This is Naked Capitalism fundraising week. 771 donors have already invested in our efforts to shed light on the dark and seamy corners of finance. Join us and participate via our Tip Jar or WePay in the right column or read about why we’re doing this fundraiser and other ways to donate, such as by check, and our current target.
Special thanks to martha r, who provided a lot of links today!
Aunt Pythia’s advice mathbabe
Diabetes rates rise dramatically, CDC reports Los Angeles Times (Aquifer). Quelle surprise!
Concerns over ‘in-the-air’ Ebola BBC
Ticked Off About a Growing Allergy to Meat Science Now (Aquifer)
Air pollution in towns and cities ‘ages brains of over-50s by three years’ Daily Mail
Hormone may help protect monogamous relationships Los Angeles Times (Aquifer)
Anonymous Saved The Election? Addicting Info
France blows up at Economist cover Guardian
Thousands of Spanish police officers march against austerity (PHOTOS) RT
Israel pounds Gaza Strip from air and sea Aljazeera
Gaza braces for invasion as death toll mounts Guardian
US Continues to Blindly Back Israeli Attacks on Gaza AntiWar
US intelligence: The downfall of P4 Financial Times
Former Clinton and Bush Cabinet Members, Now Oil and Gas Lobbyists, Expect Keystone XL Green Light Steve Horn
Exclusive: New Jersey railway put trains in Sandy flood zone despite warnings Reuters
Chef Rachel Ray Has Donated $500,000 To Open An Emergency Shelter For Displaced Pets CBS
Chicago’s Dark Legacy of Police Torture Nation (Chris Manning). From the summer (actually long before that, but ignored). Chilling.
SWAT team fires semi-automatic weapons at unarmed teenage girl RT
World’s Wealthiest Lose $26 Billion as Fiscal Cliff Nears Bloomberg
In Leaked Docs, Honeywell Cites Obama Ties As Key to Anti-Union Strategy Mike Elk (Aquifer)
Don’t Worry, Hostess’ Top Executives Still Got Richer As Company Collapsed Gawker. WTF, the top brass INCREASED THEIR PAY HUGELY as the company was fling for bankruptcy??? This is a textbook case of fraudulent conveyance. The creditors’ lawyers (how about the union?) should sue the board and execs from here to kingdom come.
Help Change The Economy — Join Walmart Workers Striking On Black Friday Dave Johnson
Walmart Strikers Food Fund WePay. OWS asks you to give what you make in one hour to Walmart strikers
Corporate Action Network. How to find Walmart Black Friday events in your area
OccupySandy feeds FEMA workers: Government incompetence at its peak RT
Occupy hatches plot to destroy payday loan industry The Raw Story. Martha r saw this as anti Occupy PR and she’s correct. Notice how the author fulminates but doesn’t dispute the Debt Resistors’ Operations Manual’s suggestion. On this issue Strike Debt is 100% correct. No one pursues consumer debtors cross border. They don’t even pursue fraudsters who run $5 million cross border scams.
‘Occupy’ Doctor Had Bomb-Making Chemicals In Ridgewood Basement, Authorities Charge New Milford, NJ Patch
Bernanke Wants Looser Lending Standards in Bubble Reinflation Effort David Dayen, Firedoglake
Antidote du jour (furzy mouse):
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On the subjet of Petraeus, today’s NYT has a great OpEd from Lucian Truscott IV puncturing the balloon.
As Truscott put its very bluntly, Petraeus is a military legend is his own and the Beltways hive mind.
I’m a Viet Nam vet and my two sons are also in the military. I was drafted and put on an express train to the Tet Offensive in 1968. My son’s were smart enough to become pilots for Air Force Airlines (they couldn’t get civilian jobs to save their lives). Needless to say, we all three have some experience with Colonels and above. In our experience, as a general (no pun intended)rule they are all “legends in their own minds”. For boots on the ground (and pilots in the air) our experience is that, to paraphrase Robert DiNero (speaking to his son, C, about Sonny, the Mob Boss, in the movie A Bronx Tale): “They don’t respect them, they fear them”. As to Colonels and above, the fear part probably goes back to the beginning of time, but the the lack of respect conincides pretty much with Mr Truscutt’s narrative.
I have no military experience what-so-ever and am glad of it because the idea of taking orders from anybody makes me nauseous, although I was a certified expert marksman with a .22 caliber target rifle as a youth.
In general (again no pun intended and that was pretty funny, HDT), I can spot bullsh*t a mile away and usually hit it with one shot.
That NYTimes Op-Ed reads like somebody’s psychotic delerium. Yes, it may in fact all be true, but it presented no evidence whatsoever that it is.
That aside. And whatever the truth, if there in fact is any. This Petraeus thing only reinforces the wisdom of not paying too much attention to current events. Most of them aren’t even worth reading about, much less talking about. Even though sometimes it’s amusing to do so.
Yawn. So true. When I heard about all the excitement about Jill Kelly, I thought they were all bonking this Jill Kelly
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7117DACED6843C39
Then I find out it’s some other married chick.
whoa! now THAT is something to get excited about, generally speaking. hahaaha
c, I’t s *Rechurn on Investment* in every *Market*.
For an inside view of how the top brass actually live, please read this: http://www.stripes.com/news/petraeus-scandal-puts-four-star-general-lifestyle-under-scrutiny-1.197587
Truscott’s Op-Ed is pretty embarrassing. Not much substance there.
Truscott claims “Iraq wasn’t a real war at all,” but still blames Petraeus for not winning it.
Then there is some gratuitous bashing of Petraeus as a nerd, no real he-man, a phony.
Finally, just what is Truscott trying to say here:
“[The WWII] generals, in my humble opinion, were nearly psychotic in their drive to kill enemy soldiers and subjugate enemy nations. Thankfully, we will probably never have cause to go back to those blood-soaked days. But we still shouldn’t allow our military establishment to give us one generation after another of imitation generals who pretend to greatness on talk shows and photo spreads, jetting around the world in military-spec business jets.”
Those imitation generals seemed pretty bloodthirsty to me. 2 million dead Vietnamese, 100,000+ dead Iraqis. That’s not imitation blood.
What is amusing about the whole Betray-us affair is what is says about the incompetence of our spook shop. Here you have the spectacle of the CIA chief and a highly trained military officer having an affair and being totally clueless about how to keep their private emails secret.
Any seventh grade hacker grommet could have told the General about the encryption software TOR that was developed by the Navy. Its use would have rendered their emails fully cloaked, and it is available to anybody as a free download. Proof? The site “Silk Road” hid behind TOR for years and the DEA failed to penetrate it. The Silk Road business model? Connecting consumers of illegal drugs– Heroin,Meth and the like — with a network of dealers who deliver their product through the mail.
I’m sick and tired about Naked Capitalism’s outlandish support for the poor and low income families – given the US$26 billion collapse in the wealth of the world’s richest persons – see Bloomberg link – since the re-election of Obama and fiscal cliff that the USA and Europe are about to plunge over, would it not be better for posters to concentrate on assisting these poor rich individuals before their wealth evaporates.
With this, I’m starting a online petition to help that most endangered of species, the global 0.1% that owns 90% of the World’s wealth – how dare anyone ask these poor creatures to contribute tax, never mind undertake a honest days work.
We all know that paying social welfare to the poor and undeserving undermines global capitalism and the pursuit of a honest dollar by that much maligned class, the World’s global elite.
So shocked am I at the Bloomberg story that I’m now giving the funds that I was going to donate to NC to these poor and much maligned persons of wealth, entitlement and power – my heart bleeds for them, particularly given the fact that they are much better than the majority on this planet.
Donations in excess of US$1 million are tax deductible – no doubt my personal friend and mentor, Mitt Romney, will be one of the first to donate to these distressed souls.
If only the US Federal Government could contribute a token payment, say US$1 trillion, I’m confident this crisis will pass.
Failure to contribute will have very drastic repercussions, particularly for the 99% – you have been warned so please dig deep into your pocket if you know whats best for you!
Quit whining. Open your own charity, deduct your donations from your income, and pay all your living expenses out of the charity as business expenses.
I wish it worked like that, dude, I really do.
Isn’t that what Jill Kelley and her surgeon husband did? Why do you think it doesn’t work. The IRS isn’t going to come after them. They’re too well connected.
Whatever is given to them will be returned ten-fold, nay twenty-fold, to the people.
For by the talents these giants possess, and application of their industrious genious, will spring forth in this land the employement of millions. Ad through these million jobs that inspire, uplift and fund the full scope of workers’ dreams, donations to NC will them flow, not in the hundreds or in the thousands, but in the millions. Yes, in the millions!
Why start from the bottom, and spend and eternity building up, when you can start from the top and in a vertable instant, create a magnificence that us commoners can only see in our dreams, though we lack the talent, the determination, the industry, the vision, to make it our reality.
Yes, to give to these victims of our ignorant prejudice is to give to ourselves. If we could only have the sense to see it.
I have a plan to spend $30,000 in taxpayer money annually to feed, house, and protect each of these poor rich people. All those interested in applying should simply forward to me their names, addresses, aliases (if any) and complete documentation of their financial activities over the past 10 years or so (depending on the various statutes of limitations). Then wait for me at the local law enforcement office while I process their application. It should not take long!
You asked for a reminder: remember to pick up your urgently required new spectacles. It’s almost December :)
The Daily Mail is a rag. Any story about medical matters – (and, indeed, anything else) in the Daily Mail is likely to be little more than a journalistic invention. Try singing along with ‘The Cancer Song’ : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTu7GLfrmUI
http://www.intlawgrrls.com/2012/11/bp-guilty-plea-vindication-or-drop-in.html
What really sad, is cheap energy teechnology might have existed for some time through LENR. I think This Rossi guy is being tarred and feathered, but we will see if he can make it anyways.
http://ecat.com/
SWAT team fires semi-automatic weapons at unarmed teenage girl…and they won’t even say why. But we know why, don’t we?
To instill terror into the heart of every black citizen in Washington DC, to let them know, we can do this any time, to anyone, for no reason whatsoever. We can violate the rule of law and the constitution of the land and you can’t do anything about it. You wanna know why we’re taking pot-shots at sleeping, unarmed, teenagers? ‘Cause we mo’f*k’n can, that’s why. Whatcha gonna do about it? Now shut your mouth and do as you’re told.
Let’s go to change dot borg and initiate a petition demanding an internal investigation of the police by the police. That will really fix things.
The police brotherhoods have legal defense
funds.
The 99%, the Blacks, the Hispanics, all those
who are abused could also create a legal defense
fund. Public defenders are thr right type and they
might have connections in the legal world.
Public defenders are overloaded with cases and
work and making plea bargains (justice in America…))
Police brotherhoods and sisterhoods ldf, one is called PORAC.
http://porac.org/legal-defense-fund/
Genocidal apartheid Israel targets media center, schools and other public infrastructure.
Ongoing Israeli Offensive on Gaza: Palestinian Civilian Deaths Rise to 27, Including 10 Children and 5 Women, and 520 Wounded, Including 140 Children and 83 Women
http://www.pchrgaza.org/portal/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9006:ongoing-israeli-offensive-on-gaza-palestinian-civilian-deaths-rise-to-27-including-10-children-and-5-women-and-520-wounded-including-140-children-and-83-women-&catid=36:pc
http://rt.com/news/gaza-media-center-strike-977/
Some good pictures here, my favorite being the laughing Israeli family yukking it up as the US-funded Iron Dome missile system goes operational.
http://electronicintifada.net/content/photos-israel-relentlessly-bombs-gaza-west-bank-protests-repressed/11901
A sentiment that is echoed in the cartoon here:
http://antiwar.com/
I would say to our Israeli friends that it appears you have intensely studied and become that very thing you fear most. Your enemies have succeeded in the worst possible way.
As an ordinary American, I would ask Ms. Livni and the heirs to Yitzhak Rabin to consider carefully what is occurring. We ourselves could benefit from looking in that same mirror.
Of course Ytzhak Rabin was assassinated for carefully trying to change it, and the heirs of Ytshak Rabin are very mindful of that assassination even today, and of the fact that the search for culpability stopped at the very lowest level . . . with the disposable Oswald who did the trigger-pulling.
Our support of Israel war crimes is in keeping with daring the world to prosecute the US for its imperialistic war crimes around the world.
Israel is not the only one to become the sickness they abhor. America needs to look in a global mirror of their imperialism for the past 60+ years.
And all this because the global inherited rich that decide who we get to vote for this year, which country gets the investment capital and which does not and what religious/political zealot is promoted this week think this is a good way for humanity to be “organized” or should I snarkly say “civilized”.
“5 Inspiring True Stories For Anyone Feeling Cynical Today”
(not that people shouldn’t feel cynical, of course)
http://www.cracked.com/article_20105_5-inspiring-true-stories-anyone-feeling-cynical-today.html
It must be attitude adjustment day!
The NYT’s philosophy blog, “The Stone,” has a column up today on “How to Live Without Irony.”
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/17/how-to-live-without-irony/
I’ve been living without irony for years – after all what are a few wrinkles among friends – besides which my irony board is broken …
Re: the Debt Resistor’s Guide Article: taking advantage of the enemy’s weakness (greed, in this case) and the use of deception are classic and effective tactics in warfare, as has been known since at least Sun Tzu. If we are indeed engaged in a class war which our side is losing, then these tactics are advisable, regardless of the “morality” of it. Goldman and JPMorgan don’t seem to let scruples stop them, neither should we.
Another tactic would be to set up a bunch of companies to offer CDS protection for banks looking to off-load risk to balance their RWA for the upcoming Basel requirements (or something like that, see some link a couple days ago for details :) ). I would try to get a loan from say, Goldman to capitalize such a firm, then offer CDS to all and sundry, run the place along a bankruptcy for profit model (see Romer and Akerloff and Bill Black for details), using the gains to fund further actions against the banks (and maybe hiring one of them fancy tax lawyers like Yves was talking about).
“All politics is local” they say.
One of the most effective things the Occupy movement could do is to organize locally in each of America’s 3,141 Counties to force their local County Clerk or Registrar of Deeds to sue the TBTF banks for full payment of registration fees on all mortgages issued and thereafter transferred since MERS was established in the mid Nineties.
There are many hundreds of millions of dollars legally owed to local Counties of America that were never paid because of the legal fiction that is MERS. These Counties could use that money now, and they have every legal right to collect. It is still the law of the land that a mortgage or a transfer of a mortgage must be recorded at the local County Clerk’s offices, and a fee paid for the service.
This will not only prove devastating to the big banks, but will bring out into the open all the fraud and criminality involved in the housing market since MERS was incorporated.
It will reveal that MERS was established specifically to allow the selling of mortgages (in bundled lots and in tranches of those bundlees) to multiple investors. MERS was established to pursue real estate fraud on a nationwide scale.
The heart of the housing bubble, and its inevitable collapse, was theft — selling the same mortgage to several investors, with the lending banks then fully insuring the mortgage several times over, once for each tranche or investor.
By the time a big bank forecloses on an American home, they have often already been paid in full for its value several times over via default insurance. Getting our County Clerks to go after these thieves for unpaid mortgage registration fees will bring this whole mess out into the open, and will fully fund our struggling Counties.
What became of the case filed for the Louisiana Clerks of Court?
And wasn’t the software created at FNMA/FMAC? Double indemnity.
This sounds like a good idea. I hope it would also include suing to force the relevant parties to actually RE-REGISTER each and every deed at each and every relevant physical courthouse. Every deed de-MERSed and brought back down to physical earth is a deed restored to a realm of predictable and reliable ownership rights law.
Meanwhile, an affinity-pledge movement could be built of people who understand the issues and will refuse to buy a house which is “registered” with MERS, but will ONly buy a house whose dead-tree deed is dead-tree registered in an analog meatspace reality-world office of recorder of deeds in a real analog meatspace reality-world courthouse.
I agree and thanks for repeating this idea.
Unfortunately, if you can’t get the state AG’s to go after the corruption then what is the chance of the localities forcing the issue?
And since our head lawyer, (HOLDER) helped put MERS together, what are the chances of our bought Federal folk doing anything about their own corruption?
Rule of Law, it was such a nice concept.
Re: Chicago’s Dark Legacy of Police Torture
The Huffington Post published an article by G. Flint Taylor mainly on an alleged “code of silence” at CPD based on intimidation and/or “consequences” for those who break the alleged “code of silence”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/g-flint-taylor/chicago-police-code-of-silence_b_2132932.html
The Hughleys are now asking for answers from the FBI, but so far the authorities have stayed silent as to why they were raiding the home – SWAT team shoots unarmed girl
Nearly everyone agrees with Mr. Myerson’s observation that FBI = F- – king Ballbusting Imbiciles (who, when not busy randomly shooting and jailing without trial their unarmed and lawful neighbors for fun and profit .. pursue their primary interests of using their limitless power to enjoin their Peeping Tom procilvities with stalkiing various tab chasers)
Just made a donation to the Wal-Mart Strikers fund. NC will have to wait until my car is repaired though, sorry. And it’s public radio fundraising week too, aaarggh.
Dear diptherio;
Considering the funk into which the “National” part of NPR has sunk,(that Kroc womans’ money could have some bearing,) try giving a little to your local college radio station. They are much closer to the ground than those folks inhabiting the rarefied atmosphere of the Beltway.
I knew someone was going to say that. Thing is, my local NPR station also plays Alternative Radio (AR), and RadioLab, both of which I love. No money for All Things Considered[sic].
The college station gets a little piece of my paycheck too, in thanks for broadcasting Democracy Now!, even though the DJ who follows always plays punk music.
For RadioLab, contribute to NYC radio station that produces it for distribution via NPR.
As I understand it thought, isn’t it the local public radio stations which do the fundraising and get the raised funds? And then they turn around and buy NPR programming with the money?
I wonder how many people would want Free Speech Radio News on their public radio station if they even knew that FSRN existed. What if those people created an escrow account and put their donations in it to be released to their public radio station if it put FSRN on the air? All Things Considered takes an hour and a half. But the last half hour is a rerun of the first half hour. A station could pay the first hour of All Things Considered and then delete the last half hour rerun and play Free Speech Radio News instead . . . if enough people created a big enough escrow incentive for them to do it.
The way they work it at the local NPR station here is you can donate for a specific program. Money being fungible though, who knows if it actually ends up working out like that. Regardless, our local NPR reporters are excellent, unlike the national guys, and deserve my support for their local reporting alone.
There are lots of good radio programs that don’t get broadcast, but could. Our station runs a survey fairly often to find out what new programming listeners want to hear (and pay for). That’s how we got RadioLab. Thankfully, though, there are podcasts and you can donate directly to the program producers if you like, of course.
Folks might enjoy this as an antidote – Cheetah Raised by Humans Who Loved Her Enough to Set Her Free
Sheila Bair will be discussing her new book, Bull by the Horns, over at FireDogLake’s Book Salon today, starting @ 5 pm EST. Jamie Galbraith will be moderating.
If you miss the live event, the discussion will be up at the site, Firedoglake.com.
[I would have sent this earlier for inclusion in the “links,” but can’t find any way to do so.]
Should be fantastic!!
The demise of debt-based global capitalism, by Cordt Schnibben:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/playing-poker-with-trillions-a-prison-of-debt-on-both-sides-of-the-atlantic-a-867404.html
Excerpt:
A great bet is underway, a poker game with stakes in the trillions, between those who are buying time with central bank money and believe that they can continue as before, and the others, who are afraid of the biggest credit bubble in history and are searching for ways out of capitalism based on borrowed money.
Sorry, the above should’ve been a new entry, not a reply.
“Debts that can’t be paid, won’t be” — Dr. Michael Hudson.
The Silver Skates of BIS are into thin ice. Shill Faber says: “War Inevitable” – averring solidly: *TINA to BIS In the Sky With Diamonds*.
Pity the little children.
http://www.bis.org/about/chronology/1980-1989.htm
http://www.bis.org/about/chronology/1990-1999.htm
http://www.bis.org/about/chronology/2000-2009.htm
American Social Security *Slush Money* is required. The UK is in need.
The Der Spiegel article goes on and on about the problems of debt, how it grows and compounds and inevitably must claim every shekel for interest payments alone. No money remains for any other purpose under such a system.
The article illustrates a perfectly impossible conundrum.
Without spelling out the obvious solution — stop issuing money as debt instruments. Issue it as a medium of exchange.
Currently, each piece of paper currency issued by a Central Bank requires it be repaid as 103% or so of a piece of paper currency. You can only get that extra 3% out of the economy by injecting yet another piece of paper currency. Which in turn needs another piece to repay that one and that one needs another and soon the world is in debt three times higher than global GDP. And can’t stop there. Can’t ever stop, anywhere. Growth in debt must be infinite or “the system” folds.
(brief interlude here while widows and children starve on the streets and national armies march about blowing up and robbing from other countries before “the system” resets with new fiat currencies)
Money needs to be fiat to work in our modern world, but it DOES NOT NEED to be issued as a debt instrument. It needs to be issued by governments, not bankers, and issued as a medium of exchange only. Issue it according to the size of either national or global GDP, issue it as a supply of greenish paper that simply facilitates buying and selling between human beings, between companies, between nations.
Issue it as chicken feathers or seashells or notches in a stick or pieces of taffy or green paper notes or keystrokes on a computer but issue it as a fixed percentage of real GDP, adjusted annually. Issue it as a reliable tool for exchanging real, Main Street, human labor, creativity and production.
Not as debt instruments to be gambled with by crazed quants and money-mad bankers and traders.
Currently, each piece of paper currency issued by a Central Bank requires it be repaid as 103% or so of a piece of paper currency. You can only get that extra 3% out of the economy by injecting yet another piece of paper currency. @Antifa
Thanks Antifa for describing the conundrum so eloquently. A few of us Soddyites sometimes chime in, but the consensus on this forum remains that there’s no problem whatsoever with our engineering of money; it’s rather that, at $16T in debt, the US Government hasn’t yet issued quite enough debt or quite enough paper money to stem the explosion of personal, institutional, state and municipal debt.
Better solution than the one you propose. Issue new money as digital train or bridge tokens or Forever stamps. Backed by services in fixed denomination, but good for everything else you buy. Then you don’t have to concern yourself with GDP or inflation at all. If you overissue, you’re making valuable services cheaper. And you’re creating industrial employment with each new unit of currency issued. A bit more at sbdm.org.
Well, that’s what Charles Walters, Erhard Pfingsten, and other “parallel economists” were saying. I don’t know if Frederick Soddy ever overtly said that or not . . . as many years as it has been since I read Soddy. But yes, many “parallel economists” have said that. I believe I remember John L. King eventually calling for that and for the sharp restriction on emmission of credit and the Nationalization of all credit-emitting institutions in his book Chaos In America.
These economists have been cast into such obscurity and outer darkness that perhaps I will begin calling them the Lost Planet economists. People can nominate their favorite undeservedly-ignored economist to the ranks of the Lost Planet economists.
Re: PR piece opposing the debt thing book.
Mandi Woodruff: nice name.
From Business Insider, 21 ways Rich People
think differently [no kidding]
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-rich-people-think-differently-from-the-poor-2012-8?op=1
Atlanta Mafia: Coca-Cola.
“the top brass INCREASED THEIR PAY HUGELY as [Hostess] was filing for bankruptcy???”
But, but, but think of all the extra work the top brass had to do as the ship sank under them – calming the passengers, keeping the crew at their posts, pursuading the band to keep playing, checking out the lifeboats for the best provided and most sea-worthy and securing their places in them. Heavens! It must have taken up a couple of extra hours golfing time a week to do all that. Why shouldn’t they be remunerated for it?
Indeed. My sister got an MBA from a creepy “Christian” business school (Pepperdine; most likely the honorary degree they gave to Angelo Mozilo at the height of the sub-prime fever is still proudly displayed on their website). The revealed wisdom was that if a company was in trouble then it took more expertise or more of a toll on a CEO to shepherd the company in trying times: ergo, pay the CEO more.
However, when times were good and the company’s profits were growing, you *also* had to pay the CEO more.
The answer to any business quandary was: pay the CEO more. I asked if there were any set of conditions under which the answer was to pay the CEO less, and she confirmed—without irony or apparent cognitive dissonance—that such conditions did not exist to her knowledge.
Paul Keating: Forget the West, our future is to the North
US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton has warned Australia against making a ‘‘false choice’’ between its strong relationship with the United States and its emerging links with China.
Ms Clinton’s comments came the day after former Prime Minister Paul Keating accused the federal government of eroding Australia’s foreign policy influence by clinging to the United States alliance at the expense of its relationships with key Asian neighbours.
On Wednesday night, Mr Keating said both the Rudd and Gillard governments had made the same mistakes as the former Howard government in weakening Australia’s crucial relationships in Asia, particularly with Indonesia.
As a result, he said, Australia had been marginalised in regional diplomacy and the era had passed in which the country was an effective foreign policy activist.
In recent years the relationship with countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia has focused on ‘‘transactional issues of marginal long-term significance’’ such as refugees and live cattle exports.
‘‘Policy towards our nearest, largest neighbour, Indonesia, has languished, lacking framework, judgments of magnitude and coherence,’’ Mr Keating said.
But Ms Clinton said Australia’s relationship with the United States was ‘‘in our DNA’’.
‘‘I know there are some who present a false choice, that Australia needs to choose between its long-standing ties to the United States and its emerging links with China,’’ Ms Clinton said in Adelaide on Thursday. ‘‘Well, that kind of zero-sum thinking only leads to negative-sum results. We support Australia having strong, multi-faceted ties with every nation in the Asia Pacific, indeed in the world, including China. Just as we seek the same. And I have said repeatedly, the Pacific is big enough for all of us.
‘‘But for both of us, the US-Australia alliance is not a matter of calculation, or cost-benefit analysis, though the benefits are clear. It is much deeper than that. It is in our DNA; it is rooted in shared history and shared struggles to overcome adversity and build a better future for ourselves, our families and future generations.’’
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/clinton-warns-australia-against-false-choice-on-china-20121114-29cqk.html#ixzz2CblWe8n9
Skippy… Here, here!
“In our DNA”… barf.
“Hillary Clinton”….barf.
skippy – just DoNtAsk …
‘‘false choice’’: I’m laughing in my beard.
(Je ris dans ma barbe.)
If the Aussies are smart, they’ll put Paul Keating in charge of their future. Maybe they’ve gotten wise, and have long memories.
skippy, the “Special Relationship” of slaves to the Victorian Reich.
I remember reading very recently that some China government spokesperson said that “there can only be one Godfather. Australia will have to decide who its Godfather will be.”
Now . . . just because the ChinaGov says it, that doesn’t make it necessarily objectively true. Perhaps Australia might feel better about relations with countries which don’t advance the “only one Godfather” theory, if there are any such countries.
skippy, don’t you know that we need to keep the DNA of American imperialism pure.
Your country must help us defend the boundries of our empire at ALL costs.
Don’t you dare try to play both sides….why, how could you!
occupy doctor had “highly volatile” chemicals, and they wont disclose what?
every farmer who fertilizes with ammonium nitrate & uses diesel fuel in his tractor can be busted the same way…
(that’s a tim mcviegh bomb, FYI)
eviction of dr. rivera and his clinic from zuccotti park, 11/15/11, starting around minute 4, to around min. 12.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arV4ik0B-wo&list=PLutWiJ5_E0xhZp2D3HvzgFRW1-fccU_Pi
Yeah, very fishy that they won’t say what kind of “dangerous chemicals” they found. Kinda like, hey, we need some time to think of something good. No mention of other bomb-making materials, no half made IEDs to show the media? One would think if they had anything really damning (appartt from the assault weapons) they would have paraded it out immediately. As for the firearms, I wonder if the NRA will be rushing to his defense?
Have you ever read the opinion of the much-linked-to-around-here Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on that “tim mcviegh bomb” ? in his 1997 book titled “The Secret Life of Bill Clinton: The Unreported Stories”.
http://mondoweiss.net/2012/11/on-the-jewish-israeli-street-theres-no-solution-to-palestinian-issue-but-more-violence.html
“Who cannot observe these attitudes and wonder about the wisdom of establishing a Jewish state.”
No kidding.
EG, didn’t that area turn to glass a few thousand years ago? Maybe there’ll be a do-over? What does Sitchin say?
Bernanke Wants Looser Lending Standards in Bubble Reinflation Effort
What?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV1LzXf1TKQ
Ooops, another Palestinian family obliterated due to a technical error.
http://rt.com/news/gaza-family-idf-mistake-017/
For you, its like channeling…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=akN_2kWZXnU
The Israeli military is just trained by the same folks as our drone idiots.
We really won’t get quality killing until the military unionizes……../snark
Ah, if they would only turn on their masters. We could live with that sort of collateral damage for a bit to change our social organization, IMO.
I think that the Economist cover is the next clear tale of the future of the EU hive mind. It is all about fear and once it is out there then control becomes much easier.
Part of me sits back and says that the “old country “accepts the rich and the class system better than the US so the EU is toast unless as a collective to enforce the genocidal austerity…….another part of me sees the folks joining with the disaffected in the Arab world to start really making some noise against our current social/economic organization.
Is the pot boiling yet? What do popcorn futures look like?
Anonymous Save the Election? Enjoyed the article very much. Surprised no one posted on it. So I will add these stories.
http://www.velvetrevolution.us/newVR/index.php?q=node/41
Karl Rove Loses Election After Being Checkmated By Cyber Sleuths?
Last month, we offered a million dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone who rigged a federal election on November 6th. We urged computer experts to contact us with information about any election manipulation of the tabulation results.
We Received A Letter
On November 12th, we received a letter from “The Protectors,” apparently a group of white hat cyber sleuths, mentioning our reward and stating that two months ago, they began monitoring the “digital traffic of one Karl Rove, a disrespecter of the Rule of Law, knowing that he claimed to be Kingmaker while grifting vast wealth from barons who gladly handed him gold to anoint another King while looking the other way.”
“The Protectors” said that they had identified the digital structure of Rove’s operation and of ORCA, a Republican get out the vote software application. After finding open “doors” in the systems, they created a “password protected firewall” called “The Great Oz,” and installed it on servers that Rove planned to use on election night to re-route and change election results “from three states.”
The letter indicated that “ORCA Killer” was launched at 10am EST and “The Great Oz” at 8pm EST on November 6th. “The Protectors” watched as ORCA crashed and failed throughout Election Day. They watched as Rove’s computer techs tried 105 times to penetrate “The Great Oz” using different means and passwords.
snip
At VR, we have spent the past decade exposing flaws in the election process, especially the use of electronic voting, secret software and cyber attacks on tabulation systems. Princeton computer scientists, Argonne Laboratories experts, GOP insiders, and even the CIA have shown that electronic election manipulation is both possible and occurring.
snip
We hope that those cyber sleuths will provide that evidence to the FBI, post it publicly or send it to us to do so.
snip
As far as lessons learned, we are hopeful that those who have been skeptical and opposed to greater security in elections will now get on board in a bipartisan manner to, as President Obama said, “fix” the broken election system.
…..
http://truth-out.org/news/item/12845-anonymous-karl-rove-and-2012-election-fix
Anonymous, Karl Rove and 2012 Election Fix?
Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks
If this is true, then the implications are enormous and could take down the entire Republican Party and finally wake Americans up to the fact that our privatized vote system is shockingly flawed and insecure.
……
http://wonkette.com/489966/anonymous-claims-it-stopped-karl-rove-from-hacking-the-election-by-hacking-orca-we-think
by Rebecca Schoenkopf
…..
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/11/19/press-tv-coup-and-counter-coup-in-washington/
Coup and counter-coup in Washington
Webster G. Tarpley and Press TV
ORCA: Why the Pro-Romney Vote Fraud Did Not Materialize
Tagg Romney and his associates, many of them investors in Bain Capital, had notoriously bought control of voting machines in almost a score of states, including Ohio. What frustrated the design to steal the election? Perhaps this operation was disrupted and aborted by investigations conveniently timed and targeting some of the main pro-Romney intelligence and military figures in the rogue network.
The answer may also be related to the apparent failure of ORCA, Romney’s data-mining and data management operation, which was supposed to help GOP volunteers get out the vote, but which may have possessed additional and more sinister dimensions. But, as David Gewirtz of ZDNet wrote on November 13, ORCA “got harpooned. ORCA beached. It flopped. It died in the sun. It failed oh-so-bad.” And with it failed the hope of Romney’s backers that they could seize the White House.
Via:
http://markcrispinmiller.com/2012/11/what-really-happened-in-ohio-on-election-night/
What REALLY happened in Ohio on Election Night
Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis are the two Ohio attorneys who deposed Mike Connell, and who have otherwise been working to expose Karl Rove’s election thievery since 2004.
From Cliff:
Some hackers/spooks hacked Romney’s computers, which crippled his election day get out the vote activity. However I fail to see how this relates to Rove’s meltdown on Fox News that night.
A successful hack of the Romney campaign computers would have affected all of the operation, would have been illegal, and would have been known to Rove early on election day. So, it does not explain Rove’s dramatic disconnect over Fox’s calling Ohio for Obama at the 11 PM (EST) news hour.
The hack we discovered was limited to Ohio. Its use was coming from Bob Urosevich the same guy who personally delivered a malicious patch in Georgia 2002 which flipped the votes and outcome in their governor and US Senate races. Our exposure of the problem in court through one of the top cyber security experts in the world (so certified by NSA) occurred at about 3:15 PM on election day.
Urosevich would have been informed that the fix had been exposed and that an Ohio judge with jurisdiction had expressed willingness to adopt the corrective action recommended by our expert. He and the one operative who would have been positioned pull the trigger, instead nixed the operation. Neither of them would have been so foolish as to contact Rove to inform him that the Ohio fix was off. Rove’s communications were surely being monitored by law enforcement authorities.
Thus, Rove’s mistaken rant over Ohio being prematurely called for Obama.
Cliff Arnebeck