacuation of US citizens in Venezuela. The ships included the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and the destroyers USS Barry, Laboon, Mahan, and Arthur W. Radford. Some of the latter vessels reportedly had NSA Direct Support Units aboard to provide additional signals intelligence support to US Special Operations and intelligence personnel deployed on the ground in close co-operation with the Venezuelan Army and along the Colombian side of the border. For its part, the CIA provided Special Operations Group personnel, headed by a lieutenant colonel on loan from the US Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to help organize the coup against Chavez. They had been in the country since the summer of 2001 and consisting of US Special Operations Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) personnel. The group reportedly made contact with senior, pro-US military officers, including armed forces chief Gen. Lucas Rincon, Deputy Security minister Gen. Luis Camacho Kairuz, and business and union leaders, especially those with the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, and the Venezuelan Workers' Confederation (CTV). Last summer, the CIA lieutenant colonel began meeting with corporate and labour leaders at the PDVSA refinery in Maracaibo to lay plans for the coup against Chavez. One of those recruited early on by the CIA was the new interim Venezuelan President, Pedro Carmona, the head of the Fedecamaras business syndicate. The coup was also supported by Special Operations psychological warfare (PSYOPs) personnel deployed from Fort Bragg, North Carolina. They put together Spanish-language television announcements, purportedly from Venezuelan political and business leaders and aired by Venezuelan television and radio stations, saying Chavez "provoked" the crisis by ordering his supporters to fire on peaceful protestors in Caracas. US electronic warfare technicians also helped to jam cell phone and radio frequencies in Caracas and other major cities in co-operation with the Intelligence Battalion "GRAL. DE BRIGADA ANDRES IBARRA" of the Venezuelan Army High Command. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 02:49:08 PM | link THE SPOOKS WERE INVOLVED Those raging Marxist firebrands at Stratfor share a few words about the Venezuelan situation. Imagine the deafening outcry if a Venezuelan plot to overthrow the U.S. government were discovered. Human intelligence sources in Venezuela and Washington told STRATFOR April 14 that the Central Intelligence Agency and the U.S. State Department may have been involved separately in the events that took place in Caracas between April 5 and April 13. If the information is correct, the reinstatement of President Hugo Chavez less than 48 hours after he was toppled by a civilian-military coup could have disastrous implications for the Bush administration's policy in Latin America. ... Our sources in Venezuela and the United States report that the CIA had knowledge of, and possibly even supported, the ultra-conservative civilians and military officials who tried unsuccessfully to hijack interim President Pedro Carmona Estanga's administration. Sources in Venezuela identified this group as including members of the extremely conservative Catholic Opus Dei society and military officers loyal to retired Gen. Ruben Rojas, who also is a son-in-law of former President Rafael Caldera. Caldera, who governed from 1969 to 1973 and from 1994 to 1998, founded the Christian Democratic Copei party. STRATFOR's sources say this ultra-conservative group planned to launch a coup against the Chavez regime on Feb. 27, but the action was aborted at the last minute as a result of strong pressure from the Bush administration, which warned publicly that it would not support or recognize any undemocratic efforts to oust Chavez. Separately, STRATFOR's sources report, the State Department was quietly supporting the moderate center-right civilian-military coalition that sought Chavez's resignation by confronting his increasingly authoritarian regime with unarmed, peaceful people power. The April 11 protest by nearly 350,000 Venezuelans was the largest march against any government in Venezuela's history, and even without violence the momentum likely would have continued building in subsequent days. U.S. policymakers who supported the civic groups seeking Chavez's departure believed their numbers eventually would reach a sufficiently large critical mass to force a change in Chavez's policies or even trigger a regime change. However, the violence that killed 15 people and injured 350 -- including 157 who suffered gunshot wounds inflicted by pro-Chavez government security forces and civilian militia members -- united the previously leaderless and disarticulated center-right opposition and gave moderates in the armed forces what they perceived as a legitimate reason to oust Chavez immediately. Sources in this center-right group tell STRATFOR that the videotapes of pro-Chavez gunmen firing indiscriminately into the front ranks of marching protesters were "more than enough" to legally justify a regime change. The conservative civilian-military group timed its coup-within-a -coup perfectly, using Carmona's swearing-in ceremony as the platform from which to hijack what was supposed to be a moderate center-right transition government -- a government that would reach out to the moderate left that is led by former Interior and Justice Minister Luis Miquilena. STRATFOR's sources inside this group report that 23 members of the president's Fifth Republic Movement block in the National Assembly had committed late April 11, after the violence, to vote for Chavez's removal from power. Additionally, given that Vice President Diosdado Cabello was responsible for organizing and coordinating the Bolivarian Circles from Miraflores presidential palace, it was felt that he and other senior Chavez regime officials could have been removed legally from the government with the help of Miquilena's votes in the National Assembly and his strong influence over the Supreme Court. However, Carmona Estanga destroyed that possibility and irreparably fractured the center-right coalition that named him to the presidency when he announced the dissolution of the National Assembly, fired the entire Supreme Court and sacked the attorney general, comptroller general and the public defender, who were appointed by Chavez. The dissolution of the National Assembly was repudiated unanimously by every political and civic organization in the country. The powerful Venezuelan Workers Confederation promptly withdrew its support from Carmona without making any announcements in that regard, STRATFOR sources said, and the tenuous anti-Chavez coalition within the armed forces collapsed almost immediately. Moreover, tensions between the moderate and mainly army faction led by Gen. Efrain Vasquez Velasco and the ultra-conservatives flared rapidly as the right-wingers, through the new interim defense minister, sought to break up Vasquez Velasco's base of support within the army by transferring some his key associates to other commands. The picture painted by STRATFOR's sources in Venezuela and the United States is of two parallel U.S. operations that were executed separately by the State Department and CIA. While the State Department sought discreetly and quasi-officially to support the anti-Chavez moderates in an effort to build a viable political center, the CIA was at least aware of the ultra-conservative plot to hijack Carmona's short-lived presidency. If the sources are correct, the Bush administration's carefully laid plans soon may backfire. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 02:37:14 PM | link A DELUGE OF POGO Brad Leithauser reviews an 11-volume Pogo reprint edition from Fantagraphics. On the political nature of the strip: ... To a child's imagination, Pogo was initially forbidding for a second reason, in addition to the strip's cacophony: Kelly was a political cartoonist. His crusading side burgeoned in the early Fifties. From the strip's beginnings, Pogo had commented on world events far beyond the Okefenokee Swamp, but it was Kelly's disgust with Joe McCarthy that propelled him onto a towering soapbox. McCarthy abruptly materialized one day in the Okefenokee Swamp, transformed into the shotgun-wielding wildcat Simple J. Malarkey. Here was a new sort of bully and thug. Previously, villains in the pastoral Swamp had seemed too bumbling to be threatening. Not so with Malarkey, who right away exuded a violent, arresting nastiness. Even when he was covered in tar, Malarkey's malignity was unmistakable. It was for strips of this incendiary sort that Pogo was occasionally dropped or censored by conservative newspapers, or moved to the editorial page. Kelly remained undaunted. Other thinly disguised, caustic caricatures eventually appeared: Nixon (as a spider), Agnew (a hyena), Castro (a seedy goat), J. Edgar Hoover (a bulldog). If the targets shifted with time, the outlook remained resolute and unsparing. When Kelly's health failed him toward the end of his life, he became increasingly dependent on collaborators and assistants. But his eye remained sharp, his outrage fresh. (In his staunch liberalism, Kelly reminds us of a curious anomaly. While the satirical novel belongs largely to a vibrant tradition of indignant conservatism-Swift, Waugh, Wodehouse, Kingsley Amis, et al.-a different sensibility reigns among cartoonists. The funny pages haven't provided a congenial home to conservatives-Al Capp, creator of L'il Abner, became a predictable blowhard when his politics veered rightward-and it's perhaps no coincidence that the sharpest strip currently going, Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World, seems the work of an unapologetic Sixties lefty.) ... I've been picking up various older collections for years. This'll allow me to me more of a Pogo completist. Another Fantagraphics reprint of interest (at least to this writer) is "Little Nemo in Slumberland" (unfortunately sold out), of which I recently obtained a fat, huge hardback collection. This ran from 1905 to 1911, with the art and even conception putting damned near everything else since to shame. There's also a nifty collection of Krazy Kat, whose creator George Herriman was influenced just a wee bit by Nemo's Winsor McCay. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 01:35:47 PM | link VENEZUELAN PLOTTERS WERE "TERRORIST SCHOOL" GRADS SOAW tells how those in charge of the aborted coup in Venezuela were graduates of the School of the Americas, i.e. the school for terrorists at Fort Benning, Georgia. Army Commander in Chief Efrain Vasquez and General Ramirez Poveda, two of the major military backers of a transitional government, received training at the notorious US Army School of the Americas (SOA). Vasquez attended the school from January 23rd to December 2nd, 1988, taking a course called "Command and General Staff Officer Training". General Ramirez took a course called "Auto Maintenance Officer Training" from May 8th to August 11th, 1972. ... The SOA, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC), is a combat training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. SOA graduates are consistently involved in human rights abuses and atrocities throughout Latin America. SOA Watch is still researching, with concern, the events in Venezuela. The involvement of SOA trained militaries follows a clear pattern in Latin America. Former Congressperson Joseph Kennedy, stated "the US Army School of the Americas...is a school that has run more dictators than any other school in the history of the world." In total, the school has produced at least eleven Latin American dictators. Its graduates include, among others, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, Major General Guillermo Rodriguez (who overthrew Ecudor's elected government and became dictator), Major General Juan Velasco (who did the same in Peru), Lieutenant General Roberto Viola and Lieutenant General Leopoldo Galtieri (responsible for Argentina's "Dirty War"), Bolivian General Hugo Banzer Suarez (who despite murdering labor leaders and opposition politicians and sheltering a Nazi war criminal, was honored as a member of the SOA Hall of Fame in 1988), Major General Guido Vildoso (military dictator of Bolivia), Brigadier General Juan Melgar Castro (military dictator of Honduras), and José Efraín Montt (dictator of Guatemala). In anattempt to diffuse public criticism and to disassociate the school from its reputation the Pentagon renamed the SOA in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation. SOA Watch maintains that the underlying purpose of the school, to control the economic and political systems of Latin America through aiding and influencing Latin American militaries, remains the same. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 11:40:32 AM | link THE OTHER LIQUID If wars won't be fought over oil in the Middle East, they'll be fought over water. A Gulf News article tells how water is one reason Israel wants the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ... Titled "Palestine Waters: A Struggle for the Overground and Underground Water", Sha'ath's paper said that Israel has not only occupied the Arab land, but also seized their water supply and other natural resources. "Israel is also desperate to deplete and destroy such resources, although they are very scarce," Sha'ath said, noting that Israel has started destroying a number of water wells since September 2000. Sha'ath stressed that 85 per cent, or 483 million cubic metres, of underground water in the West Bank is being exploited by the Israelis. "Israel also draws 50 million cubic metres of water from Gaza Strip," he said, adding that this covers 25 per cent of Israel's water consumption. He said Israel has also been exploiting the water resource of the Jordan river at a much higher degree than that allowed by the Johnston Plan. He said the Palestinian Authority has been struggling to win rights over these water resources, as provided for in the Fourth Geneva Convention which states that "the use of water by the occupier is illegal". Dr. Mohmed Ghanayem provides further data on the use and misuse of water in the occupied territories. Most colonies are built on confiscated Palestinian agricultural or communal grazing lands which has led to the uprooting of thousands of fruit trees and, as a result of the reduction in land cover, has increased soil erosion. From the time of signing of the Oslo I Accords in September 1993 to October 2000, Israel uprooted over 77,350 fruit trees, confiscated 262,600 hectares of land and bulldozed 7,250 hectares in the process of expanding West Bank colonies and opening new roads to serve the Israeli settlers. Israeli colonies in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip consume unsustainable amounts of scarce Palestinian water resources. While the annual per capita Palestinian domestic / urban / commercial / industrial / tourist water demand is estimated to be between 20-30 cubic meters per year, an Israeli uses an average 125 cubic meters per year. While Palestinians are struggling to connect the remaining 25% of the population in Palestine to household water distribution systems, Israeli colonies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip receive a continuous water supply, largely from wells within the Palestinian territories. During the dry summer periods, Palestinian communities are left without water for extended periods of time. In contrast, nearby Israeli colonies receive a continuous supply, sufficient to keep their lawns green and their swimming pools in use. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 11:32:39 AM | link MORALS OF THE BROTHEL Larry Elliott writes most entertainingly on the myth of free trade. George Bush did us all a favour when he slapped tariffs on imported steel. Unintentionally perhaps, he shed light on the west's dirty little secret: free trade is a myth, a confidence trick, a grand illusion. The duties were evidence that the United States, like the European Union, Japan and Canada, are avid supporters of the ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, but only when it means liberalising the markets of smaller and weaker countries, not their own. Bush's kow-towing to the lobbying power of the steel-producing states has led to the strangest alliance since Hitler and Stalin hopped into bed together in 1939, with the anti-globalisation movement hailing the president as a born-again protectionist. As with the Nazi-Soviet pact, this marriage is unlikely to last long. The idea that America will stop trying to prise open foreign markets for US goods is absurd. There is no more chance of that happening now than there was of Britain recanting in the first age of globalisation at the end of the 19th century. Why? Because the way the world's trading system works has little to do with ideology and everything to do with power. The strong are only interested in free trade when it suits themselves. No question, Europe has a strong case over steel. European producers have accepted the pain of restructuring, but will now be frozen out of the US market by the decision to subsidise inefficient plants. But hang on: isn't this the same EU that operates the grand-pappy of all protectionism, the common agricultural policy, which uses colossal subsidies to keep lower-cost producers out of the European market? And, just in case you are tempted to think that the extra £15 a week we pay on our food bills is worth it to keep those Greek olive groves tended and to ensure that the goats cheese appears on those market stalls in Gascony, think again. The bulk of the subsidies are swallowed up not by small farmers but by Europe's giant agri-businesses. Moreover, it was these special interest groups - every bit as powerful as the US steel lobby - which ensured that even when Europe's trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, took the step of proposing duty free access to the EU for all goods except arms from the world's poorest nations, full and immediate implementation was blocked by the rice, sugar and banana barons. For all that, Lamy's initiative was at least a step in the right direction. It recognised that trade is a vital tool in spreading prosperity to poor countries, but will only be effective in doing so if the rules are changed. At the moment, the rich countries act just like the patriarchs of Victorian London, demanding the highest moral standards of their servants but slipping out after dark to debauch themselves in brothels. ... Successful countries develop industrial strength before they fully open up their markets. This is what America did. As Oxfam noted in its report last week*, if the founding fathers had listened to Adam Smith they would still be tilling the fields, leaving manufacturing to Britain. Instead, the US industrialised in the 19th century behind hefty tariff barriers. "I don't know much about the tariff," said Abraham Lincoln, "but I do know if I buy a coat in America, I have a coat and America has the money." ... posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 11:11:00 AM | link STATE DEPARTMENT PUTS FOOT IN MOUTH Here are the especially entertaining parts of the State Department's April 12 press release about the attempted coup in Venezuela. Recall that this was released before the counter-coup that put Chavez back in office, i.e. the counter-coup driven by the replacement puppet's attempting to abolish the Supreme Court, the legislature and the constitution. In recent days, we expressed our hopes that all parties in Venezuela, but especially the Chavez administration, would act with restraint and show full respect for the peaceful expression of political opinion. ... We have every expectation that this situation will be resolved peacefully and democratically by the Venezuelan people in accord with the principles of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. The essential elements of democracy, which have been weakened in recent months, must be restored fully. So now we have a good idea what the Bush Cabal doesn't consider to be "essential elements of democracy." posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 10:57:54 AM | link CHAVEZ IS BACK The Independent tells of a counter-coup in Venezuela that's put the twice-elected Hugo Chavez back in office. Venezeula's ousted leader, Hugo Chavez, was returned to office yesterday after military loyalists entered Miraflores, the presidential palace, and deposed his temporary replacement. The next excerpt very much belies the bullshit that was being uttered by Ari Fleischer and the other pathological liars in the Bush Cabal when they thought that Chavez was out. Pedro Carmona, the business leader whom the generals had picked to head an interim government, changed places with Mr Chavez after barely a day in office, and is now in military custody, awaiting charges. His haste to abolish the constitution, the Supreme Court and the legislature alienated even some outspoken opponents of Mr Chavez within the Catholic Church, the military and business. That is, the IMF and the rest of the usual suspects were attempting to replace the "evil, antidemocratic" Hugo Chavez for raising taxes on the oil companies, and the first actions of his "democratic" successor were to attempt to abolish those horribly undemocratic institutions the Supreme Court, the constitution and the legislature. It took less than a day for the true colors of these plotters to appear. And now for some further details you're not going to find on the "liberal" evening news: With the American State Department declaring that Mr Chavez had provoked his own demise, many saw the fingerprints of the CIA on such a rapid regime change. Mr Chavez's cosy relations with Cuba, Libya, Iran and Iraq annoyed Washington even more than his tacit support for Colombia's Marxist guerrillas across the border. Conservative Venezuelan exiles in Florida, governed by President George Bush's brother Jeb, have been funnelling funds to the Chavez opposition for years. The crisis came to a head when Venezuela's largest business and labour groups called a general strike in sympathy with a protest by managers at the state oil monopoly. Analysts say the decision to topple Mr Chavez was taken six months ago by disgruntled officers in the Venezuelan navy and air force. Many resented that the President's "Bolivarian Revolution" required the military to take on mundane civic duties such as child care. Rather than a spontaneous popular uprising to get rid of a despot, this was a carefully orchestrated effort, co-ordinating military dissidents with oil strikers and the leading business and labour organisations. What was spontaneous was the backlash against the coup when even its supporters realized before it was too late what a stupid and very wrong thing it was. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 10:31:43 AM | link TRADING WITH THE ENEMY Holger Jensen writes of selective prosecution of those "trading with the enemy", i.e. Cuba. Earlier this month a Canadian salesman and his two American bosses were convicted of trading with the enemy by selling Cuba $2.1 million worth of resins used to purify water. Their indictment charged the Pennsylvania-based Bro-Tech Corp. and its three executives with arranging the embargo-busting sales through intermediaries in Canada, Mexico, Spain, Italy and Britain. The case of the Canadian, James Sabzali, 43, is particularly interesting for two reasons - (1) he is the only foreign national ever prosecuted for violating the United States? 1919 Trading with the Enemy Act and (2) some of the alleged violations occurred while he was still living in Canada. Seven of the 21 counts of which he was convicted involve sales he made from his Ontario home before moving to Bro-Tech's headquarters in suburban Philadelphia. Other counts involve sales made by his Canadian successor. Although Sabzali did not travel to Cuba after becoming a U.S. resident in 1996, he was held accountable for travel vouchers he approved for the Canadian salesman. After his conviction by a Philadelphia jury, the shocked Sabzali was fitted with an ankle bracelet which he has to wear until his sentencing June 28. He also had to surrender the deed to his house and his Canadian passport, along with those of his wife and children. He faces a maximum sentence of 205 years in prison and over $5 million in fines, though federal prosecutors have indicated they will settle for a prison term of 37 to 41 months without parole. His two American co-defendants, Stefan and Donald Brodie, face 41 to 51 months in prison and $9.3 million in fines. Okay, so that's what you can expect if you attempt to do business with evil, evil Cuba. Right? Not quite. Coke and Pepsi, Guess Jeans, Nabisco foods, Phillip Morris and R.J. Reynolds cigarettes, Campbell soups, Gerber baby foods, Kodak film, Colgate toothpaste, Max Factor cosmetics and a host of other American products from Tabasco sauce to Zenith television sets are openly sold in Cuba's government-controlled stores. In fact, more than 3,000 American trademarks are registered in Cuba. So if a hapless Canadian can be locked up for trading with the enemy, why aren't the CEOs of some of our largest corporations behind bars? Sabzali's big sin was most likely not making sufficient or any political contributions, along with having a foreign-sounding name, of course. By the way, he was selling water purification equipment, the last key piece the Cuban war machine needed before it could successfully invade the U.S. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 10:09:13 AM | link LAMP An old friend sends an interesting note concerning the popularity of open source: I was reading a jobs list for Perl programmers and I noticed a requirement for working in a "LAMP environment": turns out that this is "Linux Apache MySQL PHP" and if you look at the job market these days, LAMP (whether they use the term or not) is actually a huge growth area. Anything web/SQL is also hugely important (has been, but only growing more important. it didn't seem LAMP was this intense, say one year ago). posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 09:50:36 AM | link PALAST ON VENEZUELA A prediction by Greg Palast concerning the very recent events in Venezuela. This interview is dated March 4, and he's talking about the standard parts of the IMF "economic liberalization" program. GP: Well, in Part 4, you end up again with the taking apart of the government. And by the way, the real Part 4 is the coup d'etat. That's what they are not telling you. And I'm just finding that out in Venezuela. I just got a call from the President of Venezuela. AJ: And they install their own corporate government. GP: What they said was here you've got an elected president of the government and the IMF has announced, listen to this, that they would support a transition government if the president were removed. They are not saying that they are going to get involved in politics - they would just support a transition government. What that effectively is is saying we will pay for the coup d'etat, if the military overthrows the current president, because the current president of Venezuela has said no to the IMF. He told those guys to go packing. They brought their teams in and said you have to do this and that. And he said, I don't have to do nothing. He said what I'm going to do is, I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations because we have a whole lot of oil in Venezuela. And I'm going to double the taxes on oil corporations and then I will have all the money I need for social programs and the government - and we will be a very rich nation. Well, as soon as they did that, they started fomenting trouble with the military and I'm telling you watch this space: the President of Venezuela will be out of office in three months or shot dead. They are not going to allow him to raise taxes on the oil companies. posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 09:47:24 AM | link WHATCHA BENCHIN'? Having gotten back to 225 in just six workouts after not free benching for about two years, I've decided to go for 300 again on the bench press. I did it a day before I hit 40, so let's see if I can do it before I hit 43 in mid-July. The key this time, as it was last time, is to hit the bench press only after a half hour on one of the aerobics machines (the knees aren't so cooperative with the distance running thing any more), and another hour or so on various weight machines. That way, if you're struggling at, say, 285 after the hour and a half of other stuff, you can go in a couple of days later and get 305 or so relatively easily. The alcohol consumption being less than half of what it was 3 years ago will probably help out as well. A coveted "No Prize" to whoever identifies the reference in the title, and another for identifying the origin of "No Prize." posted by Steven Baum 4/15/2002 09:09:55 AM | link

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