by Monolycus

I’m not a legal scholar, of course, but I was always under the impression that the study and application of law and judicial processes was somehow different than "making up shit as you go".

Consider the latest in a string of Grand Inquisi– um, Attorney Generals, Michael Mukasey.  He remarked on Thursday that the US cannot investigate the intelligence community for employing the (clearly) torture technique of waterboarding because, apparently now, the Justice department had ruled in "…2002 and 2003 (that it) was legal, and therefore the department cannot investigate whether a crime had occurred."  He states that "That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice."

Now, while his predecessor Alberto Gonzalez, became notorious for his inability to remember anything that did happen, it seems that Mukasey has the opposite affliction and is remembering things which never actually occured.

During his confirmation hearings in 2007 (4-5 years after the imaginary 2002-2003 DOJ torture greenlight he referenced last Thursday), he stated that he had no opinion about its legality (strongly implying that, at that date, the DOJ had given no such advice as Mukasey referred to on Thursday). As a matter of fact, a good part of his grudging confirmation was based on the idea that this was, as of 2007, still an open question and that Mukasey would find his humanity in his sock drawer at some undisclosed date after he occupied the office:

Cont. reading: MiniLuv Says Torture Has Always Been Legal

Mosul is for some time now a hotbed of resistance activities in Iraq.

It is the capital of the Ninawa Governorate near to the Kurdish area in north Iraq. It lies on both sides of the Tigris with five bridges connection these parts. At least two of these bridges have earlier been under attack. Mosul has nearly 2,000,000 inhabitants.

Maliki has ordered a huge offensive against Mosul involving a three brigade size (10,000-15,000 troops) force of Iraqi government troops and U.S. support (likely one brigade – 3,500 troops).

The attack will start in the next few days.

Yesterday someone took out eight cellphone towers in Mosul by setting them ablaze. This will certainly be a problem for the government forces who do not have good internal communication equipment yet and depend to least to some part on cellphone communication.

This attack on the telco towers comes the same day the Washington Post reports on a change in tactics of the Baathist resistance in Iraq (WaPo says ‘Al-Qaida in Iraq’, but I agree with Scott Ritter that AQI is to a large part "a con game being run by Izzat al-Douri and the Sunni resistance.")

WaPo:

The insurgent group is now reaching out to disaffected Sunni tribal leaders in a bid to win back their support, even as it attacks Sunnis working closely with the Americans, according to Abdullah Hussein Lehebi, an emir from the Amiriyah section of Anbar south of Fallujah. "In exchange, we would not target them again and would respect the authority of the tribal leaders," he said in an interview with a Post special correspondent at a date orchard near the Euphrates River in Amiriyah.

Lehebi, 47, whose nom de guerre is Abu Khalid al-Dulaimi, said the group’s main focus now was to attack bridges, oil pipelines and telephone towers, as well as U.S. troops and their Sunni allies.

This report of a change in resistance tactics is supported by a piece Juan Cole excerpts today. Arab Intelligence Organizations Hold Secret Meeting To Confront Shiites In Iraq. Coles summary:

The USG Open Source Center translates a report from the Iranian Fars News Agency that summarizes an article in the Iraqi newspaper al-Bayanat al-Jadidah claiming that Sunni Arab intelligence agencies recently met in Amman to discuss ways of undermining the Shiite government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and of replacing al-Qaeda commanders in Iraq with Sunni fighters more acceptable to the locals.

While the meeting might well have taken place, I doubt that the Arab intelligence services have the control and means to change resistance leaders in Iraq at will. (At the same time another Arab ministerial level meeting in Tunis just agreed on an all out media shutdown of resistance reporting.)

But the essence of both, the WaPo AQI interview and the Fars report, is the change in the tactical approach of the resistance towards other Sunni’s. The ending of attempts to impose Wahabbi style religious stricture on Sunni Iraqi tribes and a renewed emphasis on infrastucture attacks.

This is then the timely end of the suicide campaign run by Abu Omar al-Baghdadi which was ordered in early December and supposed to end on January 29.

That ‘unification’ campaign by the takfiiri side of the resistance targeted Sunni tribes and was to discourage especially some (temporarily) U.S. paid ‘Awakening Councils’ to split away from the resistance for good.

The initiative and emphasis is now (again) turning away from the religious side of the resistance back to the more military-pragmatic side of the Baathist resistance leader Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. (Where did he spend that two month vacation?)

A new phase of the war over Iraq has started.

The coming fight over Mosul will get bloody. As the Arab media will now be censored, it might take a while until we get a somewhat true picture of it.

If the resistance takes a stand over Mosul two big questions will come up:

• Will Sadr end his truce and chip in with the resistance?
• What will the ‘Awakening Councils’ do?

A late 2007 BBC/ABC/ARD poll in Afghanistan shows a quite big support for Karzai and temporary foreign troop stationing. But, as ABC notes, the general support is trending lower and:

Among Afghans who report shelling, bombing or civilian deaths in their area caused by U.S. or NATO forces, approval of U.S. efforts overall drops sharply, to 29 percent. Specifically in the Southwest, among people who report no civilian deaths or injuries caused by coalition forces, 64 percent say people in their area support these forces. Among those who report such casualties, that support is 30 points lower.
…
In Kandahar, the Taliban’s hometown, just 18 percent see a better life for their children; it’s a still-low 37 percent in next-door Helmand. That soars, by contrast, to three-quarters in Balkh and two-thirds in Kunduz, two Northern provinces.

The other big point:

Lack of jobs, electricity and medical care and poor roads, bridges and
other infrastructure are other broad and persistent concerns. Nearly
half the population is illiterate; six in 10 Afghans have household
incomes under $100 a month.

There is the hen and egg problem of violence. Does Taliban presense necessiates more ‘kinetic’ foreign troop presence, or does foreign troop ‘kinetic’ activity increase the support for and number of Taliban.

Karzai says more foreign troops are not the answer and forced eradication of opium, another U.S. ‘recommendation’, would be a major problem.

At some point last year Associated Press tallied more civilians killed by foreign troops than by Taliban. In total, the Taliban seem not to be the big problem unless ‘the west’ makes them the big problem.

The general support for the Taliban is low (14%) but growing. The major problems the poll found,  electricity, jobs and clean water, can be solved if enough resources are invested there.

But while the foreign countries engaged in Afghanistan spend billions on their military there (Germany 500+ million Euros), international development programs count in millions (Germany 100 million Euros). That relation is a shame. Additionally many aid-dollars are skimmed off by international contractors and via conditional aid. (BTW: I couldn’t find U.S. numbers for military costs vs. civil aid – any ideas?)

Here are my recommendations on what to do in Afghanistan:

1. Stop fighting ghosts and creating new ones. The locals can fight or integrate the Taliban much better than anyone else.
2. Launch a $25 billion, 10 year program ‘Green Afghanistan‘. This money is to be a gift: Not ‘debt relief’, not ‘development credit’, not conditioned on ‘buy only from originator’, not for technical ‘license fees’. This money has to be a gift.

Mayor program points of ‘Green Afghanistan‘:

Cont. reading: Green Afghanistan

Some thoughts on the Super Tuesday results.

Obama and Clinton are in a draw with a slight advantage for Clinton. The fight beween the racists and the sexists will thereby continue. The victory may depend on who offers the biggest bribes for the super delegates.

From the progressive point of view, Hillary looks like the better side of a bad binary choice. But no matter who wins this, the party isn’t really split about them and would support both as candidates.

A real split can be seen on the Republican side. The religious nuts and ultra-conservatives will never support McCain. Huckabee is a whacko, Romney a money side flip-flopper par excellance and McCain a war mongering neo-con. Bush filled all three roles in one person.

While McCain looks like he will in the end win that race, he will not have enough base support to win against Clinton or Obama.

Another big ‘terrorist’ event could change that.

News & views … open thread …

Please comment.

The ‘Webpage of the Day’ has a very fitting title:

The media is missing a big story about imperial catfighting in Afghanistan.

Here is how I’d tell it.

The British were on track to buy off a very high Afghan Taliban commander and to put his forces to some sensible use. In December Gordon Brown was in Afghanistan and sought the okay from the Afghan president Karzai.

The Britains send two of their top MI 6 agents, covered as UN and EU advisors, to negotiate with Mansoor Dadullah, the top Taliban commander in south Afghanistan.

A successful deal with him would have split off a significant chunk from the core Taliban forces. It likely would have been a great step to pacify the area.

In a pending meeting Mansoor Dadullah was to be given a satellite phone for further secure negotiations with the agents. The British also offered a ton of money as well as retraining and jobs for Mansoor Dadullah’s fighters. A camp would be set up near Musa Qala and training, including for police and military service, would be given.

The mission was blown when the U.S. (Khalizad?) got a whiff of it. They hated the idea. Maybe because they really don’t like to talk with the Talibans. But more likely because they don’t like the British to do their deals.

They ‘tipped off’ the Afghan Interior Minister who is under their
control. On their way to the negotiations the British agents were
raided and detained by the Interior Minister forces.

Karzai was between a rock and a hard place (both speaking English though with different accents.) But in the end he is more a U.S. tool than a British asset. So he denied any knowledge of the British plans and kicked the agents out of the country.

Sec Def Gates angrily denounced the British actions without revealing the real story.

Deals are only to be done by the U.S. The British are certainly better at making them, but their deals will be sabotaged unless they are done under U.S. supervision.

That’s the short version of the story. Now the longer trail that leads to it.

A year ago I wrote about Musa Qala:

Cont. reading: Imperial Catfighting on Afghanistan

by Juan Moment
(lifted from a comment)

It is exactly this semi-religious belief in Exceptionalism which
time and time again brings suffering to mankind. From ancient cultures
such as Rome, through the British empire, to Nazi-Germany, the last
thing this world needs is delusional mortals with a conviction that
they are somewhat superior. Largely unnoticed by those narcists, busy
wallowing in self-admiration, the world laughs at people who claim to
be part of the Ueber-race/nation. Coz besides bigger and more guns,
tools of mindless war, they have nothing which sets them apart from the
rest. Certainly not brains.

To watch one administration after another roam the international
circuit like Ming the Merciless, makes the average universal punter
wish for Flash Gordon to rocket by to show Ming where the hammer hangs.
This has lead to a rise in popularity of regimes who stand up against
the machine known as US foreign policy. Large numbers of world citizens
cheer at news that the US has problems of sort, creating an environment
in which the country’s superpower status can not survive.

If the USA wants to regain popularity points it lost over the
decades, it must address foremost and first of all the hypocrisy it has
become to personify. She is certainly not the only nation which says
one thing and does another, but to do so in such blatant a fashion as
the US does, factually asks for worldwide condemnation. There is hardly
one facet of US foreign policy which isn’t a contradiction to another.
Proclaiming that democratic elections in Palestine are a great step
forward, and then refusing to deal with the party that got fair &
square elected, makes for one bad joke.

Cont. reading: Exceptionalism

The new Symour Hersh story, A Strike in the Dark, is about Israel’s bombing of the Syrian Box-on-the-Euphrates.

Before diving into Hersh’s account let me recap what was written here about the issue.

Early dispatches of the September 6 bombing were linked by Debs and Bea. On September 11 I mulled about Another Middle East Mystery. The reporting on it smelled of a neocon/Israeli campaign –  The Building of a Nuclear Syria Meme. We compared Propaganda: 2002-Iraq 2007-Syria and in a comment noted the "stovepiping" of intelligence on the issue. On September 29 we documented that Hillary Clinton actively peddled the neocon/Israeli "nuclear Syria" story despite better knowledge.

On October 4 my assertion was that Israel Failed to Provoke War. On October 14 the NYT revived the factless ‘nuclear Syria’ propaganda. This was noted in Baseless "News" on Page 1. In late October David Albright of ISIS peddled satellite pictures of the Syrian site as ‘evidence’ of something ‘nuclear’. I asserted that this was false. In War from the Mediterranean to Kashmir I said:

All the rumors about a ‘nuclear target’ [in Syria] there appear to be ‘curveball’ like fabrications …

Now it is nice to learn that nearly all of my thoughts on the issue are confirmed by Hersh’s research and sources:

• There was no ‘nuclear target’.
• Syria has no ‘nuclear program’.
• Most of the ‘official’ accounts about the issue were pure propaganda.
• The press was lied to and lied itself.
• David Albright’s photo analysis was influenced by Israelis and dead wrong.

Hersh does not dive into the neocon connections to the campaign I believe to have proven.

He does not find any real reason why the bombing took place, but he seems not to test the hypothesis that it might have been an attempt to start a bigger war. This something I still find likely.

In total the long Hersh piece well worth your time. It is also a good documentation of managed propaganda.

Some excerpts with added emphasis:

The seemingly unprovoked bombing, which came after months of heightened tension between Israel and Syria over military exercises and troop buildups by both sides along the Golan Heights, was, by almost any definition, an act of war.
…

Cont. reading: Hersh on the “Box on the Euphrates”

In today’s LA Times Fred Kaplan discusses the need of a more realistic U.S. view on its changed role in the world:

It should be no surprise that the presidential campaigns have barely touched on foreign policy. […] [N]o ambitious politician is willing to mention the discomfiting reality about America’s place in the world — that we are weaker today than we were a decade or two ago, and that we need a new foreign policy that acknowledges and builds on that fact.

[…]
Our leverage over half the world during the previous half-century had stemmed not just from American muscle but from the existence of a common enemy. […] But when the [Soviet] bear died, the alliance’s threads loosened.

[…]
The United States has emerged from the tectonic shift as something more like an ordinary country — a world power but not a superpower. This is unfamiliar territory for Americans. For half a century, we had been a superpower in a world that was tightly structured. Now we’re upper-middle management in a world without big bosses — a world that’s either becoming multipolar or teetering toward anarchy.

[…]
It’s no longer morning in America, but it’s not quite twilight either. The next president’s big challenge will be to revive America’s influence and stature while facing up to the limits of its power in a newly fractured world. And one of the bigger political challenges of that task will be to acknowledge, openly, that our power does have limits.

The U.S. elections are watched closely all over the world because they matter. There sometimes seems to be as much reporting on U.S. candidates in my local German rag as there is in U.S. papers.

In the German weekly Die Zeit former chancellor and ‘atlanticist’ Helmut Schmidt has Twelve Questions for the Candidates (in German; the automated  translation gets the gist). His questions touch on the same issue Kaplan is writing about.

If the U.S. wants to stay important, it will have to seek consense and stop to dictate solutions.

Unfortunatly none of the candidates has really spoken out about foreign policy. Yes, there are a few mangled bits about Iraq, but the world is much bigger than that and there are other very important issues.

The campaigns all are working by the mantra ‘elections are local’. U.S. voters still seem to believe that U.S. foreign policy doesn’t really matter much to them.

But, as Kaplan rightly points out, the U.S. position in the world has changed. The consequences of U.S. foreign policy will have bigger and bigger domestic repercussions. This especially in an economic sense and far beyond the price of oil.

There needs to be more public discussion about cause and effect of U.S. foreign policy. 9/11 was a chance for that. But then the discussion was quickly supressed in favor of a certain imperial agenda.

Like other MoA’s, Klare’s argument reminds me of rumor mills during
the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Skilled rumor-phone
operators will recognize
the necessity to start a back burn, to snuff these wild rumors out. Clarity of
vision is essentially important over theories, especially when Klare’s theory
effectively covers up the egregious covert and prime influence of BushCo!

    "* The late 1990 stock bubble riches led to an increase in suburban/exurban housing and SUV usage."

THE EXURBAN MOVEMENT WAS WELL UNDERWAY DURING THE 1984 SILICON BOOM,
WHEN PEOPLE BEGAN MOVING OUT OF THE BAY AREA, FOR EXAMPLE, AND
COMMUTING FROM CENTRAL VALLEY, A DECADE BEFORE KLARE NOTICES THE IMPACT
OF HIGHER LAND PRICES (FROM INCREASING LOCAL GOVERNMENT RESTRICTIONS
(GREEN MOVEMENT) PUSHING CHEAP LAND INTO THE HINTERLANDS.)

DELVING DEEPER, IN THE HEY-HEY LATE 1980’s SILICON VALLEY BOOM, CENTRAL CITIES ALL
OVER THE COUNTRY BEGAN RAISING PROPERTY TAXES TO ROOT OUT THE FIXED-INCOME SENIORS
AND MAKE ROOM FOR THE NOUVEAU RICHE YOUNG TURKS. GENTRIFICATION BEGAN LONG, LONG
BEFORE THE DOT.CON BUBBLE SPUN UP OUT OF THE EARLY REAL BOOM OF SILICON:SOFTWARE.

NEVERTHELESS, EVEN WITH US:UK BACKING THE 1987 IRAQ:IRAN WAR STARTED BY THE SAUDIS TO
PUMP UP THE PRICE OF CRUDE ANTICIPATING THESE EXURBANITES, BY 1990,
PRE-GWI (BUSH SR) THE PRICE OF CRUDE HAD FALLEN TO UNDER $12/BBL. 1984
PRE-SILICON OIL CRASH AND THE
1990 PRE-DOT.CON CRASH EFFECTIVELY DELINKS THE CRUDE THEORY RIFF IN KLARE’S PREMISE.

AS FAR AS THE SUV THEORY, KLARE MUST NEVER HAVE SEEN A 454 CLEVELAND, A GALAXIE 500
7-LITRE, (OR MY INTERNATIONAL 1110 WITH A 348 V-8). JAPAN ALREADY MADE MAJOR INROADS
W/ 4-CYLINDER:6-CYLINDER VEHICLES BY DOT.CON, WASHING OUT THE DETROIT OLD-IRON, AND
CALIFORNIA CLEAN AIR REGULATIONS SQUASHED ANY GAS-GUZZLING DETROIT THAT REMAINED.

* This and the devaluation of the U.S. dollar dramatically
increased the price of oil and deteriorated the U.S. balance sheet.

BUT "THIS", KLARE’S 1990’S THEORY VERS "US$-DEVALUATION", KLARE’S 2000’s THEORY,
ARE DECOUPLED BY A DECADE AND IGNORE THE FACT THE PRICE OF CRUDE OIL
WAS $15/BBL PRE-CREDIT.CON CRASH NEE PRE-GWII (BUSH JR). IF YOU COMPARE
USD:SWF:JPY TO CRUDE
THROUGH THE LATE 1990’s OUT BEYOND 2003, THERE IS CLEARLY ZERO CORRELATION.

THE 2003 INVASION OF IRAQ, AND DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF 3MBBL/DAY OIL PRODUCTION
STARTED THE LONG MARCH IN CRUDE HIKES TOWARDS A CREDIT.CON CRASH TOPPING IN 2006.
THE TREMENDOUS BURN-RATE OF NOW MOBILIZED US-MILITARY, AND A RECENT HEAVY DEMAND
FROM CHINA FILLING MULTI-B BBL STRATEGIC OIL RESERVE, DEBUNKS KLARE’S HYPOTHESIS.

    * The commodity inflation obliged the Fed to increase interest rates.

PURE PABLUM. THE FED DOESN’T DO JACK TO PREVENT INFLATION! READ LAST WEEK’S NEWS!
BUSHCO’S WAR WAS DELIBERATE. A BONAFIDE WAR CRIME (STAY WITH ME HERE). THE 1% FED
RATE POST-9/11 HAD ONLY A TEMPORARY EFFECT. IF YOU PERUSE DEEPLY INTO THE CHARTS,
YOU’LL NOTICE IMMEDIATELY, BY END OF 2002 US WAS HEADING INTO A MAJOR RECESSION,
OIL HAD ALREADY DROPPED BACK, (UNDER OIL-FOR-FOOD), TO $15/BBL, CUTTING OFF AT THE
KNEES SAUDI’S WHO WANTED $25/BBL FOR PROFIT, AND CASTRATING THE US OIL INDUSTRY.

GREENSPAN COULDN’T DROP RATES BELOW JAPAN:SWITZERLAND, BUSHCO WAS UP AGAINST THE
PROVERBIAL WALL. THE NEO-ZI’s "FINAL SOLUTION" WAS TAKE OUT IRAQ OIL PRODUCTION.
"START A SMALL WAR". CHENEY MADE $500M OFF KRISTALLNACHT, NOT LOST ON OBSERVERS.
UPSTREAM IS BOOMING NOW, EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION UP 2/3rd’s YOY. DOWNSTREAM IS
CRASHING NOW, REFINING AND TRANSPORTATION:DISTRIBUTION DOWN A WHOPPING 3/4’s YOY!
THIS IS CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY, HIGH CRIMES & MISDEMEANORS, GRAND FRAUD, TREASON.

* The (post-GWII Fed) rate increase popped the mortgage bubble
while higher oil prices dimished domestic car production. As the U.S.
now slips into recession foreign sovereign-wealth funds are taking over
US banks and industries.

KLARE IS BABBLING IN MIXING METAPHORS AND METRICS. FIRST, IT WASN’T A "MORTGAGE
BUBBLE", IT WAS A CREDIT CON, SIMILAR TO THE JAPANESE R/E BUBBLE AND CRASH,
BUT (WORK WITH ME HERE), EVEN MORE, "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY"! NOT ONLY DID RETAIL
BROKERS AND MORTGAGE LENDERS LASSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULEZ, BUT WHOLESALERS BOUND
CLEARLY JUNK BONDS INTO AAA-RATED CORPORATE PAPER, DELIBERATELY ADULTERING WITH
KNOWING FRAUD A FINANCIAL INSTRUMENT, THEN SOLD THROUGHOUT THE WORLD! THIS GOES
WAY BEYOND THE OPPORTUNITY CREATED BY THE LOW FED RATE, INTO COLOSSAL MALFEASANCE.

THAT IT WAS CLEARLY MALFEASANCE IS PROVEN WHEN PAULSON BECAME SEC-TREAS. GOLDMAN
SHORTLY THEREAFTER SOLD OFF THEIR RADIOACTIVE WASTE. PAULSON HAD THE INSIDE DOPE! THAT, IN ITSELF, IS A HIGH CRIME, AND TREASON, INSIDER TRADING ON KNOWN
FRAUD AT NATIONAL:GLOBAL LEVEL, AFFECTING EVERY HOME OWNER AND EVERY 401K INVESTOR.
NO WONDER BUSHCO IS THROWING US A STIMULUS BONE, BUT USING BORROWED MONEY AGAINST
FUTURE US DEBTS! WE’VE CAUGHT THE BANK ROBBERS, SO THEY’RE GIVING US A LOAN!!!

YOU HAVE TO LOOK FROM A POST-ENRON, POST DOT.CON, POST-S&L.CON PERSPECTIVE TO SEE
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. A CADRE OF ELITES TOOK GREENSPAN’S EASY MONEY, AND TRILLED
IT UP TO $400T IN HEDGED DERIVATIVES, BASED ON DELIBERATELY DENATURED REAL VALUES.
THAT IS A WAR CRIME, UNDER THE GENEVA CONVENTION, AND WHY KLARE MUST BE DEBUNKED.
GLOBAL ELITE HAS BANKRUPTED THE WORLD, IT DIDN’T OCCUR AT A J6P RETAIL LEVEL!

* In all, the process transfered wealth and global influence away
from the U.S. and towards second tier and resource countries.

THIS FINAL BULLS–T CONCLUSION PROVES THE PREMISE WAS FALSE, AND KLARE’S THEORY WAS
FORMULATED BACKWARDS FROM INITIAL FALSE PREMISE. "THE PROCESS" TRANSFERRED WEALTH
AWAY FROM US:UK:EU AND INTO THE BANK VAULTS OF THE ELITE CADRE, THROUGH DELIBERATE
AND WHOLESALE-LEVEL FRAUD, GRAND LARCENY, HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
AGAINST ALL HUMANITY. NOW THOSE PERPETRATORS WALK AMONG US, IN PLAIN
VIEW, ON THE DAILY NEWS,
SPEECHIFYING ON TV EVERY NIGHT, AND PROTECTED BY A US SUPREME COURT WHICH HAS, NOT
ONCE, NOT TWICE, BUT THREE TIMES RULED AGAINST THIRD-PARTY LIABILITY, EVEN WHEN THE
THIRD-PARTY KNEW, AND CONTRIBUTED KNOWINGLY, TO THE CRIME!

ENRON WAS NOT SOME ACCOUNTING ERROR! SCOTUS JUST THREW THAT ONE OUT TOO!!!

—

YOU’D HAVE TO BE HALF-BRAIN DEAD NOT TO KNOW THESE THINGS, AND ANY TIME, sorry…

Any time you eat a post-meltdown theory, no matter how intellectual or sopped
with financial gravey, which passivates this BushCo Crime-of-All-Crimes-in-the-
History-of-Humanity into some Keplerian theory of misplaced decimal points and
phosphor dots, MoA’s must RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE which created this Holocaust!

We may be passive, we may be shackled and passivated by politics and media, we may
be fenced in by usury and RFID, but never, ever think that this was not deliberate!
We haven’t "failed to thrive". We’ve been lied to, stolen from and blood-let!
Our entire system of western civilization is become kleptocratic vampirocracy.

R’giap, Uncle$, Annie, keep the faithe! !PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY IN VISION!

Posted by: Tante Aime | Feb 2, 2008 2:20:37 PM | 8

Bea points to Michael Klare’s piece on How oil burst the American bubble.

His argument:

• The late 1990 stock bubble riches led to an increase in suburban/exurban housing and SUV usage. Both depended on cheap oil. They increased energy usage while the domestic oil production share declined.
• This and the devaluation of the U.S. dollar dramatically increased the price of oil and deteriorated the U.S. balance sheet. (In 1998, the United States paid some $45 billion to import oil; in 2007 it payed $400+ billion.)
• The commodity inflation obliged the Fed to increase interest rates.
• The rate increase popped the mortgage bubble while higher oil prices dimished domestic car production.
  As the U.S. now slips into recession foreign sovereign-wealth funds are taking over US banks and industries.
• In all, the process transfered wealth and global influence away from the U.S. and towards second tier and resource countries.

Klare is right in that economic processes don’t "just happen". They are consequences of certain lifestyle decisions and the underlying philosophies.

From 1995 onward I watched the sprawl taking place in the counties west of Washington DC. People had well paying jobs there. But they drove too far – in too big cars – from too big houses – to work at overvalued companies. Worse – the cars were low quality, the houses simple plywood construction, the infrastructure congested and the companies led by mediocre managers. It was all shortterm quantity and not longterm quality.

That view is of course exaggerated. The DC area and Silicon Valley are extremes and other places were less infected.

Still Klare’s argument makes sense. A certain lifestyle demand led to higher energy consumption which led to the developing breakdown. But he cuts a bit short on other factors. The role of the Greenspan Fed in creating the double bubble needs to be included in the analysis. The effects of the war on Iraq on oil production and the general U.S. balance sheet is another understated cause.

Like the lifestyle both were willful policy decisions supported by the U.S. public. They are expressions of a certain philosophy.

There is also one serious error in Klare’s essay when he writes:

Only a dramatic last-minute decision by the Federal Reserve to reduce overnight lending rates by three-quarters of a point before the markets opened on January 22 averted a further, potentially catastrophic slide in stock prices.

As Roubini points out:

[T]hat day the market told the Fed (with a 3.5% stock market drop following the rate cut): your 75bps cut means practically nothing to us and unless the credit problems of the economy are resolved. And the 5% rally was indeed triggered by news that maybe the monoline [bond insurers’] downgrade could be avoided.

The problems have moved far beyond oil imports. Fed interest rate cuts are no longer a way to handle them. The big issues now are credit and insolvency. Said differently – trustfulness in the U.S. model – and a financial crisis developing from the lack of it.

The long ignored bills for the overconsumption of the past decade demand to be payed. That need will require a different predominant lifestyle. But the changes will have to go beyond lifestyle and energy consumption pattern.

The underlying prevailent philosophy of "bigger equals better no matter what" is fundamentally wrong.

We don’t know if the developing economic shock will yet be hard enough to change it.

The FT laments about mortgage defaulters:

One possible explanation is that it has become culturally more acceptable this decade for people to abandon houses or stop paying in the hope of renegotiating their home loans. The shame that used to be associated with losing a house may, in other words, be ebbing away – particularly among homeowners who took out subprime loans in recent years, as underwriting standards were loosened.

Culturally more acceptable? Shame? Why does the FT writer wonders about such at all?

Did anyone involved in this expected shame?

Mr. X bet that sales prices would keep soaring and cheap and easy debt would remain available. But when the credit markets froze in the wake of the subprime crisis, he was trapped without a way of paying off the … debt.

The banks made loans to Mr. X for over 100% of the real estate value and the down payment was less than one percent.

Even if the markets had held up a bit longer the deal would never have survived as it was irresponsible in the first place.

That difference would have made it tricky for Mr. X to refinance his short-term … debt even if the sales and credit markets had held up. But since conditions changed, the only deals getting done have been those with high levels of equity — something that’s out of reach for the cash-strapped Xs.

When an estate is worth less than the mortgage owned and unlikely to
gain value, it is simply rational to walk away from it.

Did the banks expected Mr. X to have shame? Is Mr. X’s behavior is not culturally acceptable?

Mr. X’s real name is Harry Macklowe who last year bought seven Manhattan office buildings for $7 billion and now has a big loss.

What is the difference of Mr. Macklowe defaulting and the little guy who bought an overpriced condo in Florida and now sends the keys to the bank?

The FT would never involve shame or culturally acceptable in a story about Macklowe’s deals.

To wonder at all when little guys behave the same way as the big scammers is highly hypocritical.

by Debs is Dead
(lifted from a comment)

[ed. note – as I explain in the comments I personally doubt that the cable cut is nefarious. But there is no certinity for either side – b.]

So how many people saw this NYT article and wrote it off as "Murphy’s law" ie when something fucks up it is certain that another accident will compound the fuck-up.

The article titled 2 Communication Cables in the Mediterranean Are Cut told us:

Two undersea telecommunication cables were cut on
Tuesday evening, knocking out Internet access to much of Egypt,
disrupting the world’s back office in India and slowing down service
for some Verizon customers.

One cable was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and the other in the
waters off Marseille, France, telecommunications operators said. The
two cables, which are separately managed and operated, were damaged
within hours of each other. Damage to undersea cables, while rare, can
result from movement of geologic faults or possibly from the dragging
anchor of a ship.

Now I realise how paranoid this sounds but given these submarine
cables are laid pretty deep, when they are coming up into shallow
waters the cables are generally laid away from areas where anchors or
fishermans nets can catch them. Two in a day and both cables just
‘happen’ to carry a huge swathe of the internet traffic out of ME Arab
countries and South Asia India and Pakistan.

Cont. reading: Cable Cut