Tue, Jan 22 2008
LYING LIARS AND THEIR BIG FAT LIES
We all knew it, we still know it, but now eggheads prove it scientifically:
Study: False statements preceded war
WASHINGTON, Associated Press - A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."
The study was posted Tuesday on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said he could not comment on the study because he had not seen it.
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.
"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.
"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.
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On the Net:
Center For Public Integrity: http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx
Fund For Independence in Journalism: http://www.tfij.org/Tue, Jan 22 2008
JAMES KUNSTLER FOR PRESIDENT
DISARRAY
by James Howard Kunstler
The dark tunnel that the U.S. economy has entered began to look more and more like a black hole recently, sucking in lives, fortunes, and prospects behind a Potemkin facade of orderly retreat put up by anyone in authority with a story to tell or an interest to protect - Fed chairman Bernanke, CNBC, The New York Times, the Bank of America… Events are now moving ahead of anything that personalities can do to control them.
The "housing bubble" implosion is broadly misunderstood. It's not just the collapse of a market for a particular kind of commodity, it's the end of the suburban pattern itself, the way of life it represents, and the entire economy connected with it. It's the crack up of the system that America has invested most of its wealth in since 1950. It's perhaps most tragic that the mis-investments only accelerated as the system reached its end, but it seems to be nature's way that waves crest just before they break.
This wave is breaking into a sea-wall of disbelief. Nobody gets it. The psychological investment in what we think of as American reality is too great. The mainstream media doesn't get it, and they can't report it coherently. None of the candidates for president has begun to articulate an understanding of what we face: the suburban living arrangement is an experiment that has entered failure mode.
I maintain that all the "players" - from the bankers to the politicians to the editors to the ordinary citizens - will continue to not get it as the disarray accelerates and families and communities are blown apart by economic loss. Instead of beginning the tough process of making new arrangements for everyday life, we'll take up a campaign to sustain the unsustainable old way of life at all costs.
A reader sent me a passel of recent clippings last week from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It contained one story after another about the perceived need to build more highways in order to maintain "economic growth" (and incidentally about the "foolishness" of public transit). I understood that to mean the need to keep the suburban development system going, since that has been the real main source of the Sunbelt's prosperity the past 60-odd years. They cannot imagine an economy that is based on anything besides new subdivisions, freeway extensions, new car sales, and NASCAR spectacles. The Sunbelt, therefore, will be ground-zero for all the disappointment emanating from this cultural disaster, and probably also ground-zero for the political mischief that will ensue from lost fortunes and crushed hopes.
From time-to-time, I feel it's necessary to remind readers what we can actually do in the face of this long emergency. Voters and candidates in the primary season have been hollering about "change" but I'm afraid the dirty secret of this campaign is that the American public doesn't want to change its behavior at all. What it really wants is someone to promise them they can keep on doing what they're used to doing: buying more stuff they can't afford, eating more bad food that will kill them, and driving more miles than circumstances will allow.
Here's what we better start doing.
[Yes! Bravo! Read James' exactly right analysis:]
Stop all highway-building altogether. Instead, direct public money into repairing railroad rights-of-way. Put together public-private partnerships for running passenger rail between American cities and towns in between. If Amtrak is unacceptable, get rid of it and set up a new management system. At the same time, begin planning comprehensive regional light-rail and streetcar operations.
End subsidies to agribusiness and instead direct dollar support to small-scale farmers, using the existing regional networks of organic farming associations to target the aid. (This includes ending subsidies for the ethanol program.)
Begin planning and construction of waterfront and harbor facilities for commerce: piers, warehouses, ship-and-boatyards, and accommodations for sailors. This is especially important along the Ohio-Mississippi system and the Great Lakes.
In cities and towns, change regulations that mandate the accommodation of cars. Direct all new development to the finest grain, scaled to walkability. This essentially means making the individual building lot the basic increment of redevelopment, not multi-acre "projects." Get rid of any parking requirements for property development. Institute "locational taxation" based on proximity to the center of town and not on the size, character, or putative value of the building itself. Put in effect a ban on buildings in excess of seven stories. Begin planning for district or neighborhood heating installations and solar, wind, and hydro-electric generation wherever possible on a small-scale network basis.
We'd better begin a public debate about whether it is feasible or desirable to construct any new nuclear power plants. If there are good reasons to go forward with nuclear, and a consensus about the risks and benefits, we need to establish it quickly. There may be no other way to keep the lights on in America after 2020.
We need to prepare for the end of the global economic relations that have characterized the final blow-off of the cheap energy era. The world is about to become wider again as nations get desperate over energy resources. This desperation is certain to generate conflict. We'll have to make things in this country again, or we won't have the most rudimentary household products.
We'd better prepare psychologically to downscale all institutions, including government, schools and colleges, corporations, and hospitals. All the centralizing tendencies and gigantification of the past half-century will have to be reversed. Government will be starved for revenue and impotent at the higher scale. The centralized high schools all over the nation will prove to be our most frustrating mis-investment. We will probably have to replace them with some form of home-schooling that is allowed to aggregate into neighborhood units. A lot of colleges, public and private, will fail as higher ed ceases to be a "consumer" activity. Corporations scaled to operate globally are not going to make it. This includes probably all national chain "big box" operations. It will have to be replaced by small local and regional business. We'll have to reopen many of the small town hospitals that were shuttered in recent years, and open many new local clinic-style health-care operations as part of the greater reform of American medicine.
Take a time-out from legal immigration and get serious about enforcing the laws about illegal immigration. Stop lying to ourselves and stop using semantic ruses like calling illegal immigrants "undocumented."
Prepare psychologically for the destruction of a lot of fictitious "wealth" - and allow instruments and institutions based on fictitious wealth to fail, instead of attempting to keep them propped up on credit life-support. Like any other thing in our national life, finance has to return to a scale that is consistent with our circumstances - i.e., what reality will allow. That process is underway, anyway, whether the public is prepared for it or not. We will soon hear the sound of banks crashing all over the place. Get out of their way, if you can.
Prepare psychologically for a sociopolitical climate of anger, grievance, and resentment. A lot of individual citizens will find themselves short of resources in the years ahead. They will be very ticked off and seek to scapegoat and punish others. The United States is one of the few nations on earth that did not undergo a sociopolitical convulsion in the past hundred years. But despite what we tell ourselves about our specialness, we're not immune to the forces that have driven other societies to extremes. The rise of the Nazis, the Soviet terror, the "cultural revolution," the holocausts and genocides - these are all things that can happen to any people driven to desperation.
Regards,
James Howard Kunstler
for The Daily ReckoningTue, Jan 22 2008
HOW BAD WAS IT? DON'T PANIC, SEZ WORLD GOOBERMINTS
Overnight action was bloody.
Governments urge calm in face of market turmoil
PARIS (AFP) - Leaders in Asia and Europe appealed for calm Tuesday and called for international cooperation in the face of a galloping global meltdown on world stock markets sparked by fears of a US recession.
Asian markets experienced a day of heavy losses, with Hong Kong share prices suffering their biggest ever one-day slide, closing down 8.7 percent.
Markets in Europe also suffered sharp sell-offs in early deals but were later able to slow the slide ahead of the opening of trade on Wall Street.
"We must be very calm in face of the fallout from a financial crisis in the United States ... and ensure more transparency in the international financial system," French President Nicolas Sarkozy insisted.
In Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel, seeking to shore up sentiment, declared there was no danger of a recession in Europe.
"There is no reason to believe there will be a recession in Europe or in Germany," Merkel told NDR-Info radio.
The chancellor said the government of Germany, Europe's biggest economy, was doing everything in its power to try to calm the markets.
"Europe is an anchor of stability in the world economy," Merkel said.
German Economy Minister Michael Glos made a similar plea, saying the economies of Germany and the eurozone countries were fundamentally strong.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown struck a similar note, with his spokesman saying Britain would do "everything in its power to maintain economic stability."
The country is "well placed to withstand this uncertainty in the global economy," he said, while adding that the government will remain "vigilant" about what is "clearly a global phenomenon."
Britain, home to one of the world's main financial hubs in the City of London, is grappling with the fallout from the US-triggered global credit crunch, including the first run on a bank in a century last year.
The European Commission's top economic official, Joaquin Almunia, called on the United States to tackle its deficits, which he said were the root cause of financial market turmoil.
"The current account deficit and the public deficit are the root cause of the turbulence," Almunia told reporters. "Thats not the only reason but I think its the basic cause.
"As regards the response of the US authorities, any measure that they adopt should be aimed at reducing the external deficit and the fiscal deficit," he added.
In Japan, Hiroko Ota, minister for economic and fiscal policy, said the government saw no need for now to intervene to halt the rout.
"Stock markets across the world are falling and it basically stems from the United States," she told reporters, before Japanese share prices tumbled 5.65 percent to a 28-month low.
"It is difficult at the moment to mull action by Japan alone. Instead, we should cooperate globally," she said.
An economic stimulus package of tax cuts and other measures announced by President George W. Bush on Friday has failed to allay concerns about the health of the world's number-one economy.
Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram, whose country's shares lost more than seven percent in early afternoon trade, urged investors to ignore the West's financial woes.
"My advice to investors is to stay calm," he said.
"Corporate profits are high, corporate income tax is at an all-time high in terms of growth. There's no reason at all to allow the worries of the Western world to overwhelm us," Chidambaram told reporters.
Australian share prices plunged 7.1 percent Tuesday in the biggest one-day fall since October 1997 but the government said the country was likely to be able to weather the storm.
"We are well placed to ride out the turbulence that flows from events in the United States, even though we are not immune from it," said Treasurer Wayne Swan.
"The prospects for ongoing growth in Asia and the developing markets are assisting us to withstand the fallout occurring elsewhere."Tue, Jan 22 2008
PPT PANIC SAVES THE DAY
Wow! Markets around the world were in total freefall (Asia was FREAKING out, amazing losses!), and it looked like the US markets would follow suit right off the cliff. Doomed - doomed, I tell you!
But fear not, citizens! The Ninja Superfriends are, as previously reported, in total panic mode and cannot allow the obvious (and necessary) corrections to occur! Oh, no, we can't let the market fix itself - we have to give a credit-addicted system more heroin, stat!
So Hank, Ben, Chris and Walt put their fevered brows together and decided to fire half their remaining avalanche-management ammo all at once. In an historic move, they declared an 'emergency' action and dropped rates .75 points! That's right, campers, the Fed is now giving away free money!
Too bad you don't get any of it, just the bankers!
Now kids, this does nothing for the underlying problems. They are all still there. But who cares about tomorrow? Today, ah, today - TODAY the market is okay, and you can still sell off your junk stocks at an okay price. Take advantage of the gift, and bail out while you have one last chance,
It's the only real gift you'll get from the PPT Ninjas.
Stocks plunge on recession fears
NEW YORK, Associated Press - An unusual emergency interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve gave Wall Street a partial rebound Tuesday from a precipitious early decline — and perhaps the first steps toward a long-term recovery. The rest of the comeback, for the economy as well as the stock market, may depend on a turnaround in the battered housing market and renewed confidence among U.S. consumers.
The Dow Jones industrial average, down 465 points shortly after trading began, fluctuated throughout the session before closing with a milder drop of 128.11, or 1.06 percent, at 11,971.19, according to preliminary calculations.
U.S. stocks began the day by following the lead of markets abroad that had plummeted for two straight days, and also extended their own steep losses from last week. Fears of a U.S. recession — one that would spread to other economies — had investors fleeing stocks worldwide.
The Fed, in a move anticipated by many traders, moved before the opening of U.S. trading, cutting its benchmark federal funds rate by 0.75 percentage point. The Dow and other major indexes then spent the day fluctuating violently, at times approaching the break-even point before heading down again.
The fact stocks didn't continue their plunge was a positive sign — but economists and analysts said a full recovery wasn't likely in the near term.All news articles and images provided under the Fair Use Notice.