By Gideon Levy
Haaretz
December 18, 2008 Kislev 21, 5769 Continue reading
Day: December 18, 2008
Frank Donaghue: Dasht-e-Leili Mass Grave + Mass graves still unguarded
Investigative reports by McClatchy newspapers, as well as PHR’s own findings, have revealed that large sections of the Dasht-e-Leili mass grave in Northern Afghanistan have been dug up and removed.
The Destabilization of Congo
Wayne Madsen: Ethnic divisions are being stoked by client states of the US who arm both sides Continue reading
Last Ditch Effort… by Cindy Sheehan
by Cindy Sheehan
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Cindy Sheehan for Congress
December 18, 2008
On Monday, I sent an e-mail announcing that the Cindy for Congress campaign organization was closing its doors. In response, I received a flood of replies begging me not to give up.
Believe me, I do not want to give up. As noted in that e-mail, I will continue to do what I can, while also trying to keep life and limb together. I’ve lived in tents and on couches before because my commitment to the cause is greater than my financial resources. And, yes, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to stay in the game if you, my supporters, are able to help provide some of the necessary resources.
Given that we literally are within days of losing our office space, having the electricity turned off and so on, if we’re going to save the Cindy for Congress campaign, we need to act now.
Of course, this plea comes at the worst time of year. Thanks to the failed economic policies of this and past administrations, we’re all financially strapped. Yet holiday traditions call for spending more money than usual. Now, here I am, hat-in-hand, literally begging for money and other resources.
Before you delete this message, let me give you a breakdown of what it costs to keep the Cindy for Congress campaign running. If you’ll read the next few paragraphs, you’ll see that even little donations have a huge impact on our ability to keep the doors open.
Mosaic News – 12/17/08: World News from the Middle East
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
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“Shoe-Tossing Journalist Held in an Undisclosed Location,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Arab Countries Voice Concern Over Iran’s Nuclear Program,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Israel Welcomes UN Security Council Resolution,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Worst Road Accident in Israel’s History,” IBA TV, Israel
“Farmers Prevented from Sending Milk to Gaza,” Palestine TV, Ramallah
“Israel Prepares for Confrontation With Hezbollah,” Nile TV, Egypt
“Dubai Film Festival Promotes Dialogue,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
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China and The Financial Crisis by Andrew Hughes
by Andrew Hughes
Global Research, December 17, 2008
With the waves of destruction brought about by the Global Financial Meltdown there comes a defining moment of obligatory reflection. If such disaster has been visited upon the Globe, what lessons can be learned to dismantle the mechanism that brought it about in the first place?
The remedies proposed by Governments the world over are not working as every real economic indicator confirms. The eternal corrupting influence of Money on Government policies and planning have all but guaranteed that whatever methods are employed to redeem the economy from the whale’s mouth, they will be like drops of rain meeting a river. The one overwhelming factor that does not seem to be factored in to the equation is that to get oneself out of a financial mess one needs financial resources. Not the borrowed kind but the saved kind. This is where China holds an Ace.
The Best and the Brightest Led America Off a Cliff By Chris Hedges
By Chris Hedges
Truthdig
December 08, 2008 Continue reading
Joint effort – legalising marijuana
Legalising marijuana will save America at least $US 14 billion a year, says the only full-time marijuana lobbyist on Capitol Hill, Aaron Houston, from The Marijuana Policy Project.
Plundering the Congo
Wayne Madsen: Congo has fallen prey to a lot of people that want to loot its natural resources
Punk Patriot: Giftmas + Capitalism
It’s that very special time of year.
The time we climb over the bodies of the dead to get TVs from box stores.
Mosaic News – 12/16/08: World News from the Middle East
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war/violence and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Mosaic needs your help! Donate here: http://linktv.org/contribute
Court Sentences 22 to Jail for Nile Delta Riots,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“New Resolution on Mideast Peace Passes at the UN,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Israeli Troops Kill Islamic Jihad Member,” IBA TV, Israel
“Russia to ‘Donate’ 10 MiG-29 Jet Fighters to Lebanon,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Power Struggle Between Somalia’s President and Prime Minister,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Syrians and Jordanians Praise Shoe Hurler,” Syria TV, Syria
“Iraqis Still Abused in Prisons,” Baghdad TV, Iraq
“The Revival of Saudi Cinema,” Nile TV, Egypt
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
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At Last, A Date By George Monbiot
At Last, A Date
By George Monbiot
ICH
December 18, 2008
The Guardian” — 15th December 2008
For the first time, the International Energy Agency has produced a date for peak oil. And it’s not reassuring.
Can you think of a major threat for which the British government does not prepare? It employs an army of civil servants, spooks and consultants to assess the chances of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, floods, epidemics, even asteroid strikes, and to work out what it should do if they happen. But there is one hazard about which it appears intensely relaxed. It has never conducted its own assessment of the state of global oil supplies and the possibility that one day they might peak and then go into decline.
If you ask, it always produces the same response: “global oil resources are adequate for the foreseeable future.”(1) It knows this, it says, because of the assessments made by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its World Energy Outlook reports. In the 2007 report, the IEA does appear to support the government’s view. “World oil resources,” it states, “are judged to be sufficient to meet the projected growth in demand to 2030″(2); though it says nothing about what happens at that point, or whether they will continue to be sufficient after 2030. But this, as far as Whitehall is concerned, is the end of the matter. Like most of the rich world’s governments, the United Kingdom treats the IEA’s projections as gospel. Earlier this year, I submitted a Freedom of Information request to the UK’s Department for Business, asking what contingency plans the government has made for global supplies of oil peaking by 2020. The answer was as follows: “the Government does not feel the need to hold contingency plans specifically for the eventuality of crude oil supplies peaking between now and 2020.”(3)
see
London Banker: “The market has failed, and officialdom is perpetuating that failure.” By Mike Whitney
By Mike Whitney
December 18, 2008 “Information Clearinghouse”
Ever since the two Bear Stearns hedge funds defaulted 17 months ago triggering a global financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been busy putting out one fire after another. Fed chief Ben Bernanke has slashed interest rates to .25 percent, handed out billions in emergency funding to teetering insurance companies and mortgage lenders, and provided $8.3 trillion in loan guarantees to keep the financial system from collapsing. Unfortunately, nothing the Fed has done has either stabilized the markets or stopped the contagion from spreading to the broader economy where consumer spending has fallen sharply, unemployment has skyrocketed, manufacturing has slipped to a 30 year low, and housing prices have plummeted. Bernanke, the Princeton academic who is an expert on the Great Depression, is limited in his understanding of the crisis by his “monetarist” bias. He believes that the only way to fight credit contraction is by flooding the financial system with liquidity (“quantitative easing”). But this remedy focuses more on reducing the symptoms rather than curing the disease. Christopher Wood sums it up in an article in the Wall Street Journal article “The Fed is Out of Ammunition”:
“The origins of the modern conventional wisdom lies in the simplistic monetarist interpretation of the Great Depression popularized by Milton Friedman and taught to generations of economics students ever since. This argued that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Federal Reserve had been more proactive about printing money. Yet the Japanese experience of the 1990s — persistent deflationary malaise unresponsive to near zero-percent interest rates — shows that it is not so easy to inflate one’s way out of a debt bust.”
Dandelion Salad 