Rebuilding the American Economy, Bush-style
Go to Original
By Tom Engelhardt
No one was prepared for the storm when it hit. The levees meant to protect us had long since been breached and key officials had already left town. The well-to-do were assured of rescue, but for everyone else trapped inside the Superdome in a fast-flooding region, there was no evacuation plan in sight. The Bush administration, of course, claimed that it was in control and the President was already assuring his key officials that they were doing a heck of a job.
No, I'm not talking about post-Katrina New Orleans. That was so then. I'm talking about the housing and credit crunches, as well as the Bear Stearns bailout, that have given the term "bear market" new meaning.
Now, don't get me wrong -- when it comes to the arcane science of economics, like most Americans, I'd benefit from an "Economics for Dummies" course. What I do know something about, though, is history, a subject that hasn't been on the Bush administration's course curriculum since the President turned out not to be Winston Churchill and conquered Iraq refused to morph into occupied Germany ‘n Japan 1945.
History may not repeat itself, but the administration's repetitive acts these past seven years make an assessment of our economic situation possible, even if you are an economics dummy.
Just consider the record: Administration officials proved incapable of rebuilding two countries that their military occupied and damaged. In Afghanistan and Iraq, while talking up the President's "freedom agenda," they were the equivalent of a natural disaster, a whirlwind of destruction.
In the case of Iraq, in disbanding its military, its government, and even its economy, they were literal nation-wreckers. On taking Baghdad, their first act of omission was to let the capital be looted. ("Stuff happens," commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the time.) Soon after, the administration's new viceroy in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III, promptly plunged the country into the equivalent of the Great Depression -- without a Bear Stearns bailout in sight.
In the case of Afghanistan, only a staggering boom in opiate growing -- the country now supplies an estimated 93% of the global market in illegal opiates, bringing about four billion dollars into the country -- has slightly offset the disaster of "liberation." By just about any other measure, Afghanistan is a wreck.
In the case of New Orleans, the Bush administration not only couldn't rebuild an American city that nature (and the Army Corps of Engineers) damaged, but turned a natural disaster into a man-made catastrophe that has yet to end.
Despite a reputation for being the most disciplined, tough, and focused administration in memory, Bush's men and women couldn't even secure their fondest inside-the-Beltway dream: constructing a generation-long Pax Republicana in Washington. In fact, it looks suspiciously as if Republicans in the House and Senate, fleeing Congress as if it were New Orleans -- it's politely called "retirement," not cutting and running -- could even be swept into minority status for a generation.
And now, with a mere ten "lame duck" months to go, comes the American economy…
You don't faintly need to understand economics to grasp the immediate danger. The people overseeing the handling of this crisis have done little these last years but hand money over to the rich, while running American power into the dirt.
Let me review our history lesson for a moment: No to nation-rebuilding, no to city-rebuilding, no to Congressional majority-building…
Who dares imagine that the people who brought you Iraq, the war, could begin the rebuilding of an economy, or even successfully caulk the cracks in the levees of a system that, in its complexity, puts Iraq's feeble economy to shame?
In some ways, an administration -- whatever its periodic changes of personnel -- can be compared to an individual. At a certain age, its urges become predictable, its habits set, its limits largely known. While change may be possible, you wouldn't want to bet your house on it.
So what exactly has the Bush administration proven itself good at? The twin skills of destruction and looting would stand at the top of any list. Perhaps that's because it chose to put its "eggs" in only two baskets -- those of the U.S. military and crony corporations.
Awed by the shock-and-awe force of forces that fell into their hands, administration officials moved to transfer as many powers of civil governance as possible to the Pentagon. From diplomacy to disaster relief, nation-building to intelligence gathering, an organization built only to destroy was designated as the go-to outfit for activities normally associated with those who have building in mind.
At the same time, the government was being staffed, top-to-bottom, with ill-prepared political pals, while a small set of crony corporations, of which Halliburton is certainly the best known, was given the nod in every rebuilding situation. It really didn't matter where you looked, they were the ones camped out, making money, on the landscape of destruction. With their no-bid, cost-plus contracts, these companies ran up the hours and then tended to jump ship when the going got bad. The same corporations that had essentially looted Iraq -- it was labeled "reconstruction" -- were the first ones called in when New Orleans went down. (Of the initial six contracts the Bush administration offered for the reconstruction of the city, five went to companies previously involved in Iraq's reconstruction program.)
Unsurprisingly, the Bush administration has proved serially incapable of building anything, even -- in the long run -- their own machine. And, from the Enron moment to the Bear Stearns one, whenever it looked like the Titanic might have hit an iceberg, it was a lock that those passengers assigned to the limited places in the lifeboats wouldn't be from steerage (or be weighed down with subprime mortgages).
So rebuilding. No. Saving people who aren't already friends. No. Doing a heck of a job in a crisis. No. Now, our latest and greatest crisis is upon us, the sort that, in a matter of weeks, has sent media commentators and pundits from reluctant discussions of whether we might be heading into a recession straight to references to the "d" word, "1929," and the Great Depression. And they're not alone. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll indicates that a startling 59% of Americans already believe we're heading for a long-term depression, not a recession (and 79% are worried about the possibility). Leave the definitional details to the experts. Most Americans have undoubtedly assessed the Bush administration's proven incapacity in perilous times and drawn the logical conclusions.
Ten months is a long, long time when only their hands are near the pilot's wheel of the ship of state and water's already seeping through the hull. It's an eon for an administration capable of sinking New Orleans in a matter of days, and Iraq in little more than months. Or, thought of another way, it's plenty of time if your expertise happens to lie in deconstruction. After all, barring a miracle, you're talking about the little administration that couldn't, no matter how hard Ben Bernanke may try.
So, even if you, like me, know next to nothing about economics, you already know enough to be afraid, very afraid.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Iraq implodes as Shia fights Shia
Another tragedy as the Shia majority turn on each other
Go to Original
By Patrick Cockburn
A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.
Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq's two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons.
The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq's majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.
Mr Sadr's followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are expected to win.
Mortars and rockets launched from Mehdi Army-controlled districts of Baghdad struck the Green Zone, the seat of American power in Iraq, for the third day yesterday, seriously wounding three Americans. Two rockets hit the parking lot of the Iraqi cabinet. The mixed area of al-Mansur in west Baghdad, where shops had begun to reopen in recent months, was deserted yesterday as Mehdi Army fighters were rumoured among local people to be moving in from the nearby Shia stronghold of Washash. "We expect an attack by the Shia in spite of the Americans being spread over Sunni districts to defend them," said a Sunni resident.
Forty people have been killed and at least 200 injured in Basra in the last two days of violence. In the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, 11 people were killed and 18 injured yesterday by a US air strike called in support of Iraqi forces following street battles with Shia militia members in the city's Thawra neighbourhood. In Baghdad, 14 have been killed and 140 wounded.
The supporters of Mr Sadr, who form the largest political movement in Iraq, blame the Americans for giving the go-ahead for Mr Maliki's offensive against them and supporting it with helicopters and bomber aircraft. US troops have sealed off Sadr City, the close-packed slum in the capital with a population that is the main bastion of the Sadrists, while the Mehdi Army has taken over its streets, establishing checkpoints, each manned by about 20 heavily armed men. It is unlikely that the militiamen in Basra will surrender as demanded by the government. Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to Mr Maliki, said those who kept their weapons would be arrested. "Any gunman who does not do that within three days will be an outlaw."
Streets were empty in Basra and Baghdad as people stayed at home to avoid the fighting. The Mehdi Army is enforcing a strike in Baghdad with mosques calling for the closure of shops, businesses and schools.
In the Shia city of Kut, on the Tigris south of Baghdad, local residents say that black-clad Mehdi Army militiamen have taken over five districts and expelled the police.
At the same time, Mr Sadr is clearly eager to continue the truce which he declared on 29 August last year after bloody clashes in Kerbala with Iraqi police controlled by the rival Shia political movement, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and their well-organised militia, the Badr organisation.
He renewed this ceasefire in February, saying he wanted to purge its ranks of criminals. "The freeze that Sadr has ordered is still ongoing," said one of his chief lieutenants, Luwaa Smaism.
Mr Sadr has sought to avoid an all-out military confrontation with American troops or Badr backed by American forces since he fought two ferocious battles for Najaf against US marines in 2004.
Mr Sadr has sent emissaries to Mr Maliki asking him to remove his troops, numbering some 15,000 men from Basra, and to resolve problems peacefully. But his aides say there will be no talks until the Iraqi army reinforcements are withdrawn. The offer of talks is in keeping with Mr Sadr's past behaviour, which is to appear conciliatory but in practice to make few real concessions. The US is claiming that the Sadrists are not being singled out, only Iran-supported militia factions, but this will find few believers in Iraq.
"This is not a battle against the [Mehdi Army] nor is it a proxy war between the United States and Iran," said a US military spokesman, Major General Kevin Bergner. "It is [the] government of Iraq taking the necessary action to deal with criminals on the streets."
The Sunni population is pleased to see the government and the Americans attacking the Mehdi Army, which they see as a Shia death squad. "Before, the Shia were arresting and killing us and forcing us to leave Iraq for Jordan and Syria where we lived in misery," said Osama Sabr, a Sunni in west Baghdad.
The fighting is threatening to disrupt Iraq's oil production, most of which comes from the Basra area, because workers in the oilfields dare not leave their homes.
The militia
The Mehdi Army
Armed wing of the Sadr movement. Muqtada al-Sadr's militia is divided, with one wing supporting the radical cleric's ceasefire while another has rejected it and continued attacks on Iraqi government forces and the British base at Basra aiport.
The Badr Brigade
Armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The Badr Brigade has been involved in numerous clashes with the Mehdi Army and appears not to be the target of the current offensive by the Iraqi government forces. The group has organised "spontaneous" demonstrations against General Mohan and General Jalil.
The Fadhila
A political party and armed group with a localised powerbase. The governor of Basra is a member of the party, and it controls a significant proportion of the region's oil supply.
Secret Cells
Said to be armed and trained by Iran and allegedly carrying out attacks ordered by Tehran.
Go to Original
By Patrick Cockburn
A new civil war is threatening to explode in Iraq as American-backed Iraqi government forces fight Shia militiamen for control of Basra and parts of Baghdad.
Heavy fighting engulfed Iraq's two largest cities and spread to other towns yesterday as the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, gave fighters of the Mehdi Army, led by the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, 72 hours to surrender their weapons.
The gun battles between soldiers and militiamen, who are all Shia Muslims, show that Iraq's majority Shia community – which replaced Saddam Hussein's Sunni regime – is splitting apart for the first time.
Mr Sadr's followers believe the government is trying to eliminate them before elections in southern Iraq later this year, which they are expected to win.
Mortars and rockets launched from Mehdi Army-controlled districts of Baghdad struck the Green Zone, the seat of American power in Iraq, for the third day yesterday, seriously wounding three Americans. Two rockets hit the parking lot of the Iraqi cabinet. The mixed area of al-Mansur in west Baghdad, where shops had begun to reopen in recent months, was deserted yesterday as Mehdi Army fighters were rumoured among local people to be moving in from the nearby Shia stronghold of Washash. "We expect an attack by the Shia in spite of the Americans being spread over Sunni districts to defend them," said a Sunni resident.
Forty people have been killed and at least 200 injured in Basra in the last two days of violence. In the town of Hilla, south of Baghdad, 11 people were killed and 18 injured yesterday by a US air strike called in support of Iraqi forces following street battles with Shia militia members in the city's Thawra neighbourhood. In Baghdad, 14 have been killed and 140 wounded.
The supporters of Mr Sadr, who form the largest political movement in Iraq, blame the Americans for giving the go-ahead for Mr Maliki's offensive against them and supporting it with helicopters and bomber aircraft. US troops have sealed off Sadr City, the close-packed slum in the capital with a population that is the main bastion of the Sadrists, while the Mehdi Army has taken over its streets, establishing checkpoints, each manned by about 20 heavily armed men. It is unlikely that the militiamen in Basra will surrender as demanded by the government. Sadiq al-Rikabi, an adviser to Mr Maliki, said those who kept their weapons would be arrested. "Any gunman who does not do that within three days will be an outlaw."
Streets were empty in Basra and Baghdad as people stayed at home to avoid the fighting. The Mehdi Army is enforcing a strike in Baghdad with mosques calling for the closure of shops, businesses and schools.
In the Shia city of Kut, on the Tigris south of Baghdad, local residents say that black-clad Mehdi Army militiamen have taken over five districts and expelled the police.
At the same time, Mr Sadr is clearly eager to continue the truce which he declared on 29 August last year after bloody clashes in Kerbala with Iraqi police controlled by the rival Shia political movement, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and their well-organised militia, the Badr organisation.
He renewed this ceasefire in February, saying he wanted to purge its ranks of criminals. "The freeze that Sadr has ordered is still ongoing," said one of his chief lieutenants, Luwaa Smaism.
Mr Sadr has sought to avoid an all-out military confrontation with American troops or Badr backed by American forces since he fought two ferocious battles for Najaf against US marines in 2004.
Mr Sadr has sent emissaries to Mr Maliki asking him to remove his troops, numbering some 15,000 men from Basra, and to resolve problems peacefully. But his aides say there will be no talks until the Iraqi army reinforcements are withdrawn. The offer of talks is in keeping with Mr Sadr's past behaviour, which is to appear conciliatory but in practice to make few real concessions. The US is claiming that the Sadrists are not being singled out, only Iran-supported militia factions, but this will find few believers in Iraq.
"This is not a battle against the [Mehdi Army] nor is it a proxy war between the United States and Iran," said a US military spokesman, Major General Kevin Bergner. "It is [the] government of Iraq taking the necessary action to deal with criminals on the streets."
The Sunni population is pleased to see the government and the Americans attacking the Mehdi Army, which they see as a Shia death squad. "Before, the Shia were arresting and killing us and forcing us to leave Iraq for Jordan and Syria where we lived in misery," said Osama Sabr, a Sunni in west Baghdad.
The fighting is threatening to disrupt Iraq's oil production, most of which comes from the Basra area, because workers in the oilfields dare not leave their homes.
The militia
The Mehdi Army
Armed wing of the Sadr movement. Muqtada al-Sadr's militia is divided, with one wing supporting the radical cleric's ceasefire while another has rejected it and continued attacks on Iraqi government forces and the British base at Basra aiport.
The Badr Brigade
Armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. The Badr Brigade has been involved in numerous clashes with the Mehdi Army and appears not to be the target of the current offensive by the Iraqi government forces. The group has organised "spontaneous" demonstrations against General Mohan and General Jalil.
The Fadhila
A political party and armed group with a localised powerbase. The governor of Basra is a member of the party, and it controls a significant proportion of the region's oil supply.
Secret Cells
Said to be armed and trained by Iran and allegedly carrying out attacks ordered by Tehran.
Paulson warns Wall Street of possible new oversight
Investment banks that have long-term access to Federal Reserve 'liquidity' should open their books, the Treasury chief says.
Go to Original
By Maura Reynolds
WASHINGTON — Signaling a willingness by the Bush administration to expand its oversight of Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said Wednesday that investment banks should submit to greater supervision if they want regular access to Federal Reserve loans.
With Congress increasingly inclined to consider additional regulation of the mortgage industry -- including Wall Street firms -- Paulson's statement, though limited, marks a significant shift from the position the administration held before the current credit crisis.
The Treasury chief spoke amid fresh congressional scrutiny of the government's role in JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s agreement last week to acquire troubled brokerage Bear Stearns Cos.
The Fed underwrote the Bear Stearns deal by agreeing to lend JPMorgan $30 billion. The central bank then said it was temporarily allowing other major Wall Street firms to also borrow directly from the Fed via its "discount window," which since the 1930s has been restricted to banks that accept traditional deposits.
Two leading senators sent a letter Wednesday to Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the chief executives of JPMorgan and Bear Stearns asking for detailed information on the arrangement agreed to by the two financial giants and the Fed.
"It's the Finance Committee's responsibility to pin down just how the government decided to front $30 billion in taxpayer dollars for the Bear Stearns deal," Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a statement. "Economic times are tight on Main Street as well as on Wall Street, and we have a responsibility to all taxpayers to review the details of this deal."
The letter was cosigned by the committee's top Republican, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
Meanwhile, Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scheduled hearings on the transaction for next week.
When it opened the discount window to non-banks, the Fed said it would continue to make such loans available for six months. In a speech Wednesday before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Paulson insisted that if investment banks wanted the right to borrow from the Fed after that six-month period, they should open their books.
"Access to the Federal Reserve's liquidity facilities traditionally has been accompanied by strong prudential oversight of depository institutions," Paulson said. speech"Certainly, any regular access to the discount window should involve the same type of regulation and supervision."
Paulson heads an administration task force that is expected soon to release recommendations for regulating the financial markets, which have been unsettled by the credit crunch and housing downturn.
Because bank deposits are insured by the federal government, traditional banks submit to federal regulation so taxpayers are not unfairly exposed to risk from irresponsible business practices. Similarly, Paulson argued, if investment banks want the backing of the Federal Reserve, the central bank needs to "protect its balance sheet and ultimately protect U.S. taxpayers."
"The Federal Reserve should have the information about these institutions it deems necessary for making informed lending decisions," he said.
The Fed's discount window makes loans to banks that face short-term needs for liquidity. The discount rate is generally higher than the federal funds rate, which banks charge one another for overnight loans to meet reserve requirements. The Fed last week cut the discount rate to 2.5% and the federal funds rate to 2.25%.
Paulson, who used to head Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs Group, said he considered the Fed's move to lend to non-banks temporary.
"Despite the fundamental changes in our financial system, it would be premature to jump to the conclusion that all broker-dealers or other potentially important financial firms in our system today should have permanent access to the Fed's liquidity facility," he said. "Recent market conditions are an exception from the norm."
The turmoil in the financial markets has spurred debate in Washington over new regulations to prevent a repeat of incautious lending practices that inflated and eventually popped a speculative bubble in the housing market.
"A correction was inevitable, and the sooner we work through it, with a minimum of disorder, the sooner we will see home values stabilize, more buyers return to the housing market, and housing will again contribute to economic growth," Paulson said.
Paulson reiterated the Bush administration's opposition to permitting homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth to have their debts reduced.
"Negative equity does not affect borrowers' ability to pay their loans," he said. "Homeowners who can afford their mortgage payment should honor their obligations, and most do."
Paulson noted that negative equity has become common because recent lending practices permitted borrowers to get mortgages with small or no down payments. He said that people who lived in their homes for the long term would eventually make up the lost equity.
"Any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator," he said. "Washington cannot create any new mortgage program to induce these speculators to continue to own these houses, unless someone else foots the bill."
Go to Original
By Maura Reynolds
WASHINGTON — Signaling a willingness by the Bush administration to expand its oversight of Wall Street, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said Wednesday that investment banks should submit to greater supervision if they want regular access to Federal Reserve loans.
With Congress increasingly inclined to consider additional regulation of the mortgage industry -- including Wall Street firms -- Paulson's statement, though limited, marks a significant shift from the position the administration held before the current credit crisis.
The Treasury chief spoke amid fresh congressional scrutiny of the government's role in JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s agreement last week to acquire troubled brokerage Bear Stearns Cos.
The Fed underwrote the Bear Stearns deal by agreeing to lend JPMorgan $30 billion. The central bank then said it was temporarily allowing other major Wall Street firms to also borrow directly from the Fed via its "discount window," which since the 1930s has been restricted to banks that accept traditional deposits.
Two leading senators sent a letter Wednesday to Paulson, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the chief executives of JPMorgan and Bear Stearns asking for detailed information on the arrangement agreed to by the two financial giants and the Fed.
"It's the Finance Committee's responsibility to pin down just how the government decided to front $30 billion in taxpayer dollars for the Bear Stearns deal," Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) said in a statement. "Economic times are tight on Main Street as well as on Wall Street, and we have a responsibility to all taxpayers to review the details of this deal."
The letter was cosigned by the committee's top Republican, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
Meanwhile, Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scheduled hearings on the transaction for next week.
When it opened the discount window to non-banks, the Fed said it would continue to make such loans available for six months. In a speech Wednesday before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Paulson insisted that if investment banks wanted the right to borrow from the Fed after that six-month period, they should open their books.
"Access to the Federal Reserve's liquidity facilities traditionally has been accompanied by strong prudential oversight of depository institutions," Paulson said. speech"Certainly, any regular access to the discount window should involve the same type of regulation and supervision."
Paulson heads an administration task force that is expected soon to release recommendations for regulating the financial markets, which have been unsettled by the credit crunch and housing downturn.
Because bank deposits are insured by the federal government, traditional banks submit to federal regulation so taxpayers are not unfairly exposed to risk from irresponsible business practices. Similarly, Paulson argued, if investment banks want the backing of the Federal Reserve, the central bank needs to "protect its balance sheet and ultimately protect U.S. taxpayers."
"The Federal Reserve should have the information about these institutions it deems necessary for making informed lending decisions," he said.
The Fed's discount window makes loans to banks that face short-term needs for liquidity. The discount rate is generally higher than the federal funds rate, which banks charge one another for overnight loans to meet reserve requirements. The Fed last week cut the discount rate to 2.5% and the federal funds rate to 2.25%.
Paulson, who used to head Wall Street investment house Goldman Sachs Group, said he considered the Fed's move to lend to non-banks temporary.
"Despite the fundamental changes in our financial system, it would be premature to jump to the conclusion that all broker-dealers or other potentially important financial firms in our system today should have permanent access to the Fed's liquidity facility," he said. "Recent market conditions are an exception from the norm."
The turmoil in the financial markets has spurred debate in Washington over new regulations to prevent a repeat of incautious lending practices that inflated and eventually popped a speculative bubble in the housing market.
"A correction was inevitable, and the sooner we work through it, with a minimum of disorder, the sooner we will see home values stabilize, more buyers return to the housing market, and housing will again contribute to economic growth," Paulson said.
Paulson reiterated the Bush administration's opposition to permitting homeowners who owe more than their houses are worth to have their debts reduced.
"Negative equity does not affect borrowers' ability to pay their loans," he said. "Homeowners who can afford their mortgage payment should honor their obligations, and most do."
Paulson noted that negative equity has become common because recent lending practices permitted borrowers to get mortgages with small or no down payments. He said that people who lived in their homes for the long term would eventually make up the lost equity.
"Any homeowner who can afford his mortgage payment but chooses to walk away from an underwater property is simply a speculator," he said. "Washington cannot create any new mortgage program to induce these speculators to continue to own these houses, unless someone else foots the bill."
Police want children routinely put on DNA database
Go to Original
By Richard Tyler
Britain’s police want to routinely put children as young as five on the National DNA Database (NDNAD), even when no crime has been committed.
Gary Pugh, the DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard, recently told the press, “The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people.”
According to Pugh, who was interviewed by the Observer, “If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large.”
Pugh’s words are a sinister echo of the film Minority Report, in which a specialist “pre-crime” police department routinely arrests people who have not committed any offence.
Describing it as a “step towards a police state,” National Primary Headteachers’ Association representative Chris Davis said it was tantamount to condemning children “at a very young age for something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.”
Action on Rights for Children and GeneWatch, a not-for-profit group that monitors developments in genetic technologies, have produced evidence to show that by March 2009, some 1.5 million children aged 10-17 will be recorded on the National DNA Database, a figure they say is far higher than admitted by government.
The organisations estimate that at least 1.1 million children have already had their DNA recorded between 1995 (when the NDNAD was established) and April 2007, with more than half a million being aged between 10 and 16.
Helen Wallace from GeneWatch said, “Unless there are exceptional circumstances, the police should not keep records of people, including 100,000 under 18s, who have been found not guilty or have had the charges dropped.”
Terri Dowty from Action on Rights for Children said, “These children will be on the database for the rest of their lives. We are turning thousands of innocent children into lifelong suspects. No other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age.
“The Home Office has shown repeated reluctance to release figures for children on the DNA database, presumably realising how shocked the public would be,” Dowty said.
Mass genetic surveillance
Pugh’s call for the routine sampling of DNA from children as young as five is only the latest in a number of statements by senior police officers and judges advocating the extension of powers to take and keep DNA samples from wholly innocent individuals, setting up a system of mass genetic surveillance.
Following two recent high-profile murder convictions where the culprits had been implicated by DNA found at the scene, calls were again made to establish a national DNA register containing samples from everyone in the UK. Last year, one of Britain’s most senior judges, Lord Justice Sedley, also called for DNA records to be kept on all UK residents.
The government has not ruled out such a move, merely saying that it would raise “significant practical and ethical issues.”
Last year, the Home Office launched a consultation to examine the possible expansion of the DNA database to cover all those arrested, even for such minor offences as begging or speeding. According to the Observer, a Home Office document initiating the consultation had promoted the merits of massively expanding the database.
Home Office Minister Meg Hiller told the home affairs select committee in February that information on the identity register, which will underpin new biometric passports and the ID cards soon to be routinely issued, would be shared with authorities in the European Union and United States “in specific cases.”
And at a recent pan-European conference on serious organised crime, London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said DNA records should be extended throughout the EU.
Roger Smith, director of human rights organisation Justice, said granting police the power to compel samples without having to show reasonable suspicion was “a substantial and unwarranted intrusion on the rights of personal privacy.” He called for a return to the position prior to 1995, when police were only allowed to keep the samples of those convicted.
Under legislation introduced in 2001 and 2004, the Labour government has considerably extended police powers to take and keep DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of having committed a “recordable offence.” This includes any offence punishable by imprisonment, but also extends to relatively minor offences such as tampering with a motor vehicle, poaching and drunkenness.
Under the 2004 legislation, police can take a DNA sample from any person arrested aged 10 or more, in the case of a child, without the parent’s consent.
This legislation currently only applies to those arrested in England and Wales. In Scotland, which has a different judicial system, most samples are destroyed if the person is not charged or is later acquitted. However, senior Scottish police officers are lobbying hard for similar powers to their English and Welsh counterparts.
The UK now has the world’s largest DNA database, containing information on at least 4.5 million individuals, equivalent to some 7 percent of the population. According to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, only 1.13 percent of the population in the EU have their DNA documented, with records being held on just 0.5 percent in the US.
In what constitutes a major breech of civil liberties—overturning the fundamental legal norm of the presumption of innocence—records can be kept indefinitely on NDNAD even if a person is never formally charged, or is later acquitted of the offence for which he or she was arrested.
The call for DNA samples to be routinely taken from those below the age of 18 continues a major escalation in the process of criminalising children ongoing since Labour came to power in 1997.
Labour’s 1998 Crime and Disorder Act reduced the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 10. The act also introduced so-called ASBOs—Anti Social Behaviour Orders—a measure that has been largely aimed against young people. It means that once an ASBO has been granted, which can be for relatively minor misdemeanours or behaviour that is causing a nuisance, breaching the ASBO can result in a criminal record.
There is also strong evidence to show that such routine recording of DNA samples unfairly discriminates against individuals from ethnic minorities. According to Black Mental Health UK, black people are three time more likely to have their DNA recorded than white people.
The organisation says government figures show that 77 percent of young black men will soon have their details held on NDNAD, “despite evidence that black people are no more likely to have committed a crime than white people.”
Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties group Liberty said establishing a DNA database for everyone in the UK “ignores the extremely intimate nature of DNA and the massive scope for error and abuse” — one report has revealed that serious flaws have been found in the data, with up to 14 percent of the entries being duplicates, stored under different names.
Such concerns are well founded in light of recent scandals in which government computer disks have been lost containing millions of sensitive personal records—in one case affecting 25 million people, covering 7.25 million families overall—including names, dates of birth, and bank and address details.
Legal Challenge
The European Court of Human Rights heard a case at the end of February in which two innocent people are seeking to have their records removed from the National DNA Database.
Legal representatives for the two—40-year-old Michael Marper and a youth named only as “S”—argue that retention of such records for innocent people is a breach of Articles 8 (respect for the privacy of the individual) and 14 (prohibiting discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In both cases, the police have refused to destroy fingerprints and DNA records taken when the two individuals, one only a teenager, were originally arrested. The police subsequently dropped the case against Marper, while the youth “S” was acquitted.
It is thought that NDNAD could hold the records of up to 1 million innocent people, with GeneWatch estimating that up to 10 percent of these could be from children—records that would have to be destroyed should the legal challenge succeed.
In February, the Economist magazine reported a Home Office spokesperson saying that innocent people “have nothing to fear from providing a sample,” since retaining such evidence was “no different from recording other forms of information such as photographs and witness statements.”
However, DNA provides a wide range of other information about an individual, such as their parentage, or a susceptibility to particular diseases or disabilities. Some insurance companies have already raised the possibility of introducing “genetic screening” as a means of lowering premium charges since the information could be used to deny cover for individuals with certain genetic markers.
The body operating the NDNAD, the Forensic Science Service, a government-owned company, is a prime candidate for privatisation, which could open up the use of the database for purely commercial purposes.
It also allows an almost unlimited possibility of police frame-ups.
The thread-bare argument that if people have “nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear” is clearly not borne out by the record of Labour. The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have trampled on long-standing democratic and legal norms, constantly eroding the rights of the individual in favour of the right of the state to monitor and control its citizens.
By Richard Tyler
Britain’s police want to routinely put children as young as five on the National DNA Database (NDNAD), even when no crime has been committed.
Gary Pugh, the DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard, recently told the press, “The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people.”
According to Pugh, who was interviewed by the Observer, “If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large.”
Pugh’s words are a sinister echo of the film Minority Report, in which a specialist “pre-crime” police department routinely arrests people who have not committed any offence.
Describing it as a “step towards a police state,” National Primary Headteachers’ Association representative Chris Davis said it was tantamount to condemning children “at a very young age for something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.”
Action on Rights for Children and GeneWatch, a not-for-profit group that monitors developments in genetic technologies, have produced evidence to show that by March 2009, some 1.5 million children aged 10-17 will be recorded on the National DNA Database, a figure they say is far higher than admitted by government.
The organisations estimate that at least 1.1 million children have already had their DNA recorded between 1995 (when the NDNAD was established) and April 2007, with more than half a million being aged between 10 and 16.
Helen Wallace from GeneWatch said, “Unless there are exceptional circumstances, the police should not keep records of people, including 100,000 under 18s, who have been found not guilty or have had the charges dropped.”
Terri Dowty from Action on Rights for Children said, “These children will be on the database for the rest of their lives. We are turning thousands of innocent children into lifelong suspects. No other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age.
“The Home Office has shown repeated reluctance to release figures for children on the DNA database, presumably realising how shocked the public would be,” Dowty said.
Mass genetic surveillance
Pugh’s call for the routine sampling of DNA from children as young as five is only the latest in a number of statements by senior police officers and judges advocating the extension of powers to take and keep DNA samples from wholly innocent individuals, setting up a system of mass genetic surveillance.
Following two recent high-profile murder convictions where the culprits had been implicated by DNA found at the scene, calls were again made to establish a national DNA register containing samples from everyone in the UK. Last year, one of Britain’s most senior judges, Lord Justice Sedley, also called for DNA records to be kept on all UK residents.
The government has not ruled out such a move, merely saying that it would raise “significant practical and ethical issues.”
Last year, the Home Office launched a consultation to examine the possible expansion of the DNA database to cover all those arrested, even for such minor offences as begging or speeding. According to the Observer, a Home Office document initiating the consultation had promoted the merits of massively expanding the database.
Home Office Minister Meg Hiller told the home affairs select committee in February that information on the identity register, which will underpin new biometric passports and the ID cards soon to be routinely issued, would be shared with authorities in the European Union and United States “in specific cases.”
And at a recent pan-European conference on serious organised crime, London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said DNA records should be extended throughout the EU.
Roger Smith, director of human rights organisation Justice, said granting police the power to compel samples without having to show reasonable suspicion was “a substantial and unwarranted intrusion on the rights of personal privacy.” He called for a return to the position prior to 1995, when police were only allowed to keep the samples of those convicted.
Under legislation introduced in 2001 and 2004, the Labour government has considerably extended police powers to take and keep DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of having committed a “recordable offence.” This includes any offence punishable by imprisonment, but also extends to relatively minor offences such as tampering with a motor vehicle, poaching and drunkenness.
Under the 2004 legislation, police can take a DNA sample from any person arrested aged 10 or more, in the case of a child, without the parent’s consent.
This legislation currently only applies to those arrested in England and Wales. In Scotland, which has a different judicial system, most samples are destroyed if the person is not charged or is later acquitted. However, senior Scottish police officers are lobbying hard for similar powers to their English and Welsh counterparts.
The UK now has the world’s largest DNA database, containing information on at least 4.5 million individuals, equivalent to some 7 percent of the population. According to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, only 1.13 percent of the population in the EU have their DNA documented, with records being held on just 0.5 percent in the US.
In what constitutes a major breech of civil liberties—overturning the fundamental legal norm of the presumption of innocence—records can be kept indefinitely on NDNAD even if a person is never formally charged, or is later acquitted of the offence for which he or she was arrested.
The call for DNA samples to be routinely taken from those below the age of 18 continues a major escalation in the process of criminalising children ongoing since Labour came to power in 1997.
Labour’s 1998 Crime and Disorder Act reduced the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 10. The act also introduced so-called ASBOs—Anti Social Behaviour Orders—a measure that has been largely aimed against young people. It means that once an ASBO has been granted, which can be for relatively minor misdemeanours or behaviour that is causing a nuisance, breaching the ASBO can result in a criminal record.
There is also strong evidence to show that such routine recording of DNA samples unfairly discriminates against individuals from ethnic minorities. According to Black Mental Health UK, black people are three time more likely to have their DNA recorded than white people.
The organisation says government figures show that 77 percent of young black men will soon have their details held on NDNAD, “despite evidence that black people are no more likely to have committed a crime than white people.”
Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties group Liberty said establishing a DNA database for everyone in the UK “ignores the extremely intimate nature of DNA and the massive scope for error and abuse” — one report has revealed that serious flaws have been found in the data, with up to 14 percent of the entries being duplicates, stored under different names.
Such concerns are well founded in light of recent scandals in which government computer disks have been lost containing millions of sensitive personal records—in one case affecting 25 million people, covering 7.25 million families overall—including names, dates of birth, and bank and address details.
Legal Challenge
The European Court of Human Rights heard a case at the end of February in which two innocent people are seeking to have their records removed from the National DNA Database.
Legal representatives for the two—40-year-old Michael Marper and a youth named only as “S”—argue that retention of such records for innocent people is a breach of Articles 8 (respect for the privacy of the individual) and 14 (prohibiting discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In both cases, the police have refused to destroy fingerprints and DNA records taken when the two individuals, one only a teenager, were originally arrested. The police subsequently dropped the case against Marper, while the youth “S” was acquitted.
It is thought that NDNAD could hold the records of up to 1 million innocent people, with GeneWatch estimating that up to 10 percent of these could be from children—records that would have to be destroyed should the legal challenge succeed.
In February, the Economist magazine reported a Home Office spokesperson saying that innocent people “have nothing to fear from providing a sample,” since retaining such evidence was “no different from recording other forms of information such as photographs and witness statements.”
However, DNA provides a wide range of other information about an individual, such as their parentage, or a susceptibility to particular diseases or disabilities. Some insurance companies have already raised the possibility of introducing “genetic screening” as a means of lowering premium charges since the information could be used to deny cover for individuals with certain genetic markers.
The body operating the NDNAD, the Forensic Science Service, a government-owned company, is a prime candidate for privatisation, which could open up the use of the database for purely commercial purposes.
It also allows an almost unlimited possibility of police frame-ups.
The thread-bare argument that if people have “nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear” is clearly not borne out by the record of Labour. The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have trampled on long-standing democratic and legal norms, constantly eroding the rights of the individual in favour of the right of the state to monitor and control its citizens.
Washington again forecasts ruin for Medicare and Social Security
Go to Original
By Kate Randall
In what has become virtually an annual ritual, the Social Security Board of Trustees issued a report Tuesday projecting a bleak future for the US government’s two biggest benefit programs, Social Security and Medicare. The general projections of the board, all Bush administration members, were identical to last year’s.
The report states that the programs are facing “enormous challenges.” It estimates that resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041, and that reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits are projected to be exhausted by 2019.
Social Security, enacted in 1935 under the Roosevelt administration, is a social insurance program providing benefits to retirees, survivors of beneficiaries and the disabled. Medicare, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, provides health insurance coverage to seniors and others meeting special criteria.
Together, the two programs cover almost 50 million Americans, and paid out benefits of $627 billion in calendar year 2007, accounting for 23 percent of all federal spending. The first of the 76 million “baby boomers”—people born between 1945 and 1964—began collecting Social Security benefits this year.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, one of the board’s trustees, commented on the release of the report, “Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues and threaten America’s future prosperity.”
The three remaining contenders for the White House in 2008—Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Republican John McCain—had little to offer in the form of concrete steps for dealing with the financial challenge facing these entitlement programs, as any real solution would entail a significant redistribution of wealth, beginning with the raising taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, something the Democrats as much as the Republicans are reluctant to propose.
Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute public policy center, commented to the Los Angeles Times, “Everybody knows that there are a couple of 800-pound gorillas under the run, but nobody wants to talk about them because that is not the route to the Oval Office.”
In 2005, Bush seized on the unfavorable financial situation facing Social Security to push for privatization of the program. His plan—backed by McCain—called for allowing younger workers to divert their payroll tax contributions into private investment accounts. In February, Bush also proposed cuts in the Medicare program totaling more than $180 billion over five years.
While Democrats in Congress blocked both of these legislative initiatives, they have also refused to counter the administration’s moves to make permanent the massive tax cuts for the rich enacted under Bush.
While both Obama and Clinton have put forward proposals they claim would provide health care for all Americans, they have had little to say about the projected Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. Neither is eager to publicly call for rationing care, cutting payments to providers or requiring beneficiaries to pay more.
They are also beholden to the powerful health-care industry lobby, which has consistently blocked proposals for even modest reductions in Medicare payment rates, and are continually urging Congress to expand Medicare coverage of specific drugs, medical procedures and tests.
In the course of the primary campaign, Both Clinton and Obama have proposed better coordinating care for the chronically ill, reducing prescription drug costs, and promoting preventative health care, sidestepping the issues of tax hikes or benefit cuts.
Senator Clinton had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s report. She has claimed that her health-care proposal would save more than $50 billion a year in “efficiency reforms.”
Obama commented vaguely that the trustees’ report “should give Americans confidence that we can keep Social Security strong for future generations if we come together and address its real but manageable long-term cash flow issue.”
He said that as president he would “reduce costs in the Medicare program by enacting reforms to lower the price of prescription drugs, ending the subsidies for private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program and focusing resources on prevention and effective chronic disease management.”
John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who in the past has described the Medicare program as a “fiscal train wreck,” commented through a senior advisor that the report demonstrated the need to bring health care costs under control, i.e., to make cutbacks.
Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget would hold the annual growth in Medicare spending to 5 percent, down from 7.2 percent, in large part by reducing payments to medical providers.
The conclusion of the Social Security Board of Trustees report states that if action is not taken soon to confront the fiscal crisis facing Social Security and Medicare when the combined trust funds become exhausted in 2041, drastic measures would need to be taken:
* Starting in 2041, payroll taxes would need to be increased to 15.94 percent in 2041 and continue rising to 16.60 percent in 2082.
* Or benefits could be reduced, beginning with a 22 percent cut at the point of trust fund exhaustion in 2041, with reductions reaching 25 percent in 2082.
The threat to the financial viability of the Medicare and Social Security programs is real. The Board of Trustees states that over the 75-year period considered by their report, the programs would require additional revenue equivalent to $4.3 trillion in today’s dollars to pay all scheduled benefits.
But even the minimal measures needed to adequately finance the retirement and health-care needs of the population— a reversal of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and a drastic increase in taxation on corporate profits and the income of the wealthy—are dismissed out of hand by this body.
By Kate Randall
In what has become virtually an annual ritual, the Social Security Board of Trustees issued a report Tuesday projecting a bleak future for the US government’s two biggest benefit programs, Social Security and Medicare. The general projections of the board, all Bush administration members, were identical to last year’s.
The report states that the programs are facing “enormous challenges.” It estimates that resources in the Social Security trust fund will be depleted by 2041, and that reserves in the Medicare trust fund that pays hospital benefits are projected to be exhausted by 2019.
Social Security, enacted in 1935 under the Roosevelt administration, is a social insurance program providing benefits to retirees, survivors of beneficiaries and the disabled. Medicare, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson, provides health insurance coverage to seniors and others meeting special criteria.
Together, the two programs cover almost 50 million Americans, and paid out benefits of $627 billion in calendar year 2007, accounting for 23 percent of all federal spending. The first of the 76 million “baby boomers”—people born between 1945 and 1964—began collecting Social Security benefits this year.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, one of the board’s trustees, commented on the release of the report, “Without change, rising costs will drive government spending to unprecedented levels, consume nearly all projected federal revenues and threaten America’s future prosperity.”
The three remaining contenders for the White House in 2008—Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Republican John McCain—had little to offer in the form of concrete steps for dealing with the financial challenge facing these entitlement programs, as any real solution would entail a significant redistribution of wealth, beginning with the raising taxes on the wealthy and the corporations, something the Democrats as much as the Republicans are reluctant to propose.
Robert D. Reischauer, president of the Urban Institute public policy center, commented to the Los Angeles Times, “Everybody knows that there are a couple of 800-pound gorillas under the run, but nobody wants to talk about them because that is not the route to the Oval Office.”
In 2005, Bush seized on the unfavorable financial situation facing Social Security to push for privatization of the program. His plan—backed by McCain—called for allowing younger workers to divert their payroll tax contributions into private investment accounts. In February, Bush also proposed cuts in the Medicare program totaling more than $180 billion over five years.
While Democrats in Congress blocked both of these legislative initiatives, they have also refused to counter the administration’s moves to make permanent the massive tax cuts for the rich enacted under Bush.
While both Obama and Clinton have put forward proposals they claim would provide health care for all Americans, they have had little to say about the projected Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. Neither is eager to publicly call for rationing care, cutting payments to providers or requiring beneficiaries to pay more.
They are also beholden to the powerful health-care industry lobby, which has consistently blocked proposals for even modest reductions in Medicare payment rates, and are continually urging Congress to expand Medicare coverage of specific drugs, medical procedures and tests.
In the course of the primary campaign, Both Clinton and Obama have proposed better coordinating care for the chronically ill, reducing prescription drug costs, and promoting preventative health care, sidestepping the issues of tax hikes or benefit cuts.
Senator Clinton had no immediate comment on Tuesday’s report. She has claimed that her health-care proposal would save more than $50 billion a year in “efficiency reforms.”
Obama commented vaguely that the trustees’ report “should give Americans confidence that we can keep Social Security strong for future generations if we come together and address its real but manageable long-term cash flow issue.”
He said that as president he would “reduce costs in the Medicare program by enacting reforms to lower the price of prescription drugs, ending the subsidies for private insurers in the Medicare Advantage program and focusing resources on prevention and effective chronic disease management.”
John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who in the past has described the Medicare program as a “fiscal train wreck,” commented through a senior advisor that the report demonstrated the need to bring health care costs under control, i.e., to make cutbacks.
Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget would hold the annual growth in Medicare spending to 5 percent, down from 7.2 percent, in large part by reducing payments to medical providers.
The conclusion of the Social Security Board of Trustees report states that if action is not taken soon to confront the fiscal crisis facing Social Security and Medicare when the combined trust funds become exhausted in 2041, drastic measures would need to be taken:
* Starting in 2041, payroll taxes would need to be increased to 15.94 percent in 2041 and continue rising to 16.60 percent in 2082.
* Or benefits could be reduced, beginning with a 22 percent cut at the point of trust fund exhaustion in 2041, with reductions reaching 25 percent in 2082.
The threat to the financial viability of the Medicare and Social Security programs is real. The Board of Trustees states that over the 75-year period considered by their report, the programs would require additional revenue equivalent to $4.3 trillion in today’s dollars to pay all scheduled benefits.
But even the minimal measures needed to adequately finance the retirement and health-care needs of the population— a reversal of Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and a drastic increase in taxation on corporate profits and the income of the wealthy—are dismissed out of hand by this body.
Hundreds of aging American Airlines planes grounded for inspection
Go to Original
By Naomi Spencer
On Wednesday, American Airlines grounded 10 percent of its planes and cancelled flights in response to a hastily issued directive from the Federal Aviation Administration that required the company—the world’s largest airline—to inspect for possible wiring dangers.
The order comes just one day after a separate directive ordering inspections on thousands of Boeing jetliners potentially at risk for fuel leaks, and only weeks after an abrupt grounding of dozens of planes operated by Southwest Airlines for inspections. All of these moves highlight the dangerously crumbling infrastructure of the airline industry and the compromised state of federal oversight.
American Airlines announced the cancellations Wednesday morning of approximately 200 flights, all involving large MD-80 jets. Each craft holds some 170 passengers, meaning that travel was interrupted for tens of thousands of people across the country.
American Airlines uses 300 MD-80 planes, which are on average 18 years old. The oldest MD-80 still used began flying for the company in 1983.
According to a report in the Dallas Morning News Wednesday, these are not even the oldest craft in the fleet. AA also operates a fleet of Boeing 767-200s that are on average 21 years old, as well as 18-year-old Airbus A300s.
The machinery of the entire airline industry is worrisomely old. The Morning News noted that American Airlines operates the second-oldest fleet among the top US carriers, behind Northwest Airlines. In a cost-cutting restructuring scheme in the 1990s, Northwest expanded its fleet of Douglas DC-9 planes, which are on average 35 years old.
The decision to continue using aging aircraft is based solely on profit. The Morning News quoted a January statement by AA chief executive Gerard Arpey, who said that the company would wait until it was cost effective to replace the MD-80s with more fuel efficient planes. “We continue to be a little bit discouraged by the timing of the next-generation narrow-body airplane,” Arpey said, “which will probably push us in the direction of more 737-800s for MD-80 replacement than the next-generation airplane. But you’ll have to stay tuned on that.” At present, industry analysts project new narrow-body models will not come into production until 2017 to 2020.
The MD-80s were being inspected Wednesday for wire shielding problems, although both corporate and FAA officials have emphasized that the grounding was voluntary and precautionary.
According to FAA spokesperson Tim Wagner, planes are being checked to verify that shielding over a wire bundle attached to an auxiliary hydraulic pump is attached to an inner wall at one-inch intervals. This is an airworthiness standard that was issued two years ago, although the FAA did not begin auditing for company compliance until this month.
Wagner told Bloomberg news, “We have found that some of the attachments were slightly more than one inch ... we are going back to make sure we have precisely attached the sleeve every single inch. This is an abundance of caution on our part.”
In other words, sleeves that are supposed to cover bundles of wires were found detached from the wall of the wheel wells on an unspecified of the planes inspected Wednesday.
According to MSNBC Wednesday, American Airlines was rushing to get every inspection completed “over the course of a few hours.”
The FAA itself came under scrutiny by a congressional committee in early March for allowing Southwest Airlines to fly at least 117 planes overdue for inspections. In 2006 and 2007, Southwest carried out nearly 60,000 flights using 46 planes not inspected for metal fatigue-related cracks in their fuselages, with the full knowledge of the company and complicity of FAA inspectors.
McClatchy newspapers reported March 23 that Southwest inspected dozens of planes this month and found cracks in the fuselages of six aircraft. A company spokesperson told the news service that “at no point was it an issue of safety for passengers.”
According to two FAA whistleblowers scheduled to testify before the House Transportation Committee next month, the agency allowed Southwest to skip inspections for years. Officials in the agency were reportedly close to upper management in the company, with one top Southwest maintenance official having previously held a position in the FAA. Government documents obtained by USA Today indicate that FAA officials ignored critical safety violations by Southwest. The paper reported March 12 that top officials also “leaked sensitive data to the carrier and tried to intimidate two inspectors to head off investigations.”
In an effort to strike a tougher pose, the FAA announced it would seek $10.2 million in fines from Southwest for the violation and has issued a series of hasty inspection directives to the airline industry in the weeks since.
On Tuesday, FAA officials announced mandatory inspections on 3,500 Boeing 737s for a long outstanding danger of fuel leakage. In August, a China Airlines 737 exploded in flames on the tarmac of an Okinawa, Japan airport, just after 165 passengers were evacuated. The blaze was caused by a bolt that rattled free from the wing and pierced the fuel tank. Several other reports of similar incidences had been filed with the FAA prior to this week’s directive.
The FAA also issued a directive enforcing inspections on 5,000 other US-operated planes and 1,000 others internationally—again, on long-known dangers of engine failure associated with faulty gaskets in propeller planes.
The directives speak less to a policy of regulation than to its prolonged absence. Years’ worth of job cuts, along with wholesale cuts to employee wages, maintenance, and equipment upkeep, have dangerously compromised airline safety—with the active cooperation of federal authorities and the leadership of the industry’s unions.
Last fall, NASA withheld a compendium of airline safety data—including interviews with 24,000 pilots, data on the prevalence of near mid-air collisions, landing problems, mechanical failures, and other incidences—on the grounds that it would threaten the airline business because of the devastating effect it would have on consumer confidence.
NASA’s stonewalling provided yet another illustration of the ways in which government agencies act on behalf of private enterprise and subordinate public safety to business interests. Associated Press journalist Rita Beamish, whose Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the information were thwarted, said a source familiar with the data indicated that at least twice as many dangerous incidents occurred as were recorded by current monitoring systems.
After several months of pressure from consumer protection groups and the media, NASA released the data in what the New York Times described as “an intentionally scrambled, partly deleted version” (“NASA Offers Airline Safety Data,” January 1, 2008). The data was presented “in a format that made it difficult if not impossible for outsiders to analyze in search of trends, presenting the reports as documents rather than spreadsheets,” the Times noted.
Upon publication, NASA administrator Michael Griffin snidely told reporters, “It’s hard for me to see any data here that the traveling public would care about or ought to care about,” he said. “But it’s also not for me to prescribe what others may care about. We were asked to release the data and I said that we would, and I’ve done that.”
By Naomi Spencer
On Wednesday, American Airlines grounded 10 percent of its planes and cancelled flights in response to a hastily issued directive from the Federal Aviation Administration that required the company—the world’s largest airline—to inspect for possible wiring dangers.
The order comes just one day after a separate directive ordering inspections on thousands of Boeing jetliners potentially at risk for fuel leaks, and only weeks after an abrupt grounding of dozens of planes operated by Southwest Airlines for inspections. All of these moves highlight the dangerously crumbling infrastructure of the airline industry and the compromised state of federal oversight.
American Airlines announced the cancellations Wednesday morning of approximately 200 flights, all involving large MD-80 jets. Each craft holds some 170 passengers, meaning that travel was interrupted for tens of thousands of people across the country.
American Airlines uses 300 MD-80 planes, which are on average 18 years old. The oldest MD-80 still used began flying for the company in 1983.
According to a report in the Dallas Morning News Wednesday, these are not even the oldest craft in the fleet. AA also operates a fleet of Boeing 767-200s that are on average 21 years old, as well as 18-year-old Airbus A300s.
The machinery of the entire airline industry is worrisomely old. The Morning News noted that American Airlines operates the second-oldest fleet among the top US carriers, behind Northwest Airlines. In a cost-cutting restructuring scheme in the 1990s, Northwest expanded its fleet of Douglas DC-9 planes, which are on average 35 years old.
The decision to continue using aging aircraft is based solely on profit. The Morning News quoted a January statement by AA chief executive Gerard Arpey, who said that the company would wait until it was cost effective to replace the MD-80s with more fuel efficient planes. “We continue to be a little bit discouraged by the timing of the next-generation narrow-body airplane,” Arpey said, “which will probably push us in the direction of more 737-800s for MD-80 replacement than the next-generation airplane. But you’ll have to stay tuned on that.” At present, industry analysts project new narrow-body models will not come into production until 2017 to 2020.
The MD-80s were being inspected Wednesday for wire shielding problems, although both corporate and FAA officials have emphasized that the grounding was voluntary and precautionary.
According to FAA spokesperson Tim Wagner, planes are being checked to verify that shielding over a wire bundle attached to an auxiliary hydraulic pump is attached to an inner wall at one-inch intervals. This is an airworthiness standard that was issued two years ago, although the FAA did not begin auditing for company compliance until this month.
Wagner told Bloomberg news, “We have found that some of the attachments were slightly more than one inch ... we are going back to make sure we have precisely attached the sleeve every single inch. This is an abundance of caution on our part.”
In other words, sleeves that are supposed to cover bundles of wires were found detached from the wall of the wheel wells on an unspecified of the planes inspected Wednesday.
According to MSNBC Wednesday, American Airlines was rushing to get every inspection completed “over the course of a few hours.”
The FAA itself came under scrutiny by a congressional committee in early March for allowing Southwest Airlines to fly at least 117 planes overdue for inspections. In 2006 and 2007, Southwest carried out nearly 60,000 flights using 46 planes not inspected for metal fatigue-related cracks in their fuselages, with the full knowledge of the company and complicity of FAA inspectors.
McClatchy newspapers reported March 23 that Southwest inspected dozens of planes this month and found cracks in the fuselages of six aircraft. A company spokesperson told the news service that “at no point was it an issue of safety for passengers.”
According to two FAA whistleblowers scheduled to testify before the House Transportation Committee next month, the agency allowed Southwest to skip inspections for years. Officials in the agency were reportedly close to upper management in the company, with one top Southwest maintenance official having previously held a position in the FAA. Government documents obtained by USA Today indicate that FAA officials ignored critical safety violations by Southwest. The paper reported March 12 that top officials also “leaked sensitive data to the carrier and tried to intimidate two inspectors to head off investigations.”
In an effort to strike a tougher pose, the FAA announced it would seek $10.2 million in fines from Southwest for the violation and has issued a series of hasty inspection directives to the airline industry in the weeks since.
On Tuesday, FAA officials announced mandatory inspections on 3,500 Boeing 737s for a long outstanding danger of fuel leakage. In August, a China Airlines 737 exploded in flames on the tarmac of an Okinawa, Japan airport, just after 165 passengers were evacuated. The blaze was caused by a bolt that rattled free from the wing and pierced the fuel tank. Several other reports of similar incidences had been filed with the FAA prior to this week’s directive.
The FAA also issued a directive enforcing inspections on 5,000 other US-operated planes and 1,000 others internationally—again, on long-known dangers of engine failure associated with faulty gaskets in propeller planes.
The directives speak less to a policy of regulation than to its prolonged absence. Years’ worth of job cuts, along with wholesale cuts to employee wages, maintenance, and equipment upkeep, have dangerously compromised airline safety—with the active cooperation of federal authorities and the leadership of the industry’s unions.
Last fall, NASA withheld a compendium of airline safety data—including interviews with 24,000 pilots, data on the prevalence of near mid-air collisions, landing problems, mechanical failures, and other incidences—on the grounds that it would threaten the airline business because of the devastating effect it would have on consumer confidence.
NASA’s stonewalling provided yet another illustration of the ways in which government agencies act on behalf of private enterprise and subordinate public safety to business interests. Associated Press journalist Rita Beamish, whose Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the information were thwarted, said a source familiar with the data indicated that at least twice as many dangerous incidents occurred as were recorded by current monitoring systems.
After several months of pressure from consumer protection groups and the media, NASA released the data in what the New York Times described as “an intentionally scrambled, partly deleted version” (“NASA Offers Airline Safety Data,” January 1, 2008). The data was presented “in a format that made it difficult if not impossible for outsiders to analyze in search of trends, presenting the reports as documents rather than spreadsheets,” the Times noted.
Upon publication, NASA administrator Michael Griffin snidely told reporters, “It’s hard for me to see any data here that the traveling public would care about or ought to care about,” he said. “But it’s also not for me to prescribe what others may care about. We were asked to release the data and I said that we would, and I’ve done that.”
Richard Dauch and the aristocratic principle in America
$10 million for American Axle CEO
Go to Original
By Jerry White
The following statement is also posted as a pdf file. We urge all auto workers and WSWS readers to download the statement and distribute it at your factories and workplaces, and in your communities.
This week, as more than 3,600 workers marked the end of their first month on strike against the wage-cutting demands of auto parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing, it was revealed that the company’s CEO, Richard Dauch, was paid $10.2 million in salary, bonuses and other benefits in 2007.
Dauch, whose compensation since 2003 has totaled nearly $70 million, is demanding that workers accept a cut in pay from $28 to $14.50 an hour and, in some cases, as low as $11.50. Dauch insists that the company cannot afford to maintain the current level of wages and benefits.
Under the pay package approved by the company’s board of directors, Dauch will make about $196,154 a week. If he cuts wages in half, workers will see their pay reduced to $580 a week—far less than what is needed to pay for basic necessities such as rent or mortgage obligations, food, heating, gasoline, education and health care. At such near-poverty wages, it would take an American Axle worker 338 weeks—or six-and-a-half years—to earn what Dauch will bring home every week.
In a country where all men are supposedly created equal, it is clear that Dauch is 338 times more equal than the workers who produce his profits.
In its proxy statement filing Monday, the company’s board of directors said Dauch was being rewarded for “proactive leadership in returning AAM to profitability as AAM continues to resize, restructure and recover from the rapid and unprecedented structural transformation of the highly competitive US domestic auto industry.”
What does this mean? Over the last several years, Dauch has ruthlessly cut the workforce at his original plants by nearly half, shuttered his Buffalo, New York plant and expanded American Axle’s low-cost factories in the US, Mexico and other countries. Now he is demanding wage and benefit cuts that will leave workers and their families facing destitution. According to America’s corporate and financial elite, that’s earning your pay.
Of course, Dauch is not alone. This week, General Motors and Ford announced multi-million-dollar pay packages for their CEOs, Alan Mulally and Richard Wagoner, respectively. Chrysler LLC, now owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, has refused to reveal how much it paid its chief, Robert Nardelli, after he left Home Depot last year with a golden parachute of $210 million.
Although Detroit’s big automakers are still in the red, they expect to reap vast sums for their big investors due to the new contracts signed last year with the United Auto Workers union (UAW). These sell-out agreements will allow the companies to dump their retiree health care obligations, eliminate thousands more jobs and replace higher-paid senior workers with workers making a third of their wages and benefits.
Behind the auto bosses are the Wall Street financiers who count on Dauch & Co. to guarantee the maximum possible return on their investments by gutting the wages and pensions of workers. In the case of private equity firms such as Cerberus, the takeover of auto companies like Chrysler is but the prelude to ruthless downsizing, followed by the resale of what remains of the firm at an enormous markup.
In the ranks of hedge fund and private equity moguls are individuals such as Stephen Schwarzman, the co-founder of Blackstone Group LP, who received a total compensation package of $5.13 billion in 2007, an amount just shy of the gross national product of the South Pacific nation of Fiji. Blackstone sold its controlling stake in American Axle several years ago, netting $600 million for its top investors.
Other billionaires have cashed in on the systematic dismantling of the auto industry and the buying and selling of companies. These include former Chrysler investor Kirk Kerkorian (net worth $15 billion), Carl Icahn (net worth $13 billion), Wilbur Ross (net worth $1.2 billion) and Cerberus kingpin Stephen Feinberg (net worth $1 billion).
Together with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others, these are the people who make up America’s financial aristocracy. They enjoy all the privileges and prerogatives of wealth and power that come from their control of society’s economic resources.
They control both political parties and the news media and exert vast influence over the decisions—from the launching of wars, to the bailout of Wall Street swindlers, to the gutting of vitally needed social programs—that affect the lives of the vast majority of the population, both in the US and globally.
The social devastation in the two cities—Detroit and Buffalo—where American Axle has its major facilities is testimony to the parasitism and socially destructive character of the capitalist system over which such forces preside. Once powerful examples of US industrial might—and the home of so-called “middle class workers”—they have been ravaged by decades of corporate downsizing.
The “Motor City” is one of the poorest big cities in America. It ranks among the top five US cities in the rate of home foreclosures.
The former steelmaking center of Buffalo has seen the decimation of its manufacturing base, the loss of nearly half of its population, and an explosive growth of poverty and hunger.
Such is the result of a deliberate policy of “deindustrialization”—the elimination of less profitable sections of industry—carried out by the financial elite, in order to free up their capital for investment in more lucrative ventures. These consist largely of various forms of financial manipulation and speculation, the result of which is a financial crisis that threatens to plunge the US and the world into a new Depression.
For the capitalist owners, the giant forces of production, built up by decades of human labor, are nothing more than personal assets to be dispensed with as they see fit. In this economic system, the working class is nothing more than an object for exploitation.
How can any rational and humane solution to the problems facing workers in the US and around the world be found when the means of production are held in the iron grip of this financial aristocracy? Like France before the Revolution of 1789, this social layer has become an absolute barrier to any progressive and egalitarian form of economic organization.
The role of the UAW
The UAW has been conspicuously silent about Dauch’s pay-off. This is, in part, because the union has a long history of collaborating with him, dating back to the Chrysler bailout of 1979-80, when Dauch, then a top executive at the company, joined with UAW officials to blackmail workers into accepting massive wage and benefit cuts.
Most fundamentally, the UAW agrees with Dauch that the living standards of its members and of future workers must be sharply reduced. On the eve of the American Axle strike, the UAW offered give-backs on par with what it granted to the parts makers Delphi and Dana and the Big Three automakers.
Far from representing the interests of American Axle employees and other auto workers, the UAW functions as a loyal handmaiden of the auto companies. In exchange for its service to the auto bosses, the UAW has been rewarded with control of a $54 billion retiree health care trust fund and hundreds of millions of shares of GM and Ford stock. UAW President Ronald Gettelfinger has been called the “darling of Wall Street,” now that he presides over one of the biggest private investment funds in America.
The UAW sits on a strike fund worth nearly $1 billion, yet it is forcing American Axle workers to survive on $200 a week in strike benefits. Why? These workers—who are engaged in the longest auto strike in a decade—are taking a stand for workers throughout the industry. They should receive their full wages and benefits until a victory is won.
But the UAW bureaucracy has no intention of depleting its strike fund, which is a huge source of income from interest that keeps the gravy train going at the union’s misnamed Solidarity House headquarters and its various district offices, and provides a slush fund to bribe local union officials.
There is another reason for the UAW’s miserliness toward the strikers. The union has no intention of waging a serious struggle, and sees economic hardship as aiding its effort to wear down the strikers and force them to accept massive cuts in wages and benefits.
The transformation of the UAW into a business, with a direct economic incentive to help the auto companies exploit its members—who are required to join the union and whose dues payments to the union are automatically deducted from their paychecks—is the product not simply of the corruption and cowardice of Gettelfinger and the other UAW bureaucrats. More fundamentally, it is a result of the political perspective of the UAW and the rest of the official unions, which is based on economic nationalism, support for the Democratic Party, and the defense of the capitalist profit system.
If the American Axle strike is not to be isolated and defeated, rank-and-file workers must take the conduct of the struggle and the negotiations out of the hands of the labor bureaucracy. The walkout must be extended throughout the industry in order to overturn the concessions contracts agreed to by the UAW. At the same time, the nationalism of the UAW bureaucracy must be rejected and an appeal made to workers in Canada, Latin America, Asia and Europe to wage a common struggle in defense of jobs and living standards.
This industrial mobilization must be the starting point for the building of a powerful political movement of the working class—in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans—based on a socialist program to meet the needs of the masses of working people, not the corporate and financial elites. At the heart of this program is the demand for the major auto and auto parts companies to be removed from the private ownership and control of the auto bosses and placed under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class.
We urge auto workers to download and distribute this statement and send your comments to the WSWS. To contact the WSWS, email us at here.
Go to Original
By Jerry White
The following statement is also posted as a pdf file. We urge all auto workers and WSWS readers to download the statement and distribute it at your factories and workplaces, and in your communities.
This week, as more than 3,600 workers marked the end of their first month on strike against the wage-cutting demands of auto parts supplier American Axle & Manufacturing, it was revealed that the company’s CEO, Richard Dauch, was paid $10.2 million in salary, bonuses and other benefits in 2007.
Dauch, whose compensation since 2003 has totaled nearly $70 million, is demanding that workers accept a cut in pay from $28 to $14.50 an hour and, in some cases, as low as $11.50. Dauch insists that the company cannot afford to maintain the current level of wages and benefits.
Under the pay package approved by the company’s board of directors, Dauch will make about $196,154 a week. If he cuts wages in half, workers will see their pay reduced to $580 a week—far less than what is needed to pay for basic necessities such as rent or mortgage obligations, food, heating, gasoline, education and health care. At such near-poverty wages, it would take an American Axle worker 338 weeks—or six-and-a-half years—to earn what Dauch will bring home every week.
In a country where all men are supposedly created equal, it is clear that Dauch is 338 times more equal than the workers who produce his profits.
In its proxy statement filing Monday, the company’s board of directors said Dauch was being rewarded for “proactive leadership in returning AAM to profitability as AAM continues to resize, restructure and recover from the rapid and unprecedented structural transformation of the highly competitive US domestic auto industry.”
What does this mean? Over the last several years, Dauch has ruthlessly cut the workforce at his original plants by nearly half, shuttered his Buffalo, New York plant and expanded American Axle’s low-cost factories in the US, Mexico and other countries. Now he is demanding wage and benefit cuts that will leave workers and their families facing destitution. According to America’s corporate and financial elite, that’s earning your pay.
Of course, Dauch is not alone. This week, General Motors and Ford announced multi-million-dollar pay packages for their CEOs, Alan Mulally and Richard Wagoner, respectively. Chrysler LLC, now owned by private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, has refused to reveal how much it paid its chief, Robert Nardelli, after he left Home Depot last year with a golden parachute of $210 million.
Although Detroit’s big automakers are still in the red, they expect to reap vast sums for their big investors due to the new contracts signed last year with the United Auto Workers union (UAW). These sell-out agreements will allow the companies to dump their retiree health care obligations, eliminate thousands more jobs and replace higher-paid senior workers with workers making a third of their wages and benefits.
Behind the auto bosses are the Wall Street financiers who count on Dauch & Co. to guarantee the maximum possible return on their investments by gutting the wages and pensions of workers. In the case of private equity firms such as Cerberus, the takeover of auto companies like Chrysler is but the prelude to ruthless downsizing, followed by the resale of what remains of the firm at an enormous markup.
In the ranks of hedge fund and private equity moguls are individuals such as Stephen Schwarzman, the co-founder of Blackstone Group LP, who received a total compensation package of $5.13 billion in 2007, an amount just shy of the gross national product of the South Pacific nation of Fiji. Blackstone sold its controlling stake in American Axle several years ago, netting $600 million for its top investors.
Other billionaires have cashed in on the systematic dismantling of the auto industry and the buying and selling of companies. These include former Chrysler investor Kirk Kerkorian (net worth $15 billion), Carl Icahn (net worth $13 billion), Wilbur Ross (net worth $1.2 billion) and Cerberus kingpin Stephen Feinberg (net worth $1 billion).
Together with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and others, these are the people who make up America’s financial aristocracy. They enjoy all the privileges and prerogatives of wealth and power that come from their control of society’s economic resources.
They control both political parties and the news media and exert vast influence over the decisions—from the launching of wars, to the bailout of Wall Street swindlers, to the gutting of vitally needed social programs—that affect the lives of the vast majority of the population, both in the US and globally.
The social devastation in the two cities—Detroit and Buffalo—where American Axle has its major facilities is testimony to the parasitism and socially destructive character of the capitalist system over which such forces preside. Once powerful examples of US industrial might—and the home of so-called “middle class workers”—they have been ravaged by decades of corporate downsizing.
The “Motor City” is one of the poorest big cities in America. It ranks among the top five US cities in the rate of home foreclosures.
The former steelmaking center of Buffalo has seen the decimation of its manufacturing base, the loss of nearly half of its population, and an explosive growth of poverty and hunger.
Such is the result of a deliberate policy of “deindustrialization”—the elimination of less profitable sections of industry—carried out by the financial elite, in order to free up their capital for investment in more lucrative ventures. These consist largely of various forms of financial manipulation and speculation, the result of which is a financial crisis that threatens to plunge the US and the world into a new Depression.
For the capitalist owners, the giant forces of production, built up by decades of human labor, are nothing more than personal assets to be dispensed with as they see fit. In this economic system, the working class is nothing more than an object for exploitation.
How can any rational and humane solution to the problems facing workers in the US and around the world be found when the means of production are held in the iron grip of this financial aristocracy? Like France before the Revolution of 1789, this social layer has become an absolute barrier to any progressive and egalitarian form of economic organization.
The role of the UAW
The UAW has been conspicuously silent about Dauch’s pay-off. This is, in part, because the union has a long history of collaborating with him, dating back to the Chrysler bailout of 1979-80, when Dauch, then a top executive at the company, joined with UAW officials to blackmail workers into accepting massive wage and benefit cuts.
Most fundamentally, the UAW agrees with Dauch that the living standards of its members and of future workers must be sharply reduced. On the eve of the American Axle strike, the UAW offered give-backs on par with what it granted to the parts makers Delphi and Dana and the Big Three automakers.
Far from representing the interests of American Axle employees and other auto workers, the UAW functions as a loyal handmaiden of the auto companies. In exchange for its service to the auto bosses, the UAW has been rewarded with control of a $54 billion retiree health care trust fund and hundreds of millions of shares of GM and Ford stock. UAW President Ronald Gettelfinger has been called the “darling of Wall Street,” now that he presides over one of the biggest private investment funds in America.
The UAW sits on a strike fund worth nearly $1 billion, yet it is forcing American Axle workers to survive on $200 a week in strike benefits. Why? These workers—who are engaged in the longest auto strike in a decade—are taking a stand for workers throughout the industry. They should receive their full wages and benefits until a victory is won.
But the UAW bureaucracy has no intention of depleting its strike fund, which is a huge source of income from interest that keeps the gravy train going at the union’s misnamed Solidarity House headquarters and its various district offices, and provides a slush fund to bribe local union officials.
There is another reason for the UAW’s miserliness toward the strikers. The union has no intention of waging a serious struggle, and sees economic hardship as aiding its effort to wear down the strikers and force them to accept massive cuts in wages and benefits.
The transformation of the UAW into a business, with a direct economic incentive to help the auto companies exploit its members—who are required to join the union and whose dues payments to the union are automatically deducted from their paychecks—is the product not simply of the corruption and cowardice of Gettelfinger and the other UAW bureaucrats. More fundamentally, it is a result of the political perspective of the UAW and the rest of the official unions, which is based on economic nationalism, support for the Democratic Party, and the defense of the capitalist profit system.
If the American Axle strike is not to be isolated and defeated, rank-and-file workers must take the conduct of the struggle and the negotiations out of the hands of the labor bureaucracy. The walkout must be extended throughout the industry in order to overturn the concessions contracts agreed to by the UAW. At the same time, the nationalism of the UAW bureaucracy must be rejected and an appeal made to workers in Canada, Latin America, Asia and Europe to wage a common struggle in defense of jobs and living standards.
This industrial mobilization must be the starting point for the building of a powerful political movement of the working class—in opposition to the Democrats and Republicans—based on a socialist program to meet the needs of the masses of working people, not the corporate and financial elites. At the heart of this program is the demand for the major auto and auto parts companies to be removed from the private ownership and control of the auto bosses and placed under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class.
We urge auto workers to download and distribute this statement and send your comments to the WSWS. To contact the WSWS, email us at here.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Credit crisis: Mervyn King offers little comfort as squeeze enters 'a new phase'
Go to Original
By Gary Duncan
The Bank of England’s Governor paved the way yesterday for it to take more radical steps to ease mounting financial stresses on British banks as he admitted that the credit squeeze had entered “a new and difficult phase”.
Mervyn King signalled to MPs that ground-breaking action to buy up or swap the illiquid mortgage-backed securities blamed for the near-seizure of credit markets could be taken, in a decisive attempt by the Bank to quell resurgent financial strains.
The Governor said that present conditions were “the sorts of circumstances in which central bank action is necessary to prevent a major shock to the system as a whole. We are discussing with the banks how a longer-term resolution of the problem might be reached,” he told the Commons Treasury Committee.
Mr King highlighted his concern over deteriorating financial conditions when he conceded for the first time that the economy faced a full-blown credit crunch. Until now, he had avoided using that term, but yesterday he emphasised that “across the world, confidence in financial markets is fragile”.
His comments came as renewed strains in Britain’s money markets were confirmed when sterling Libor interest rates for three-month loans between banks rose to 6 per cent, the highest since December 28.
The Governor also boosted City speculation that interest rates could be cut again as soon as next month. Asked whether market upheavals meant that the Bank was more predisposed to cut interest rates, Mr King replied bluntly: “Yes.”
His clear hint that the Bank was contemplating unprecedented measures to restore financial calm in its talks with commercial banks came as he pinned the blame for the funding drought in inter-bank lending firmly on largely untradeable assets, such as mortgage-backed securities.
“The heart of the problem stems from an overhang on banks’ balance sheets of assets in which markets have closed,” he said. “These assets cannot now be sold or used to secure funding in the market; they are difficult to finance.
That has created uncertainty about the strength of banks’ financial positions.”
The Governor made clear that the Bank would continue to lend against asset-backed securities. However, in a signal that he sees a sound case for stronger measures, he added: “Such lending can only be a temporary measure, but it can be a useful bridge to a longer-term solution.”
While he did not detail any specific measures, he underlined the case for more far-reaching action. “It is unrealistic to assume that markets for many asset-backed securities are likely to reopen speedily, or, when they do, to their previous levels of activity.”
While Mr King’s comments were seen as pointing to potential Bank moves that would remove asset-backed securities from banks’ balance sheets, he also emphasised to MPs that any action would come with two key conditions.
He said it was essential that the risk of losses on banks’ lending “remain with banks’ shareholders”, while any public funds should not simply subsidise new commercial lending by banking groups. The Governor could impose conditions on any new Bank of England support to ensure the first condition, but guaranteeing the latter could be much harder to achieve.
Mr King mounted a strong defence of the Bank’s handling of the credit crisis, rebuffing challenges from MPs who suggested it had been less proactive than the US Federal Reserve.
He also repeated his prediction that house prices were unlikely to rise over the next few years, while a sharp squeeze on household spending power was likely to continue for another year. Despite that, he dampened hopes of steep cuts in interest rates, pointing again to the difficult balancing act between pressures from rising inflation and weaker growth.
By Gary Duncan
The Bank of England’s Governor paved the way yesterday for it to take more radical steps to ease mounting financial stresses on British banks as he admitted that the credit squeeze had entered “a new and difficult phase”.
Mervyn King signalled to MPs that ground-breaking action to buy up or swap the illiquid mortgage-backed securities blamed for the near-seizure of credit markets could be taken, in a decisive attempt by the Bank to quell resurgent financial strains.
The Governor said that present conditions were “the sorts of circumstances in which central bank action is necessary to prevent a major shock to the system as a whole. We are discussing with the banks how a longer-term resolution of the problem might be reached,” he told the Commons Treasury Committee.
Mr King highlighted his concern over deteriorating financial conditions when he conceded for the first time that the economy faced a full-blown credit crunch. Until now, he had avoided using that term, but yesterday he emphasised that “across the world, confidence in financial markets is fragile”.
His comments came as renewed strains in Britain’s money markets were confirmed when sterling Libor interest rates for three-month loans between banks rose to 6 per cent, the highest since December 28.
The Governor also boosted City speculation that interest rates could be cut again as soon as next month. Asked whether market upheavals meant that the Bank was more predisposed to cut interest rates, Mr King replied bluntly: “Yes.”
His clear hint that the Bank was contemplating unprecedented measures to restore financial calm in its talks with commercial banks came as he pinned the blame for the funding drought in inter-bank lending firmly on largely untradeable assets, such as mortgage-backed securities.
“The heart of the problem stems from an overhang on banks’ balance sheets of assets in which markets have closed,” he said. “These assets cannot now be sold or used to secure funding in the market; they are difficult to finance.
That has created uncertainty about the strength of banks’ financial positions.”
The Governor made clear that the Bank would continue to lend against asset-backed securities. However, in a signal that he sees a sound case for stronger measures, he added: “Such lending can only be a temporary measure, but it can be a useful bridge to a longer-term solution.”
While he did not detail any specific measures, he underlined the case for more far-reaching action. “It is unrealistic to assume that markets for many asset-backed securities are likely to reopen speedily, or, when they do, to their previous levels of activity.”
While Mr King’s comments were seen as pointing to potential Bank moves that would remove asset-backed securities from banks’ balance sheets, he also emphasised to MPs that any action would come with two key conditions.
He said it was essential that the risk of losses on banks’ lending “remain with banks’ shareholders”, while any public funds should not simply subsidise new commercial lending by banking groups. The Governor could impose conditions on any new Bank of England support to ensure the first condition, but guaranteeing the latter could be much harder to achieve.
Mr King mounted a strong defence of the Bank’s handling of the credit crisis, rebuffing challenges from MPs who suggested it had been less proactive than the US Federal Reserve.
He also repeated his prediction that house prices were unlikely to rise over the next few years, while a sharp squeeze on household spending power was likely to continue for another year. Despite that, he dampened hopes of steep cuts in interest rates, pointing again to the difficult balancing act between pressures from rising inflation and weaker growth.
Death of the Bees: GMO Crops and the Decline of Bee Colonies in North America
Go to Original
By Brit Amos
By Brit Amos
‘Commercial beehives pollinate over a third of [North}America’s crops and that web of nourishment encompasses everything from fruits like peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries and more, to nuts like California almonds, 90 percent of which are helped along by the honeybees. Without this pollination, you could kiss those crops goodbye, to say nothing of the honey bees produce or the flowers they also fertilize’.1
This essay will discuss the arguments and seriousness pertaining to the massive deaths and the decline of Bee colonies in North America. As well, it will shed light on a worldwide hunger issue that will have an economical and ecological impact in the very near future.
There are many reasons given to the decline in Bees, but one argument that matters most is the use of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO) and "Terminator Seeds" that are presently being endorsed by governments and forcefully utilized as our primary agricultural needs of survival. I will argue what is publicized and covered by the media is in actuality masking the real forces at work, namely the impact of genetically modified seeds on the reproduction of bee colonies across North America
Genetically modified seeds are produced and distributed by powerful biotech conglomerates. The latter manipulate government agricultural policy with a view to supporting their agenda of dominance in the agricultural industry. American conglomerates such as Monsanto, Pioneer HiBred and others, have created seeds that reproduce only under certain conditions, often linked to the use of their own brands of fertilizer and/or insecticide.
The genetic modification of the plant leads to the concurrent genetic modification of the flower pollen. When the flower pollen becomes genetically modified or sterile, the bees will potentially go malnourished and die of illness due to the lack of nutrients and the interruption of the digestive capacity of what they feed on through the summer and over the winter hibernation process.
I will argue that the media reports tend to distract public opinion from the true cause which underlies the destruction of bee colonies. As such, outlined are four major arguments which the biotech conglomerates (which produce and market GMO seeds) have used to mislead the public regarding the demise of the bees. These arguments include Varroa mites, parasites, cell phones, and terminator seeds
Argument 1: Varroa mites2
Firstly, while there are some people who want to pin the blame on these mites, such views are unconvincing in that the argument does not make any sense because the main source of disease for these bees is intestinal disease. In fact, ‘many bee experts assumed Varroa mites were a major cause of the severe die-off in the winter of 2005. Yet when researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, traveled to Oakdale, California, where Anderson and a number of his fellow beekeepers spend winter and spring, they could find no correlation between the level of Varroa mite infestation and the health of bee colonies. ‘We couldn’t pin the blame for the die-off on any single cause,’ says Jeff Pettis, a research entomologist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland,3 However, treatments against mites may be leaving hives open to the onslaught of powerful pathogens, much in the same way the overuse of antibiotics lead to super bugs in society today. What does that say about our future? We have learned that in the 1960’s and 1970’s, among other human ailments, DDT was a major cause of cancer in humans and animals; however, the substitution of such pesticides was a closely guarded secret. Unfortunately, the long term effects on the human population has yet to be understood as the compromise of the immune system may be happening quicker than we are ready to accept, even regarding the advent of super bugs. One can see that even this medical implication has severe economical implications.
Argument 2: Parasites
Secondly; Crops and even hedges, verges, and woodlands, and even where bees remain are sprayed with pesticides or herbicides. These chemicals are the practical extension of an exasperating belief that nature is our enemy. Pouring poison on our food is a very simplistic way of dealing with our problems however it ignores the root causes. “New genetically modified crops, designed to be immune to certain pesticides and herbicides, have resulted in the increased usage of these chemicals. Pesticides, particularly Bayer’s imidacloprid, a nicotine-based product marketed under the names Admire, Provado, Merit, Marathon, and Gaucho have been concretely implicated4 in the destruction of bee populations before (see also)5. The fact that other bees and insects are not raiding deserted hives to feed on the honey as they normally would lends some credence to the theory of a toxic overload. The toxic overload is certainly a concern, but wouldn’t it also need to be considered that this is systematic in the degeneration of the digestive process, such as in humans inability to digest preservatives and not absorb the enzymes to break down the foods eaten for survival?
Argument 3: cell phones
Thirdly, there was also a misconstrued study on cell phone radiation 6 and its effects on the bee’s ability to navigate which turned out to be an over-zealous unthinking reaction by an article in the Independent news. Some have also mentioned other navigational hindrances such as UV radiation, shifting magnetic fields and even quantum physics7 as a reason to the destruction of the bees.
There is certain implications to this theory, and it has been proven that electromagnetic radio wave lengths to affect the navigation of the bees. However the sun emits radiation spurts all the time, yet this has not offered a hindrance to the bees.
Argument 4: Terminator Seeds
Lastly, ‘Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialization of “Terminator” crop varieties. These seeds are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds, which farmers cannot replant, also to mention that the bees that are trying to collect pollen, found to have their digestive tract diseases, such as amoeba and nosema disease’8. These diseases are mainly located in the digestive tract system. After studies of the autopsy, the most alarming trait is that the lower intestine and stinger have discolored to black vs. the normal opaque color, Synominus with colon cancer in humans.
Figure 1: Extreme discoloration of intestinal tracts of bees.
‘When thoracic discs were cut from sample Georgia A-2 the musculature of bees was notably soft and discolored (A) when compared to healthy thoracic cuts (B).
This discoloration suggests that the bees were dead upon collection. When questioned the beekeeper confirmed that the bees were alive at the time of collection. Further, the tracheal system of these bees did not show signs of desiccation usually associated
with the collection of dead bees. Thoracic discs from this sample, after being placed in KOH for 24 hours, revealed peculiar white nodules”9
As seen above, it is certain that the digestive shutdown is due to hard material in the digestive tract that compromises the immune system. Circulatory problems would without doubt. Could it be that humans are going through the same process with the rise of Colon Cancer? As seen below in the comparison of the healthy Bee and the unhealthy bee, it is obvious that the bees that are ingesting GMO pollen are having severe digestive problems, so severe that the disease is terminal.
Figure 2: Digestive shutdown of the Honey Bee
The rectal contents of Georgia bees (A) were distinctly different then the contents of Pasadena bees (B). The rectal walls of GA bees were notably transparent revealing contents that looked like small stone packets (C). While Fyg (1964) describes similar stone like contents in poorly laying queens, the stones observed in the GA bees were not attached to the epithelium layer as Fyg (1964) describes. When these packets were ground and mounted, some unidentified floating objects (UFO’s) were observed. A cubic particle that resembles the cubic bodies of polyhedrios viruses (this viruses attacks wax moths) excepting that the cube observed was ~10x too big for a virus particle. There were fragments of pollen grains husks in all samples examined. All PA samples were found to have nosema spores in their rectal contents while none of the GA samples did. In two samples, epithelial cells were packed with spores.10
The North American reliance on bees for pollination is at minimum from 30 to 40%. Does it not seem obvious that the digestion of foreign genetic agriculture directly affects the digestive process of the bees. Could it also be that there are similarities in the human population digestive process? It must also be noted that this increased epidemic of the bee colony collapse has risen significantly since the use of GMO agriculture in our foods. It is also suspect in the rise of new cases of medical ailments in humans such as colon cancer, obesity, heart disease, etc... In the writers’ opinion, the inability of the bees to pass matter digestively is quite similar to the present problems in the human digestive system
Conclusion:
The proof is obvious that one of the major reasons of the bees’ decline is by the ingestion of GMO proteins. This is problematic, as there is such an increase of indigestible foods in humans and bees. The situation of colon cancer in humans is somewhat similar in occurrence. This is only a theory but leaves one to wonder what are we eating en mass. The external or complementary good of the bee is obviously a rise for a global concern. The long-term economical and environmental impact has yet to be completely understood.
The Ecological Impact of horizontal gene transfer and increase of rampant disease is not fully examined and if so, is kept silent by these Conglomerates. The Economic Impact of the Colony collapse would mean higher inflation, scarcity of agricultural goods, and ultimately the collapse of North America Agriculture Business.
The Environmental Impact of scarcity and increased demand for resources, will beyond doubt have severe repercussions for our long-term food security. The bio-diversity of the bees causes positive economic and ecological externalities. The negative externalities have yet to be fully grasped or understood.
Organic crops: still relatively untouched
The truth is that organic farming is relatively untouched as the bee crisis is concerned. Organic farming maintains the diversity of the eco-system and preserves the quality of the foods produced. The economic impact that the scarcity of bees will potentially have on our society as a whole is very worrisome. In the end, only our children will fully realize; that it was greed that destroyed our beautiful blue planet.
References:
Thill, John. Colony Collapse: Do Massive Bee Die-Off Mean an End to Our Food System as We Know it? AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/module (Accessed 7/9/2007 10:06 PM)
Colony Collapse Disorder. Wikkapedia Encyclopedia Online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/’Colony Collapse Disorder’
(Accessed July 12, 2007)
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)
www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
(Accessed June 30, 2007)
CROP PROTECTION. Monthly 28 February 2001 – Issue No 135
Market Scope Europe Ltd.
http://www.crop-protection-monthly.co.uk (Accessed July 10, 2007)
HONEY BEE Research Program. RIRDIC Honeybee Research Program Home Page. http://rirdic. gov.au/program/hb.htmltop, (Accessed July 7, 2007)
Ho, Dr. Mae-Wan. ‘Recent Evidence Confirms Risks of Horizontal Gene Transfer’. ISIS Contribution to ACNFP/Food Standards Agency Open Meeting 13 November 2002, Institute of Science in Society, PO Box 32097, London NW1 0XR (Accessed July 16, 2007)
ISIS Contribution. ‘Recent Evidence Confirms Risks of Horizontal Gene Transfer”. ISIS Contribution to ACNFP/Food Standards Agency Open Meeting 13 November 2002 (Accessed July 17, 2007)
Vidal, John. ‘Canada backs terminator seeds’, The Guardian. Wednesday, February 9, 2005.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/ (Accessed July 17, 2007)
Wilson, Dan. Lost colonies: ‘Where have the bees gone’? Appelton Post-Crescent, 5/18/2007 (Accessed July 19, 2007)
What’s Causing the Mass Disappearance of Honeybees? ‘What is causing the Dramatic decline in Honeybee Populations in the U.S and Elsewhere in Recent years’? HealthNewsDigest.com – New York, NY, June 2, 2007
http:/www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php (Accessed July 10, 2007)
Notes
1 Hill, Scott. AlterNet, Posted on June 11, 2007, Printed on July 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/53491/
2 http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06sum/bees2.asp
3 ‘The Vanishing’
http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/06sum/bees2.asp
4 http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2003/11/26/millions_of_bees_dead_bayers_gaucho_blamed.htm
5 http://www.valleyvoicenewspaper.com/vv/stories/beedeaths.htm
6 http://independent.co.uk/environment/news/article2449968
7 http://www.synchronizm.com/blog/index.php/2007/03/29/the-bees-who-flew-too-high/
8 Vidal, John. ‘Canada backs terminator seeds’ Wednesday February 9, 2005. The Gaurdian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/
9 Fall Dwindle Disease: A preliminary report
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
December 15, 2006
10 Fall Dwindle Disease: A preliminary report
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/pressReleases/FallDwindleUpdate0107.pdf
Land Deal Could Open Alaska Wildlife Refuge to Oil
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Anchorage, Alaska - A controversial land swap proposal could open portions of an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, dividing Alaska natives and stoking opposition from environmentalists seeking to protect the bears, moose and birds that live there.
Supporters of the plan to exchange land in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, which lies just south of the more-famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, say they would like the plan to be approved by the administration of US president George W. Bush before the election in November.
"The window is the election," Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a staunch backer of the plan, said at an Anchorage news conference. "We'd like to have an executive order out of the administration before they leave office."
The proposed land trade would give 110,000 acres of hydrocarbon-prone uplands within the refuge, plus mineral rights to another 97,000 acres, to Fairbanks-based Doyon Ltd. In exchange, the refuge would gain 150,000 acres of bird-friendly wetlands now owned by Doyon, plus 56,500 acres on which Doyon has pending land claims.
Doyon, owned by Athabascan Indians of interior Alaska, has long envisioned such a trade to give economic benefits to its shareholders while preserving traditional culture and the environment on which it depends.
"You can have both the subsistence lifestyle and the protection of that lifestyle, and you can have oil and gas exploration," said Norm Phillips, Doyon's resource manager.
But many people living closest to the potential development - many of them Doyon shareholders - oppose the plan because of the likelihood of oil pollution and the possibility of social upheaval such as a flow of drugs, alcohol and poachers over new roads.
"Usually, the indigenous people are at the losing end of any sort of oil development," said Dacho Alexander, first chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribe in Fort Yukon, a village of 600 near the proposed exchange parcels.
Alexander said the dispute illustrates the perennial clash between corporate goals and non-economic Native values.
The Yukon Flats basin holds an estimated 173 million barrels of oil - accounting for less than nine days of US consumption at current rates - along with 5.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 127 million barrels of natural-gas liquids, according to the US Geological Survey.
It also holds unique ecological values.
Straddling the Arctic Circle, cradled by two mountain ranges and bisected by the Yukon River, the refuge encompasses boreal forests that support moose, grizzly and black bears and many other mammals.
Its network of lakes, streams, ponds and sloughs attract Alaska's highest concentrations of breeding ducks. It has some of Alaska's coldest winter days and, thanks to around-the-clock sunlight, scorching summer temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest for this latitude in North America.
Fran Mauer, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and prominent critic of the land exchange, says the trade plan violates the refuge's conservation mission.
"I just don't see that it's in the public's interest to do it," he said.
But Doyon officials say that no matter what land the corporation ends up owning, oil and gas drilling is inevitable in the Yukon Flats.
"Even if the land trade doesn't happen, Doyon is still going to move forward with exploration out there," Phillips said.
Anchorage, Alaska - A controversial land swap proposal could open portions of an Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling, dividing Alaska natives and stoking opposition from environmentalists seeking to protect the bears, moose and birds that live there.
Supporters of the plan to exchange land in the Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge, which lies just south of the more-famous Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, say they would like the plan to be approved by the administration of US president George W. Bush before the election in November.
"The window is the election," Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young, a staunch backer of the plan, said at an Anchorage news conference. "We'd like to have an executive order out of the administration before they leave office."
The proposed land trade would give 110,000 acres of hydrocarbon-prone uplands within the refuge, plus mineral rights to another 97,000 acres, to Fairbanks-based Doyon Ltd. In exchange, the refuge would gain 150,000 acres of bird-friendly wetlands now owned by Doyon, plus 56,500 acres on which Doyon has pending land claims.
Doyon, owned by Athabascan Indians of interior Alaska, has long envisioned such a trade to give economic benefits to its shareholders while preserving traditional culture and the environment on which it depends.
"You can have both the subsistence lifestyle and the protection of that lifestyle, and you can have oil and gas exploration," said Norm Phillips, Doyon's resource manager.
But many people living closest to the potential development - many of them Doyon shareholders - oppose the plan because of the likelihood of oil pollution and the possibility of social upheaval such as a flow of drugs, alcohol and poachers over new roads.
"Usually, the indigenous people are at the losing end of any sort of oil development," said Dacho Alexander, first chief of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribe in Fort Yukon, a village of 600 near the proposed exchange parcels.
Alexander said the dispute illustrates the perennial clash between corporate goals and non-economic Native values.
The Yukon Flats basin holds an estimated 173 million barrels of oil - accounting for less than nine days of US consumption at current rates - along with 5.5 trillion cubic feet of gas and 127 million barrels of natural-gas liquids, according to the US Geological Survey.
It also holds unique ecological values.
Straddling the Arctic Circle, cradled by two mountain ranges and bisected by the Yukon River, the refuge encompasses boreal forests that support moose, grizzly and black bears and many other mammals.
Its network of lakes, streams, ponds and sloughs attract Alaska's highest concentrations of breeding ducks. It has some of Alaska's coldest winter days and, thanks to around-the-clock sunlight, scorching summer temperatures as high as 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest for this latitude in North America.
Fran Mauer, a retired Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and prominent critic of the land exchange, says the trade plan violates the refuge's conservation mission.
"I just don't see that it's in the public's interest to do it," he said.
But Doyon officials say that no matter what land the corporation ends up owning, oil and gas drilling is inevitable in the Yukon Flats.
"Even if the land trade doesn't happen, Doyon is still going to move forward with exploration out there," Phillips said.
Protesters Enter Bear Stearns Headquarters
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By Karen Brettell
New York - About 60 protesters opposed to the U.S. Federal Reserve's help in bailing out Bear Stearns (BSC.N) entered the lobby of the investment bank's Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday, demanding assistance for struggling homeowners.
Demonstrators organized by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America chanted "Help Main Street, not Wall Street" and entered the lobby without an invitation for around half an hour before being escorted out by police.
"There are no provisions for homeowners in this deal. There are people out there struggling who need help," said Detria Austin, an organizer at NACA, an advocacy group for home ownership.
Bear Stearns employees were alternatively amused and perplexed, taking pictures on their cell phones.
"Homeowners, that's more than $1 trillion (in mortgage debt), you're crazy," one man in a suit screamed at a protester on the street.
On March 16, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) said it would acquire its rival the Bear Stearns Co Inc. for $2 per share, in a deal brokered by the Federal Reserve aimed at heading off a bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system.
On Monday, JPMorgan raised its offer to about $10 a share to appease angry stockholders who vowed to fight the original deal. Bear Stearns traded at $10.86 a share at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
As part of the deal, the Fed agreed to guarantee up to $29 billion of Bear Stearns assets.
The agreement has raised concerns that the U.S. government is prepared to help rescue a failing Wall Street bank while declining to bail out millions of home owners facing the possibility of foreclosure.
By Karen Brettell
New York - About 60 protesters opposed to the U.S. Federal Reserve's help in bailing out Bear Stearns (BSC.N) entered the lobby of the investment bank's Manhattan headquarters on Wednesday, demanding assistance for struggling homeowners.
Demonstrators organized by the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America chanted "Help Main Street, not Wall Street" and entered the lobby without an invitation for around half an hour before being escorted out by police.
"There are no provisions for homeowners in this deal. There are people out there struggling who need help," said Detria Austin, an organizer at NACA, an advocacy group for home ownership.
Bear Stearns employees were alternatively amused and perplexed, taking pictures on their cell phones.
"Homeowners, that's more than $1 trillion (in mortgage debt), you're crazy," one man in a suit screamed at a protester on the street.
On March 16, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) said it would acquire its rival the Bear Stearns Co Inc. for $2 per share, in a deal brokered by the Federal Reserve aimed at heading off a bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system.
On Monday, JPMorgan raised its offer to about $10 a share to appease angry stockholders who vowed to fight the original deal. Bear Stearns traded at $10.86 a share at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
As part of the deal, the Fed agreed to guarantee up to $29 billion of Bear Stearns assets.
The agreement has raised concerns that the U.S. government is prepared to help rescue a failing Wall Street bank while declining to bail out millions of home owners facing the possibility of foreclosure.
Anti-war Campaigners Have To Change Electoral Tactics
Neither Clinton nor Obama has a real plan to end the occupation of Iraq, but they could be forced to change position
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By Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill
'So?" So said Dick Cheney when asked last week about public opinion being overwhelmingly against the war in Iraq. "You can't be blown off course by polls." A few days later, his attitude, about the fact that the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has reached 4,000, displayed similar levels of sympathy. They "voluntarily put on the uniform," the vice-president told ABC news.
This brick wall of indifference helps explain the paradox in which we in the US anti-war camp find ourselves five years into the occupation of Iraq: anti-war sentiment is as strong as ever, but our movement seems to be dwindling. Sixty-four per cent of Americans tell pollsters they oppose the war, but you'd never know it from the thin turnout at recent rallies and vigils.
When asked why they aren't expressing their anti-war opinions through the anti-war movement, many say they have simply lost faith in the power of protest. They marched against the war before it began, marched on the first, second and third anniversaries. And yet, five years on, US leaders are still shrugging: "So?"
That's why it's time for the anti-war movement to change tactics. We should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders.
Many argue otherwise. They say that if we want to end the war, we should simply pick a candidate who is not John McCain and help them win: we'll sort out the details after the Republicans are evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some of the most prominent anti-war voices - from MoveOn.org to the Nation, the magazine we both write for - have gone down this route, throwing their weight behind the Obama campaign.
This is a serious strategic mistake. It is during a hotly contested campaign that anti-war forces have the power to actually sway US policy. As soon as we pick sides, we relegate ourselves to mere cheerleaders.
And when it comes to Iraq, there is little to cheer. Look past the rhetoric and it becomes clear that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has a real plan to end the occupation. They could, however, be forced to change their positions, thanks to the unique dynamics of the prolonged primary battle.
Despite the calls for Clinton to withdraw in the name of "unity", it is the very fact that Clinton and Obama are still fighting it out, fiercely vying for votes, that presents the anti-war movement with its best pressure point. And our pressure is badly needed.
For the first time in 14 years, weapons manufacturers are donating more to Democrats than to Republicans. The Democrats have received 52% of the defence industry's political donations in this election cycle - up from a low of 32% in 1996. That money is about shaping foreign policy and, so far, it appears to be well spent.
While Clinton and Obama denounce the war with great passion, they both have detailed plans to continue it. Both say they intend to maintain the massive green zone, including the monstrous US embassy, and to retain US control of Baghdad airport.
They will have a "strike force" to engage in counter-terrorism, as well as trainers for the Iraqi military. Beyond these US forces, the army of green zone diplomats will require heavily armed security details, which are currently provided by Blackwater and other private security companies. At present there are as many private contractors supporting the occupation as there are soldiers, so these plans could mean tens of thousands of US personnel entrenched for the future.
In sharp contrast to this downsized occupation is the unequivocal message coming from hundreds of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq Veterans Against the War which, earlier this month, held the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland - modelled on the 1971 Winter Soldier investigation, in which veterans testified about US atrocities in Vietnam - are not supporting any candidate or party. Instead they are calling for immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US soldiers and contractors. Coming from peace activists, the "out now" position has been dismissed as naive. It is harder to ignore coming from the hundreds who have served - and continue to serve - on the frontlines.
The candidates know that much of the passion fuelling their campaigns flows from the desire among so many rank-and-file Democrats to end this disastrous war. Crucially, the candidates have already shown that they are vulnerable to pressure from the peace camp. When the Nation revealed that neither candidate was supporting legislation that would ban the use of Blackwater and other private security companies in Iraq, Clinton changed course. She became the most important US political leader to endorse the ban - scoring a point on Obama, who opposed the invasion from the start.
This is exactly where we want the candidates: outdoing each other to prove how serious they are about ending the war. That kind of battle has the power to energise voters and break the cynicism that is threatening both campaigns.
Let's remember, unlike the outgoing Bush administration, these candidates need the support of the two-thirds of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq. If opinion transforms into action, they won't be able to afford to say, "So?"
Go to Original
By Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill
'So?" So said Dick Cheney when asked last week about public opinion being overwhelmingly against the war in Iraq. "You can't be blown off course by polls." A few days later, his attitude, about the fact that the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq has reached 4,000, displayed similar levels of sympathy. They "voluntarily put on the uniform," the vice-president told ABC news.
This brick wall of indifference helps explain the paradox in which we in the US anti-war camp find ourselves five years into the occupation of Iraq: anti-war sentiment is as strong as ever, but our movement seems to be dwindling. Sixty-four per cent of Americans tell pollsters they oppose the war, but you'd never know it from the thin turnout at recent rallies and vigils.
When asked why they aren't expressing their anti-war opinions through the anti-war movement, many say they have simply lost faith in the power of protest. They marched against the war before it began, marched on the first, second and third anniversaries. And yet, five years on, US leaders are still shrugging: "So?"
That's why it's time for the anti-war movement to change tactics. We should direct our energy where it can still have an impact: the leading Democratic contenders.
Many argue otherwise. They say that if we want to end the war, we should simply pick a candidate who is not John McCain and help them win: we'll sort out the details after the Republicans are evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Some of the most prominent anti-war voices - from MoveOn.org to the Nation, the magazine we both write for - have gone down this route, throwing their weight behind the Obama campaign.
This is a serious strategic mistake. It is during a hotly contested campaign that anti-war forces have the power to actually sway US policy. As soon as we pick sides, we relegate ourselves to mere cheerleaders.
And when it comes to Iraq, there is little to cheer. Look past the rhetoric and it becomes clear that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton has a real plan to end the occupation. They could, however, be forced to change their positions, thanks to the unique dynamics of the prolonged primary battle.
Despite the calls for Clinton to withdraw in the name of "unity", it is the very fact that Clinton and Obama are still fighting it out, fiercely vying for votes, that presents the anti-war movement with its best pressure point. And our pressure is badly needed.
For the first time in 14 years, weapons manufacturers are donating more to Democrats than to Republicans. The Democrats have received 52% of the defence industry's political donations in this election cycle - up from a low of 32% in 1996. That money is about shaping foreign policy and, so far, it appears to be well spent.
While Clinton and Obama denounce the war with great passion, they both have detailed plans to continue it. Both say they intend to maintain the massive green zone, including the monstrous US embassy, and to retain US control of Baghdad airport.
They will have a "strike force" to engage in counter-terrorism, as well as trainers for the Iraqi military. Beyond these US forces, the army of green zone diplomats will require heavily armed security details, which are currently provided by Blackwater and other private security companies. At present there are as many private contractors supporting the occupation as there are soldiers, so these plans could mean tens of thousands of US personnel entrenched for the future.
In sharp contrast to this downsized occupation is the unequivocal message coming from hundreds of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq Veterans Against the War which, earlier this month, held the Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland - modelled on the 1971 Winter Soldier investigation, in which veterans testified about US atrocities in Vietnam - are not supporting any candidate or party. Instead they are calling for immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all US soldiers and contractors. Coming from peace activists, the "out now" position has been dismissed as naive. It is harder to ignore coming from the hundreds who have served - and continue to serve - on the frontlines.
The candidates know that much of the passion fuelling their campaigns flows from the desire among so many rank-and-file Democrats to end this disastrous war. Crucially, the candidates have already shown that they are vulnerable to pressure from the peace camp. When the Nation revealed that neither candidate was supporting legislation that would ban the use of Blackwater and other private security companies in Iraq, Clinton changed course. She became the most important US political leader to endorse the ban - scoring a point on Obama, who opposed the invasion from the start.
This is exactly where we want the candidates: outdoing each other to prove how serious they are about ending the war. That kind of battle has the power to energise voters and break the cynicism that is threatening both campaigns.
Let's remember, unlike the outgoing Bush administration, these candidates need the support of the two-thirds of Americans who oppose the war in Iraq. If opinion transforms into action, they won't be able to afford to say, "So?"
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