Posts with the tag china

Peace and Freedom to Tibet

"Voice for Humanity" — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:20:35 EDT

From: PADMINI ARHANT
WWW.PADMINIARHANT.COM

Attention: Mr. Richard Gere
Chairman of the Board of Directors
International Campaign for Tibet

Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

I acknowledge your kind invitation to join you and millions of voices around the world in the Freedom Campaign for Tibet. I admire the passion, determination and zeal exhibited by the supporters towards the noble cause.

I share your concerns and views regarding the human rights abuse, violation and suppression of democracy in Tibet. Having been a resident of New Delhi, India, I’m all too familiar with the plight of the Tibetan population fleeing their homeland from persecution and unspeakable crime against humanity.

Please refer to http://www.padminiarhant.com for the remaining content.

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

Darfur Plea for USA from UNHCR

"Voice for Humanity" — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 18:15:34 EDT

From: PADMINI ARHANT
WWW.PADMINIARHANT.COM

Meryl Streep - Hollywood

USA for UNHCR
Washington DC 20077-7282

Dear Meryl Streep,

I appreciate your humanitarian concerns with respect to Darfur crisis.
Unfortunately, the widespread human atrocities not confined to a specific demography despite the world progress in other aspects.

Darfur is the worst humanitarian crime in the twenty first century and soon nearing a decade for the genocide. Yet, the most influential authorities like the United States, the European Union, the emerging economic powers and the United Nations continue to witness the heinous act instead of terminating it once and for all.

Although, the humanitarian relief is commendable, the poignant issue is the reluctance and the lack of action from the United Nations Security Council and the other affluent democracies in Europe and North America.

Remaining content available @http://www.padminiarhant.com

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

Optimization of Analog Circuits Test Mode Based on ACA

Mr. RUKUNDO Olivier — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:36:21 EDT

Abstract

The optimization of test node selection is key stage for analog circuits test modes. In this master thesis, optimization technique was studied for test node selection based on Ants Colony Algorithms. The studied technique can yield high faults detection and isolation rates with less number of nodes. The methods, used to select test nodes for fault isolation, such as Heuristic method, Ambiguity sets method and Hashing Method were discussed. The studied concepts can also be applied in the domain of fault dictionary approach for optimization purposes.

P2P Network Exposes Obama's Safehouse Location

Unknown user — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:00:06 EDT

Sorry I was away recently on vacation, I won't disclose the location for fear that people may know the location of my loved ones, and strike against me through them.

Feeling paranoid, I do, but I am sure Obama may not be....
I read today at this location http://it.slashdot.org/story/09/07/29/205207/P2P-Network-Exposes-Obamas-Safehouse-Location?art_pos=12
that certain applications are able to let some users read through your computer, to get at your files and your folders and get a notion of who you are by what you keep on your computer.

So I guess someone in the white house family , probably one of the daughters, used daddy's white house computer to get some limewire downloads. First off, using national security equipment such as computers paid for by the people to access illegal materials for download (such as Britney Spears songs) is a big NO,NO!

Second letting a kid access to those same computers that might contain sensitive materials, again is a NO,NO!

WHO IS THE MAIN TECH ADMIN OVER THERE, HAS HE NO BRAIN???
There are protocols in place to avoid this sort of thing from happening. The fact they are not enforced either means Obama pulled rank, and no one was able to set his little girls up with a computer and network dmz'd of their own, or the brats sneaked into his office when he was not looking (and the rest of the security team) and made for the laptop to download some p0rn....jk!

Our national security is at stake here, and with no room for error.
If this is a cover story used to let people think that the girls were the reason for a break in, when actually it covers up a possibly bigger story, that the Chinese were finally able to break through the white house network security and actually get into the computers there, means we might have a bigger problem, but I will let you decided what to think.

I am merely reporting on possibilities...that we are not safe, and need to think like in Battlestar Galactica, as if the enemy was able to hack effortlessly into the systems, making us resort to not networking all computers together, and keeping all systems singular, you may stand a chance of keeping better security

I serious protest to the environment of political in current China

Dong Bing — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:04:51 EDT

Racism issues and the unjust gap between rich and poor divide the china. Most of the disadvantaged class and other disadvantaged groups have been internally displaced and barely survive. many without running clean water or the stability of of electricity, Most farmers have access only to contaminated water from a nearby groundwater for cooking, cleaning and drinking, and for dumping their own waste. I serious protest to the environment of political in current China. All the Right Reasons is that we have a corrupt government and the armed forces! And when I delivered this speech I have not feel fear to any person, any government and political parties! I was a soldier in 12 years ago, this situation is I witnessed in that time, So if have that one day, when I go to prison for serving, please impartial judge summoned all kind-hearted people to give evidence.

China vs. USA in creating the world's largest botnet army?

Unknown user — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:17:19 EDT

We have the technology, but so do they....in the event that there is a cyber attack, the idea is that the US army be able to take over your computer for the greater good of the country. However, if we compare ourselves to our bigger cousins, China...we pail in that comparison.

China could easily afford to have 250 million machines to node together into a massive botnet, sort of what we have seen the likes of with that virus STORM. We probably could accomadate 10 million machines, if there are that many infected with a special malware the army created.

There are also those special organisations..like google...that allow you to donate your cpu cycles for a special reason (like doing cancer stem cell research) which in the end makes us feel like we are doing our part, but who says that those mega machines are not infected with the same virus or worm, thereby coming back full circle as if you had the malware installed on your pc.

We match our 10 million to their 250 million, and we have to wonder...is this why we are login the cyber war??? What can we do differently, or better, to make sure this type of thing does not happen.

I would recommend something along the lines of an organised committee, that analyses the current threat that countries may pose based on their advanced techonlogy or access to...and formulate a way to moderate a country's progress. Let's say for example Africa was starting a special project to get some computers into schools.... this would be classified as mundane.

If you took a third world country that just finished purchasing special servers that allow multi processing of complex nature, sort of what you need to use to guide missles...well then we would have to review the background of where that hardware was going, and account for its presence at all times.

In the case of a botnet, it is the sum of the small parts that make the whole...does that mean we should limit the amount of computers allowed...or limit the connectivity of those computers to internet access...or anything that might put a small dent into that armor?

Who is to say, but it is something to think about in the years to come, especially now that we are seeing more and more cyber threats surfacing and making theirpresence known. ID Fraud, CC fraud, email scams....spamming, omg spamming! Just food for thought.

Pulse of the Economy

"Voice for Humanity" — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:15:30 EDT

By Padmini Arhant

With a finger on the pulse of the economy, the recent reports on employment, housing, financial and stock market post stimulus funding worth $787 billion approved by Congress in February 2009, has drawn both praise and criticism from different quarters. The praise is always welcome and encouraging for any administration and the Obama administration is no exception to the rule, particularly when they are relentlessly engaged in stabilizing the economy as the top priority.

Whereas, the criticism targeted at the President is no revelation considering the partisan Washington atmosphere. The results thus far, indicate the current national unemployment rate at 9.2% against 8% in the pre-approval stimulus package forecast. Further, the reports reveal the economy shed 1.6 million jobs with the White House claiming 150,000 jobs saved since...

More @http://www.padminiarhant.com

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

International Event - Education under Attack in Australia

"Voice for Humanity" — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 16:35:40 EDT

By Padmini Arhant

In continuation of the topic on racial attacks against Indian students (from India) in Melbourne, Australia, the incident in the new millennium strikes resemblance to apartheid in South Africa until it became free in 1994.

Australia designated as the industrialized nation, multicultural yet homogenous society…devoid of major ethnic representation in politics, democratic with mandatory voting (the only democratic nation to impose penalty for not voting) and,

A willful participant in all U.S. led major conflicts from Vietnam to Iraq - is a commonwealth nation sworn allegiance to Great Britain’s monarch as the head of the Republic.

The nation from “down under” celebrated bicentennial in 1970 and 1988 to commemorate the permanent white settlement is not a young republic and not new to controversies either.

More @ http://www.padminiarhant.com

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

World’s Biggest Polluters Can’t Hide from Space imaging

Peter from Carrollton, TX — Sun, 31 May 2009 19:36:25 EDT

World’s Biggest Polluters Can’t Hide from Space imaging

The map, based on 18 months’ worth of satellite data, shows very high levels of NO2 above major European and North American cities and across much of north-east China. South-east Asia and Africa also have raised concentrations of the gas due to their burning of vegetation. “Ship tracks are visible in some locations,” says Steffen Beirle, one of the research team at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. “Look at the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean between the southern tip of India and Indonesia.” Although NO2 is formed naturally by lightning and by microbes in the ground, it is also released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels by power plants, heavy industry and vehicles. Large quantities of the gas can cause respiratory problems and lung damage, and can also contribute to harmful ozone forming near ground level.

Obama has commented on helping poor nations to develop clean technologies but as you can see, it is not the poor countries that harm the planet the most. It is the rich large countries doing all of the damage. We first need to look at home and prevent the devastation that has been ongoing. United States, China, and Europe need to change the way they live first before they can start criticizing other poorer nations that only amount to about 11% of emissions around the world. Our polar ice caps have lost nearly a third of its size from 1981 to 2003(NASA Data). Your plan is to reduce amounts of emissions by the year 2050. By your logic, we won’t have a polar ice cap left. There won’t be anything to save. The climates around the world are already beginning to shift. Melting glacial water changes the composition of the ocean and changes the weather patterns around the world. Yearly Warming Temperatures from NASA

http://politicalpete.com/

‘Talibanization’ of Afghanistan and Pakistan

"Voice for Humanity" — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:26:18 EDT

By Padmini Arhant

The Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan and the northwestern regions of Pakistan, particularly the swat valley have proven deadlier for the ruling powers in Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United Sates due to the inevitable civilian casualties and displacement arising from the incessant shelling supposedly targeting the Taliban militants.

According to the Pakistani government,

Further info @ http://www.padminiarhant.com

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

Racism – The Durban II, Geneva Conference

"Voice for Humanity" — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:55:19 EDT

By Padmini Arhant

www.padminiarhant.com

Racism – The Durban II, Geneva Conference

The past week - April 20 -24, 2009, Geneva, Switzerland hosted ‘The Durban II conference’ on racism. The preceding event in 2001 held in Durban, South Africa marred by racial overtones and negative attacks against the state of Israel evidently led the United States and Western allies to boycott the recent U.N meeting.

It was a United Nations gathering to address the persisting contemporary discriminatory practices often transforming into persecution, oppression and even genocide in some parts of the world. According to the White House and media reports, the reason behind United States and allies’ absence at the symposium was the blue print content notably against Israel by the Islamic Republic of Iran. However, the United Nations’ assurance to eliminate any anti-Israeli inflammatory remarks from the Iranian President’s speech failed in convincing the United States, Israel and others to attend the world forum.

Meanwhile, predictably the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad’s rhetorical speech caused spectacle prompting other European diplomats to briefly abandon the summit. To the United Nations’ credit, the subsequent address by the Iranian President modified to reflect reality on the tragic holocaust previously denied by the political figure.

Whenever a consortium organized to deal with sensitive humanitarian issue of great magnitude, the stage is set for fireworks and doesn’t require more than a spark to ignite the flame into blazing fire. All those refuting the one nation’s contentious repetitive conduct, regrettably ignored the wide spectrum of humanitarian crises around the world. The objection against a particular nation’s demeanor effectively dismissed the urgency for unanimous solutions to global problems affecting humanity.
Further, such action conspicuously displayed hierarchy prevalent in the humanitarian priorities.

Every continent has nations with dark legacy and embarrassing episodes of human rights violation. In the new millennium, the global community challenged to empathize with those currently enduring incessant suffering due to lack of freedom, inequality, injustice including intolerance.

The Geneva conference was a great platform for the nations that boycotted the meeting exclusively the United States and Israel to express serious commitment in resolving the age-old Middle East conflict between Israel and Palestine. Any glimpse of hope in the two states solutions approved by vast majority of population on both sides with a free Palestine comprising West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem alongside the democratic Israel unequivocally accepted as a sovereign state in the entire region would have instantaneously gained credibility in the large presence of the United Nations.

Needlessly, as holocaust victims Israel was better qualified to condemn any crime against humanity and set an example by leading the world in the establishment of peace and democracy with its neighbor Palestine. Israel had a unique opportunity in Geneva to demonstrate solemn pledge and action to aid those, relevantly the Palestinians deserving similar liberty granted to Israel predominantly with the support and solidarity among the nations around the world. Israel’s unprecedented humanitarian gesture would have made it incumbent on the Arab nations at the conference to forge alliance in promoting regional unity and peace.

If the world would not have heeded to the humanitarian call for an Independent Israel, it could have resulted in the devastating annihilation of a specific human race. Likewise, South Africa proudly declaring results from a democratic election today would have succumbed to oppressive apartheid without the international community’s involvement in the freedom of that nation.

There is immense misery and extreme hardships in various parts of the world. People in these regions generally exposed to despair, depression and death at infancy consider themselves fortunate if they live beyond the short life expectancy because of poverty, disease, war and deprivation of basic human rights.

Geneva conference reached a broad based consensus against racial and gender discrimination, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia other than human rights abuses across the globe. An international assembly by governments from most parts of the world had the moment and venue to review pertinent matter concerning different nations and people. Unfortunately, the U.N committee presumably under intense pressure from nations prioritizing political agenda in their allegiance to a single ally, did not layout the importance of relieving humanity from the perpetual violence through war, invasion and occupation reminiscent of the twentieth century’s imperialism and colonialism .

Is there deficiency in related topics involving the remaining population on the planet seeking entitlement to the international representation, rescue and relief from burgeoning crimes against innocent civilians?

Only if rationality and utilitarianism prevailed over popular political dogma of individualism, the desirable goals for fairness and justice are attainable in human affairs.

Is the struggle for peace and independence by the population in Palestine, Burma, Tibet, and North Korea any less significant than the international feud between Israel and Iran?

What about the status quo of civil wars contributing to genocides in Rwanda, Darfur, Congo and other parts of Africa?

Should the world ignore the escalating ethnic cleansing in Sri Lanka as an internal matter rather than an international moral issue?

Where was the denunciation of the pervasive Taliban abuse of women in Afghanistan now dangerously spreading to the Northwestern regions of Pakistan?

Why did the summit not extensively focus on the various abuses in Latin, Central and South America and China, notwithstanding the denial of equal status to women in the Middle East and other Islamic nations?

On the generic concept of racism, xenophobia - typically the fear of the unknown, homophobia - the overt hate crimes against gay and trans-gender community and other horrific incidents in human trafficking, child pornography and numerous offenses were excluded during the five-day long international meeting.

Apparently, the interpretation of ‘tolerance’ in the crimes against humanity is subject to the relationship among existing and emerging economic and political powers in the global society.

The protocol on protests, boycott and co-operation alike varies depending on the nations along with political and economic repercussions arising from such action.

For example, the Iranian President’s controversial stance against Israel held responsible for the Western nations’ boycott of the latest Geneva conference on racism while implying the other attendees’ motive questionable.

Nevertheless, the human rights activists’ plea to boycott the 2008 Beijing Olympics to draw attention towards the plight of the Tibetan population persecuted by the hour and suppression of the democracy movement in the People’s Republic of China rejected by the participating nations prominently those who recently boycotted the Geneva conference.

It is widespread knowledge that the emerging economic power China being the treasury and
Exchequer for the world economy, a nuclear nation possessing veto power routinely exercised against common benefit in the U.N. Security Council decisions, privileged with supreme diplomatic immunity in all things inhumane.

In the recent G-20 summit, call for globalization over protectionism dominated the theme for global economic revival. Synonymously, in the environmental matter and international security collective effort embraced as a successful strategy. Henceforth, collaborative action regarded imminent to resolve international crises.

Ironically, abstaining from leadership at the summit to formulate policies in the restoration of human rights, freedom and civil liberties, the fundamental requirements for peace, progress and prosperity, creates a vacuum rather than serving the real purpose.

History is testimony to the rise and fall of civilizations that fair well when guided by wisdom, compassion and courage for universal good.

Thank you.

Padmini Arhant

China: Economic growth falls to 6.1 percent

Tyrop from Vassar, KS — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 05:15:22 EDT

It is the slowest rate of growth for the Asian nation in nearly a decade, Xinhua reported.

The economic data was announced at a news conference by Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics.

Gross domestic product reached 6.6 trillion yuan (about $939 billion) during the quarter, according to government-run news agency Xinhua.

Meanwhile, industrial output grew 5.1 percent for the quarter and showed signs of improvement -- climbing 8.3 percent in March.

China's consumer price index and producer price index -- two major indicators of inflation -- fell 1.2 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively, while retail sales grew 15 percent.

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China's Electric Cars and Dirty Coal Electric Production

J. HAGUE, Community Advocate — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:18:47 EDT

"China Vies to Be World’s Leader in Electric Cars http://www.nytimes.com/todaysheadlines
By KEITH BRADSHER
In a new threat to Detroit, China is investing heavily in hybrid and electric-vehicle technology with a plan built on research, recharging stations and incentives."

What are we waiting for?
China needs clean electricity, we need clean cars.
With what we now know, can we not "leap frog" to an advanced
level of clean electricity production and optimal use?

There must be some better use for China's dirty coal than to pollute its
air and damage the health of its flora and fauna. And there must be alternatives
to expanding nuclear fission-electricity production.

I have floated the idea of "energy farms" in previous e-mails. Something like this
might be among the answers for not only China, but for many other nations, especially those
with tidal potential or virtually firm sun/wind combinations.

Tidal, wind, sunlight, municipal waste, ( any local renewables ) all, on or near the same site - "energy farm".

Produce at the maximal production function for all resources concurrently, and with the surplus electricity*, produce and store it as hydrogen, for use when one or more of the renewable sources are at sub--optimal levels. ( *surplus is determined by the difference between average "firm" production and maximal production; "deficit" would be the mirror image of "surplus" and require "topping up" to maintain average firm production from the total energy farm ). The stored hydrogen, if in sufficient supply, could also be used as an emergency "peak power" supplemental resource. The stored hydrogen is the "battery" or "resevoir" of the system enabling all the otherwise "non firm" renewables to be firmed up - much like our massive hydro-electric resevoirs here in British Columbia. There will be production losses and the need for sophisticated process computer controls to balance the system provides another outlet for North American know-how.

We know how to do this. On a net social benefit to cost analysis, I challenge anyone to do better. Properly balanced, this energy farm could produce and utilize "surplus" hydrogen at no economic cost!

So, who needs convincing? This could be a potent economic renewal project.

Comments?

John Hague - BA, CA, Mediator,
"Creative Conflict Services, BC" :: "NATURE, PEOPLE, BUSINESS, In Harmony"

Obama girl from Shanghai,China!!

Sally07 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 06:06:49 EDT

There are so much to say about what Barack gives me。。。

I am a university student from Shanghai ,Tongji University,China,majoring in environmental engineering.

The first time he fascinated me was on Ellen's show,his handsome dance and outlook and more important humerous and generous quality.

Since I attend an interpretation class in Shanghai,our teacher Jack Peng was graduated from the Texas University majoring in Environment and Energy with Ph.D degree and also got a master degree in the interpretating school in Montery,the practice material our teacher gave us included his speech at the 2004DNC,and of course the victory speech on election night and the inauguration speech in Washington DC.

But that's far from enough for me,so I then bought a biography of him written by Greenwood.I read it even if I'm having my classes.And now I'm reading the Audacity of hope,which has been so familiar to most of you.

What Obama presented to me is really different from several previous U.S politician I used to think about,his heart for the nation and it's people was so open and sincere.He brings back the truth of the American virtue after so many years of struggle and division.He make people believe in their own strength.

Since I have downloaded may video clips from the website,all those really touched me a lot ,both Obama and the volunteers have fought hard for this campain.No matter what backgrounds they come from,they have come together for this election.The youth in America find their common grounds in the Obama politics,their heart reopened to the world.So they put their unprecedented enthusiasm to this election.

I really look forward to the further relationship between China and the U.S,since Shanghai2010 World EXPO is drawing near.There will be more exchanges between the two nations people.Both of two sides are getting in line with each other.

One world,on dream right?

Hope for the future for the people and the nation!!!

I am sincerely looking forward to our further contacts in the days and months to come on this website or through my facebook or e-mail.

Things Go Better With Coke

Tom Awtry — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:32:02 EDT

The posting I’m authoring is more-or-less a follow on to a previous post listed here, regarding our international trade and American business interests on foreign soils.

A keyword flooding around, and which has resurfaced in these past few economic stricken times is “Protectionism”, where I have read this word a few times in our American based online news articles, but have seen it almost daily in foreign based web publications. In essence these foreign based governments via their media services have directed warnings to America not to establish policies locking out their countries goods and services in America.

Fair enough, these countries are worried, such as we ours, about their country’s unemployment and perhaps trade imbalances; and need assurances from the US that we won’t adopt trade barriers or policies, which could further hamper their economic recovery efforts.

It’s when these countries enact policies against us, which is beginning to presently happen, is when I become disturbed and disgruntled. Today, an article appeared within TIME, entitled: “China Says ‘Keep Out’ to Coca-Cola”, which I feel is an outstanding example of a country who has developed a huge imbalance of trade with us, a country to whom we owe one trillion dollars to (as pointed out in my previous aforementioned posting above) and according to some Washington folks (legislative branch) have understood it to mean a threat in some ways.

Consider taking a read of the TIME article and see what your feelings are over the frustration of letting the Chinese shop in America, picking up our small and middles sized businesses at a bargain, and not allowing us to invest within their country.

Again another video, but perhaps a neutral view on China’s business dealings with America, as presented by Bloomberg’s.

US Trade Deficit Narrows: US Trade Deficit With China; China’s Role In The World Economy

Analysis by Fred Bergsten of Peterson Institute for International Economics; Analysis by Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics

America for Sale

Tom Awtry — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:24:21 EDT

Thomas Jefferson Monument

This is troubling to me that we owe, as I understand it, over one trillion dollars to China, which could work against us someday in the future.

No, I don’t believe we’ll have to place the Lincoln or Jefferson Monuments up for sale, but there could be other ramifications should we be in debt so heavily and trusting that Economical Recovery Package “not” fail.

However, my father once told me “if you have to borrow money, watch you borrow from” (of course we all know that’s very true), meaning in essence “don’t let them use your indebtedness against you”.

This was the case in the Truman Administration when Great Britain owed us a sum of money after World War II and we used the threat of increased interest payments against them in order expedite a problem in the Middle East.

I would hate to see the Chinese use the same kind of threat(s) against us to forsake a friendly nation we currently support or perhaps share some our technology, which someday could be used to harm Americans or our businesses.

Currently it appears, according to a TIME Online article entitled: “Will the U.S. Sell Assets As the British Government Did?” that According to The Times of London, “The government is pressing ahead with plans to sell a string of state-owned organizations as part of a privatization drive to add £35 billion to the dwindling public purse.” Among the treasures being sold are the Royal Mint and the national mapping agency.

Please don’t take this posting as doubting President Obama’s Stimulus Package and his plans for revving our troubled economy, but my major concerns are the “nay” sayers we have in existing in our legislative branch of government; who are quick to condemn, slow to react and most importantly fail to provide workable solutions to our country’s burdens.

Here’s another video example we have to also contend with, and that’s our small and middle sized businesses being forced into being put up “for sale”, such as what happened last July when oil prices were high and the Middle East went shopping in America.

US firms up for sale to foreign investors - 29 July 08

The falling dollar means foreign investors are buying thousands of American firms, but at the same time American companies are going to countries such as Mexico in search of cheap labour and lower prices. Al Jazeera’s Sherine

Update 17 March 09:

China seeks technical assets abroad
from UPI Asia Online by By Cong Cao

This columnist predicted that China may take advantage of the global financial crisis to acquire valuable but deeply discounted assets globally. Indeed, China has acquired overseas natural resources, and now is ready to shop overseas for small- and medium-sized enterprises, especially high-tech ones.

Update 18 March 09:

Since the time I’ve blogged this posting a release from the White House came out 12 hours later, which relates to my concerns:

Message to the Congress from the President concerning exports to China
from White House.gov Press Office Feed

In accordance with the provisions of section 1512 of the Strom Thurmond National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1999 (Public Law 105-261), I hereby certify to the Congress that the export of fine grain graphite to be used for solar cell applications and for the fabrication of components used in electronic and semiconductor fabrication, and two dual-motor, dual-shaft mixers to be used to produce carbon fiber and epoxy prepregs for the commercial airline industry is not detrimental to the U.S. space launch industry, and that the material and equipment, including any indirect technical benefit that could be derived from these exports, will not measurably improve the missile or space launch capabilities of the People’s Republic of China.

Additional postings regarding this topic and other may be found here:

We Talked Globalization when we should have Talked Hometown

Tom Awtry — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 19:45:37 EST

In an article authored by Hari Sud for UPI Asia, I found out what has happened to my country of America the past thirty years and especially the last ten years.

I have reprinted the article in its entirety, since I strongly belief it should be read and considered by all; the article is entitled: “What’s next for globalization?” I have taken the liberty of high-lighting sections and phrases, which I deem most important to our current financial burden.

What’s next for globalization?

By Hari Sud
Column: Abroad View
Published: February 20, 2009

Toronto, ON, Canada, — As the U.S. financial meltdown continues in 2009, attention is now directed toward the wider and long-range impact of globalization. In theory, globalization is increasing the mobility of goods, services and capital throughout the world by removing the barriers to free trade and increasing closer integration and the inter-connectedness of national economies.

For the West, that has translated into relocating labor-intensive and smokestack industries to countries where costs are lower. Europe and the United States have envisioned themselves as the world’s bankers, financial masters and influence peddlers – which was great in theory, if only the crooks in the U.S. financial sector had been kept away from the proceeds of globalization.

Since 2001, the United States has been awash with cash. It came from oil-producing Arabs and from the export proceeds of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and India. That cash found a home in the subprime mortgages that have started the financial meltdown that is pulling the world down.

Europe and the United States were winning the globalization race until 2008, as master bankers handling the export earnings of other states. On the sidelines, China, Asia’s Tiger economies, Brazil and India began generating some cash and technology and building their own economies, leading to rapid increases in their gross national products. However, the benefits did not extend to the rest of Asia, Africa and other less-developed countries.

How does Obama's Plan stop the ship from sinking?

LOL — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:32:05 EST

What Obama and this country’s financial leaders of this country don’t seem to understand is that simply bailing it out doesn’t fix the hole. How does giving a few people temporary jobs help solve the problem? By temporary I mean that hopefully it will not require 30 years to fix and build all of the infrastructure we need.

But let us say that some how, I don’t know where, the government comes up with money to pay for all of these projects. The money is sent to the state. The states allot the required amounts to the contractors. This goes into the payroll of the various businesses. The question they have to ask is, “then where does it go?” A good guess would be to look at who make up the top retailers in the country. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, CVS, Kroger, Costco, Target, Walgreen, Sears/ K-mart, Lowe’s, and Super Value make up the top 10. Next quantify what percentage of their gross income ends up being sent outside of the economy. How much of that local income is spent on paying low wages to people that are forced to shop at these chains and deliver even more money outside of the economy. What you see is that in very few turns of the original capital, almost all of the invested money is no longer circulating through the US economy. That leads us right back to where we are today.

How are any of these suggestions going to stop capital from going outside the economy. We are drowning in debt. That is a fact that is true from the individual family, through all branches of business and government, and ends on the capital steps. Is there anybody in Washington that really understands how we ended up here?

Don’t Kick us when we’re Down China

Tom Awtry — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 03:53:33 EST

Today I listened to most of what Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Putin of Russia said during their presentation at the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, on CNN about the international community’s economic troubles and walked away upset.

Both squarely placed the blame on the US, which I hate to admit is true, but throughout both of their speeches neither rendered one constructive suggestion on methods to implement to resolve the economic, burdening problems. Instead, they were consistently positioning themselves and countries to have a stronger voice in the world’s economic community, which may be needed and fair, but the way they presented their arguments was totally uncalled for.

Here from the Washington Post and AP an article entitled “China’s Wen Guardedly Hopeful” (title misleading) are excerpts from what occurred at the meeting today.

China’s Wen Guardedly Hopeful

Associated Press
Thursday, January 29, 2009

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 28 — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao brought cautious optimism to the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, predicting that his country will achieve its target of 8 percent economic growth this year despite the global financial meltdown.

Remember China you’re manipulating your currency on us, as I stated in this posting here.

Wen called for enhanced U.S.-China cooperation to address the issue, even as he and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin obliquely criticized the United States, blaming a relentless pursuit of profits for the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Putin, who called the crisis a “perfect storm” that was wreaking destruction on all corners of the global economy, refrained from blaming the United States directly — but pointedly noted that just a year ago at Davos, American delegates emphasized the U.S. economy’s fundamental stability.

People are “depressed and traumatized,” Rupert Murdoch, chief executive of News Corp., said on the first full day of the forum. He noted that worldwide about “$50 trillion of personal wealth” had vanished since the crisis worsened with the Sept. 15 collapse of the U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers.

Personally I don’t consider Mr. Murdoch a reliable source of reference on the situation at hand.

“The size of the problem confronting us today is larger than in the 1930s,” said billionaire philanthropist George Soros.

Additional blog postings by Tom Awtry may also be found here.

We’re Going to be Trading Microchips for Toasters

Tom Awtry — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:16:48 EST

I’m a firm believer that protectionism is not the answer, at this time in the world’s economy situation; however it is also my strictest of belief’s America as given away far too much of its technology to other countries, which in some cases as used it against us.

We have seen what Japan and Korea as done with our cars, TV’s Microchips (RAM chips especially) and steel. No, in honesty both countries were developing these industries within their own country, but we provided them some of the needed know-how to get them off the ground.

Today we wonder where all of our jobs have gone (out sourcing), consider re-reading the aforementioned paragraph and contemplate what the answer could possibly be?

Now China has decided it needs to shift gears from being an exporter of inexpensive, commercial products to more a higher level of manufactured goods requiring advanced technology.

The United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 18:14:43 EST

Cluster Bomb Treaty and The World's Unfinished Business

by Ramzy Baroud @ commondreams.org

The United States, Russia and China are sending a terrible message to the rest of the world by refusing to take part in the historic signing of a treaty that bans the production and use of cluster bombs. In a world that is plagued by war, military occupation and terrorism, the involvement of the great military powers in signing and ratifying the agreement would have signaled - if even symbolically - the willingness of these countries to spare civilians' unjustifiable deaths and the lasting scars of war.

Nonetheless, the incessant activism of many conscientious individuals and organizations came to fruition on December 3-4 when ninety-three countries signed a treaty in Oslo, Norway that bans the weapon, which has killed and maimed many thousands of civilians.

The accord was negotiated in May, and should go into effect in six months, once it is ratified by 30 countries. There is little doubt that the treaty will be ratified; in fact, many are eager to be a member of the elite group of 30. Unfortunately, albeit unsurprisingly, the US, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan - a group that includes the biggest makers and users of the weapon - neither attended the Ireland negotiations, nor did they show any interest in signing the agreement.......

ENTIRE ARTICLE - http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/13-3

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY

WEBMASTER — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 02:26:14 EST

The Pickens Plan: For those who would like to become an active participant in a solution for our nations energy needs I urge you to join with T.Boone Pickens in his quest for a cleaner planet through alternative energy.

Also see Green Wave Energy: Green Wave was founded by Mark Holmes and was formulated for viable alternative energy solutions. Green Wave Energy is promoting state-of-the-art energy-saving products and services throughout the country.

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when people see the economic benefits of using alternative energy technologies

Call 949.645.1701 for information on how Green Wave Energy can help you save the planet.

Alternative Energy
Source: David Apperson

url: http://veterans.barackobama.com/page/community/tag/alternative-energy

Opponents of cluster bombs say a treaty expected to be finalized by more than 100 countries next week in Norway's capital could shame non-signers like the U.S., Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan and India into also shelving the weapons.

John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 13:22:48 EST

Opponents of cluster bombs speak out in Norway

Cluster bomb opponents say treaty to be finalized in Norway next week to shame non-signers

Nov 26, 2008 09:54 EST

Opponents of cluster bombs say a treaty expected to be finalized by more than 100 countries next week in Norway's capital could shame non-signers like the U.S., Russia and China into also shelving the weapons.

Cluster Munitions Coalition umbrella group coordinator Tom Nash says the treaty "will stigmatize the weapons," making them "morally unacceptable." Nash was speaking Wednesday before the Dec. 3-4 signing ceremony in Oslo.

Cluster bomblets are packed by the hundreds into artillery shells, bombs or missiles that scatter them over vast areas. Some fail to explode immediately. The unexploded bomblets can then lie dormant for years until they are disturbed, often by children attracted by their small size and bright colors.

___

On the Net - http://www.stopclustermunitions.org

SOURCE - http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=467455

OBAMA FOR MAINE

WEBMASTER — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 20:37:52 EST

Abbot Village * Acton * Addison * Albion * Alfred * Alna * Andover * Anson * Appleton * Ashland * Athens * Atkinson * Auburn * Augusta * Aurora * Bailey Island * Bangor * Bar Harbor * Bar Mills * Bass Harbor * Bath * Bayville * Beals * Belfast * Belgrade * Belgrade Lakes * Benedicta * Benton * Bernard * Berwick * Bethel * Biddeford * Bingham * Birch Harbor * Birch Island * Blaine * Blue Hill * Blue Hill Falls * Boothbay * Boothbay Harbor * Bowdoinham * Bradford * Bradley * Bremen * Brewer * Bridgewater * Bridgton * Bristol * Brooklin * Brooks * Brooksville * Brookton * Brownfield * Brownville * Brunswick * Bryant Pond * Buckfield * Bucksport * Burlington * Burnham * Bustins Island * Buxton * Byron * Calais * Cambridge * Camden * Canaan * Canton * Cape Cottage * Cape Elizabeth * Cape Neddick * Cape Porpoise * Capitol Island * Caratunk * Cardville * Caribou * Carmel * Carrabassett Valley * Casco * Castine * Center Lovell * Chamberlain * Charleston * Charlotte * Chebeague Island * Chelsea * Cherryfield * China * Clayton Lake * Cliff Island * Clinton * Columbia Falls * Coopers Mills * Corea * Corinna * Cornish * Cornville * Costigan * Cranberry Isles * Crouseville * Cumberland * Cundys Harbor * Cushing * Cutler * Damariscotta * Danforth * Danville * Dayton * Deer Isle * Denmark * Dennysville * Detroit * Dexter * Dixfield * Dixmont * Dover Foxcroft * Dresden * Dryden * Durham * Eagle Lake * East Andover * East Baldwin * East Blue Hill * East Boothbay * East Corinth * East Dixfield * East Livermore * East Machias * East Millinocket * East Newport * East Orland * East Parsonfield * East Poland * East Sebago * East Stoneham * East Sullivan * East Vassalboro * East Waterboro * East Wilton * East Winthrop * Easton * Eastport * Eddington * Edgecomb * Eliot * Ellsworth * Embden * Estcourt * Station * Etna

The Bailout is for China?!?!

Taho — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 06:18:12 EST

Peter DaFazon on the Bailout:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Qn4-1q80A

The Status Quo in the Taiwan Strait as defined by the US Constitution

Unknown user — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:24:15 EST

After the First Sino-Japanese War, Qing China ceded Formosa and the Pescadores to Japan via the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. Article XIX of the Limitation of Armament Treaty Between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan, (signed at Washington, Feb. 6, 1922) affirmatively identified Formosa and the Pescadores (aka Taiwan) as part of Japanese territory.

After President Roosevelt's speech of Dec. 8, 1941, the Congress declared war against the Empire of Japan, which included Taiwan. The US Constitution has placed no limit upon the war powers of the government, but they are regulated and limited by the laws of war. Among other war powers, the government has the rights to declare war, to institute military governments, and to make treaties.

According to the historical record, all military attacks against the four main Japanese islands and (Japanese) Taiwan during the period of WWII in the Pacific were conducted by United States military forces.

America - Together (post election)

Alex Karoub — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:44:40 EST

..... Contact: http://Alex.Karoub@gmail.com

WHO IS THAT GUY BARACK OBAMA? HE IS US.

We have made historic headway by together pointing our nation in the right directions. After decades, we have America focused on the issues of fundamental importance. Now, each of us acting in concert can together move our country to lead the world to the fruitfulness of moral goodness. I have no doubts about my abilities and the abilities of fellow Americans to work smart and hard to achieve these goals.

Barack Obama has the visions, leadership, and integrity for us to correct and redirect our country to once again lead the world for the fruitions of good. Let's closely listen, learn, and move forward based on that which we know deep inside is good and which we can validate with our hearts.

I hope that those who had but a few reasons to support Obama, look further into the other issues more deeply. I found the more I explored, studied, and listened to Obama the more I found us in agreement. The couple of issues that I did not have depth of knowledge of, quickly became obvious in need. This was unusual for me since I have always refused to be any kind of a follower, and still am not. I find Obama to be a deep thinker who is articulate and inspirational; and, of most fundamental importance, Obama makes excellent moral sense.

Hopefully, our country has learned lessons from the past of mistakenly following leadership blindly, as was done with Nixon and Bush. There are leaders who are simply in it for themselves and will cater to individuals or groups in order to grab for their own benefit. Corrupt and bad leaders hide at all levels. This is especially true in city government as well as county and state government. The corrupt deals of politicians need to be exposed, and those responsible need to be weeded out in the coming local elections. Others need to be investigated by law enforcement and be prosecuted for illegal dealings; for deals they often make for their hidden personal agendas. Let’s look at the bad experiences of the past as bitter medicines, let’s eliminate the need for such bad medicine in the future. Let us use what we know is good to go forward.

I believe we have chosen wisely, not by greed and not by misguided retaliatory anger. I believe this time our country has chosen with open eyes, with each of us listening and examining our choice of leadership closely, driven and validated by our hearts.

I hope we can continue to make our efforts even more inclusive (in many more ways than I touch on here). Far right republicans will be stubborn to change, but we will need to include them to change if we are to succeed. Sure a few more will leave our country, but that is not the American way. No, we really don't need their false fronts of power, money, insider knowledge, or other trappings that they have taught many to 'respect?'. Let's recruit as many as we can, that's the American way, evolving and changing together as one nation. Try to be understanding as we move forward; by better understanding each as individuals and people with various desires and needs we will find ways to reach out with friendship and have them join our causes of good.

Be on the lookout, and root out bad leadership in government and business. Do not be intimidated by those who use the false fronts of power and give a false sense of security in order to lead. Be extra leery of those who say or imply ‘Trust me’; those who give a sense that they somehow omnipotently know better. No longer will Americans be dazzled by phony displays of brilliance or baffled by baloney. There are government aristocrats and business leaders who still believe in the old adage of: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle em with bullshit”. We can embrace complexity by demanding true, fundamental, and understandable explanations. We can root out falsehoods by not accepting double speak. We as Americans know how to grow ourselves by first believing in ourselves. Don’t be a follower. Don’t be a follower of followers.

However, when we find leaders who are good; a leader that thinks, speaks, and acts from their heart; one that is honest, has integrity, and leads by sincere examples; then we need to in a big way, join them, support them, and promote their causes of good. From much research, investigation, and scrutiny, I believe Barack Obama is such a person. I hope we search for and find many more who are similar, who we can add to service at all levels of government. We need to add/replace leaders in business with ones that have honesty, integrity, and show quality in leadership. We need more people in leadership roles who are moral, like Barack Obama.

Remember, we are not fighting a battle, we are the artisans and sculptors of the future for ourselves and generations to come. Rarely do societies have opportunities to make such dramatic moves forward as we now have in this opportunity of today. Take pride and practice in being inclusive as we stride forward. In moving forward, create opportunity not only for yourself, but also for all. Hope is a wonderful thing to behold; but without opportunity, hope can become but a dream never achievable. We can, will, and must, create opportunity.

In the coming year I hope that we do not lose our spiritedness, but instead continue to build and make headway. I hope we all continue our campaign for change in government and business. We will succeed in moving forward once again, it will take much effort and good oversight on the part of each of us. We will make great strides in the months and years ahead in order to achieve the fruitions of good. Let's keep our enthusiasm progressing through these coming toughest of times. Let us use the light of goodness and love to motivate us with historic momentum.

I have chosen Barack Obama because he best represents my deepest beliefs in America. Please take time to read the issues that Barack Obama has published on this website. Also, give your attention to see how he leads us to move our nation forward in the time ahead. Most importantly, be part of America's great future, participate in the greatness that together we will make. Participate!

We will each and all flourish, if we think, speak, and act, by using the love in our hearts.

Your reply is welcome. Contact: Alex.Karoub@gmail.com

Senator John McCain's National Security Failures and Moral Failures

Patriot for Obama — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 09:43:25 EST

Set aside for the moment the fact that more terrorists are being trained by fundamental and radical extremists than now ever before and that there is more support for terrorists among the growing population of fundamentalists and radicals than ever before.

Set aside for the moment the fact that Iran, who was labeled as an Axis of Evil, has greater influence in Iraq and the Middle East now than at any time prior to the War in Iraq.

Set aside for the moment the fact that U.S. foreign aide has been misappropriated and misused by those who received it for purposes of terrorism. The late Mujahideen Commander Nek Mohammed was bribed with U.S. foreign aide money that he requested to repay his loans from al Qaeda. It has been alleged that the attack on an Indian Embassy and perhaps the more recent attacks within India were financed by the Pakistani ISI with U.S. foreign aide.

Set aside for the moment the fact that the threat is greater now than ever that terrorist will acquire multiple nuclear weapons in Pakistan as opposed to just a dirty bomb.

How do the Republican Party and Senator John McCain justify heinous and reprehensible acts by fellow Republicans, which threatened National Security and may have influenced the actions of the White House in an international incident? Notwithstanding the issue of their age and gender, which is made all the more evident by testaments to that individuals frequenting an infamous child bordello in Thailand, how do the Republican Party and Senator John McCain justify a fellow Republican accepting enslaved Thai Prostitutes from the son of a now disgraced communist leader? Did their knowledge of his actions limit the response of his Republican family member during an international crisis? Did their knowledge of his actions limit the response of his Republican family member during a National Security threat? For those who have faith, each persons God's ultimate assesment of our lives occcurs on the day of reckoning. Your god may have had the first of many last laughs on the person who accepted the enslaved Thai Prostitutes, although one must sympathize with his former wife. That person became infected with an incurable sexually transmitted disease.

Indiscretions such as these are generally supposed to be considered a potential threat to National Security when considering others for security clearance, but this has not always been the case. The Department of Defense (DOD), including the military and other federal agencies has overlooked illegal and immoral indiscretions in the past. DOD helped an underage Philippine female immigrate to the United States to marry a former Marine Aviator, who was once employed by the contractor at USAF Plant No. 4 and once in the reserve. When she revealed at a Christmas Party that she was an underage bride, his security clearance was not revoked. DOD, including the USAF, and the Senate Armed Services Committee overlooked the access by employees of the contractor at USAF Plant No. 4 of child pornography on the World Wide Web. They destroyed evidence on individual computers, but they were so ignorant in their obstruction of justice that they forgot to destroy evidence on mainframes and servers. Their security clearances were not revoked. DOD, including the USAF, and the Senate Armed Services Committee ignored visits by defense contractor and some military personnel to child bordellos in South Korea and Thailand among other nations. Some employees openly bragged about their visits to the parlors, which were staffed with underage child prostitutes. Their security clearances were not revoked.

I would not feel safer with Senator John McCain in the White House at any level. He has already demonstrated for me his failure to lead at any level. He has already demonstrated his failure to lead morally. He has already demonstrated his failure to lead in matters of National Security. He has already demonstrated his ability to lead use into the most serious economic crisis of the last 100 years.

To Obama, McCain, Congress, and NASA: How should a space race be run?

Dr. Jeffrey Kargel — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:09:12 EDT

Today India launched its first mission beyond Earth orbit. After a 5-day elliptical semi-orbit of the Earth to place it on a lunar intercept, it will fire its rocket to enter lunar orbit. It will then train a huge array of sophisticated instruments, many with foreign (including American) participation, on the Moon's surface. It will map lunar topography, make precision images, and map uranium and helium-3, ice, and other potential natural resources. I write with excitement, as extraterrestrial resources is something I have written a fair amount about in the technical science and space development literature. Use of extraterrestrial resources is part of what I view as forming humanity's destiny.

China and Japan each launched their own lunar orbital missions recently, so a full-fledged Asian space race is on. The U.S. will also have an advanced lunar resource prospecting mission soon. Japan's media, and the media across Asia, is abuzz with talk about lunar exploration and the Asian space race. Everybody is interested in pushing toward human lunar exploration.

Not lost on anybody, the Moon is also viewed militarily as the ultimate high ground. In principle, ice mines at the lunar South Pole could supply ice from to low Earth orbit (LEO) far more efficiently than launches of water from Earth into LEO. Ice translates not just as water, but also oxygen and hydrogen-- rocket fuel. Ample rocket fuel in LEO means unlimited capability to maneuver around Earth, to shift the orbits of spy satellites when crises emerge, to shift the orbits of Earth resources satellites, to fuel rockets that will move astronauts to the Moon and Mars and beyond more efficiently than if all the rocket fuel had to be launched from Earth's surface. In short, the lunar South Pole is like Middle Eastern oil as far as space operations are concerned. There are more ominous possibilities related to the "high ground" aspect that need not even be mentioned, but there is no question that the Moon is a strategic place in many regards, and it could be used as a stepping stone to places farther afield, such as Mars.

The Moon is also supremely interesting scientifically, having merit in its own right as a unique planetary type object but also bearing clues to Earth's origin, as Apollo began to teach us. In terms of the 'gee-whiz' aspect of human exploration, the Moon represents an exciting target if you haven't already been there. If you have been there, as America has been, it is still a worthy place to explore by humans, but in pure scientific exploration terms, that can be done far more cost effectively by robotics. Yes, humans can do some things that robotics cannot, but robotics truly are up to the task of doing most of what humans can do, plus much more that we can't. Even mining of ice or helium-3 (if we ever get helium-3-based fusion electrical power generation mastered) would best be done robotically, if money is an issue. I would warrant that for America, money is an issue, and most voters and taxpayers probably would say so, too. We need to do things efficiently.

That said, if we do venture beyond LEO with humans, is the Moon the best place to go? To most planetary scientists, Mars is much more interesting place than the Moon and it is more apt to be a place that can be settled. There are severe challenges for sure, especially in getting there and returning; the transit is the biggest danger because of solar cosmic radiation storms. Some Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) have orbits close enough to Earth's that they can be reached in as little as a month or two instead of a year or more; thus, they are safer. NEAs represent a much more diverse and resource-rich set of objects, although I note that there are some peculiarities of the Moon (such as enrichment in He-3) that could drive particular, specific efforts at resource exploitation. None of this, not even the strategic aspects (for those military types pondering that), favors human-driven activity if getting the job done efficiently is what the goal is.

If having humans do something interesting in space is the goal, the Moon is interesting indeed; but in post-Apollo era, there are other places we should go. If there is a sense of a space race, I would urge America's leaders to consider a space race in a different context, more like the framing context that JFK used to send us to the Moon. We should do something spectacular, partly because it is hard. We can go to the Moon, but it will be hailed as a return to the past. If there is no pressing reason to have humans on the Moon, but instead can have robotics take care of our scientific and engineering/resource exploitation objectives there, then I'd say let's skip the Moon and go to Mars, but do so in a logical sequence. If we need a stepping stone, near Earth asteroids would provide a more interesting one that would not entail years and years of staying there (at a cost of maybe $100 billion beyond the cost to get to that first return to the Moon). We could go to 3 or 4 asteroids, learn a lot, and be done with that phase of the program, and then focus on Mars. In some regards asteroids would be safer than the Moon, if we can select some that would entail only a month or so of transit time each way. We could have small solar storm radiation shelters onboard the craft, and not worry about osteoporosis and other severe maladies that we will have to worry about when we finally go to Mars. We could conduct these missions and use manned maneuvering units to make the landings; no need for extremely complex lunar landing craft, no need for a lot of things that would cost us dearly to get to the Moon and which would not be directly applicable to Mars landings. We could get to the asteroids rapidly, I would guess before 2016. With 8 years of doing one mission every 2 years or so, we could learn a lot, and then by 2024, if we aimed for it now, we could be on Mars. Otherwise, we will be busy trying to pay off our Apollo-Plus bill and not have really made much progress toward getting to Mars. We'll have China and who knows who else as neighbors, and we will be seen as competing directly with them.

Why try to steal the Chinese (or Indian or Japanese or European) thunder? Let them do what will give them national pride and international prestige. Let's not race them at all. Let's dedicate a strong robotics effort at the Moon, especially one dedicated toward natural resource exploration. If the Chinese are willing, we could ride with them to the Moon; and they could ride with us to asteroids. This would create openness and confidence that the more threatening possible uses of the Moon (and asteroids) would not elapse. We certainly do not need a militarized space race and hostile land grabs and paranoid approach to space exploration.

We should not accede to any territorial claims by any nation, nor make any claims, as international law now warrants. We should create a legal framework for resource exploration and exploitation, but astronaut involvement should not come to be seen as the legal basis for staking claims. The asteroids will be able to provide water to LEO even more cheaply than the Moon can (it sounds counter-intuitive, but the Moon's gravity well makes this statement true). On asteroids there is abundant platinum, carbon compounds, semiconductors, and all sorts of things that the Moon doesn't have. We can exploit those materials robotically, and we can involve humans in their exploration much more quickly and less expensively than going to the Moon; and the asteroids certainly represent stepping stones to the greater beyond, for which the Moon does not serve so well.

The cost of this proposed revised goal of the coming decade would be far less than the cost of the human lunar program. The savings (probably several billion dollars per year) could be split in quarters between (1) developing advanced planetary robotics, (2) reducing the taxpayer's burden (or our debt to China), (3) rebuilding our Earth observation program, and (4) preparing for Mars settlement by humans. By 2020 we can start ramping down expenditures for this asteroid program and sharply ramping up Mars settlement preparations if that is our nation's aspiration. Nearly all the hardware developed for the asteroid effort would be directly transferrable to Mars exploration, and by 2020 hopefully we will have an economy that reflects a decade of efficient and wise federal expenditures.

In any case, resource exploration should be the focus of NASA's extraterrestrial robotic exploration program.

Who are we?

Ron from Walnut Creek, CA — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:24:51 EDT

Hello my friends (Hmmm, that has a familiar and eerie ring, eh?) and fellow Earthairians. I am a mature (well, adult) person from the West Coast of the New America. My interest, at the moment, is to elect Barack Obama as President of these not so United States. I am of the 60's generation, and I am ecstatic about this which appears more and more like reality every day. I never imagined that we would live to see another 'Kennedy' in the White House.

Not to say that Barack is not his own man person, because that is largely his appeal, and what makes him electable. Bill Clinton made it clear that only a centrist Democrat could be elected in this country at this time. The Millenium generation will in time change that, but for now......

So today I have a question, and an idea. The question is this: Why in heavens (This is a family blog afterall) name is it that we have to focus on this ridiculous nonsense about Bill Ayers, when it is the Republican Vice President who has ties, fresh ties, to a virulent anti American organization. No, we don't want to base a campaign on such an issue, but certainly the American people deserve to have the record set straight, and put in perspective. I don't think Sarah Palin is a 'terrorist', so why doesn't she just shut up about this? I really hate this kind of hysterical baiting. It is not only unfair and untrue; it is dangerous. Here we have a candidate who is touting himself as bipartisan; claiming that Barack is not bipartisan, when exactly the opposite is the truth. The character of this (Republican) campaign has created a very poisonous environment which will be hard to govern. Whoever wins, there will be a lot of healing needed. Barack, I think you are up to it. Wisdom prevails.

The idea is this. If we are going to Federalize the banking institution in this country, why not create an investment bank which lends directly to Small Business at very reasonable rates? Why do we need to rescue the scoundrels just so they can (supposedly) turn around and lend money to the rest of us? Why do we need them? They are one middle class we can do without. Point is that such a huge amount of money would be a tremendous investment in the future; the future not only of America, but the healing of the whole planet, with the creation of new technologies and jobs marketable and transportable to the rest of the world.

Specifically, I am thinking of new environmental energy and manufacturing technology infrastructure ventures which are particularly saleable to China. We know that we as a people have the history and creativity and drive to make this happen. Take the constraints off, take the middle (man/bank) out of the way, and make this fluid capital directly available. Standard diligence, such as provided by the new Venture firms of the post dot com community, would apply. Rather than fret about global warming, here is significant positive action we can take. We ARE up to it!

Just a thought. So think!

.....Ron

Who are we?

Ron from Walnut Creek, CA — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:24:51 EDT

Just a thought. So think!

.....Ron

The Economic Plan that is needed.

John from Berkeley, CA — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 04:22:48 EDT

What Obama needs to do is lower taxes for the middle class, that way their will be a larger effect on consumer consumption. The old trickle down effect of hoping the upper class' tax breaks can benefit the economy is no longer working; they are the ones who caused this financial crisis. We need to urbanize the country and create more inward growth of our administrative systems, knowledge, and innovation while still maintaining a steady control as the world's central economic generator.

It will be particularly advantageous to create the right alliances right now. China is on the brink of entering its mass urbanization phase. Chinese media, such as "Still Life" directed by Jia Zhanke, depict the demolition of old Chinese cities and in order for mass reconstructive urbanization projects mainly consisting of infrastructure and industry. America needs to begin capitalizing upon the economic benefits that helping and fostering economic growth of a quickly developing brings. This mutually beneficial international partnership of trade, coupled with the tax breaks for the "Joe" consumers, will undoubtedly help boost America's economy, not just to its former state, but rather to that next level. It is time to embrace the intelligence of a Harvard graduate running this country.

A Battle of Ideas and Philosophy

Jamari from Herndon, VA — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:17:21 EDT

My Fellow Americans:

Ultimately, this election is not about Barack and Joe or McCain and Palin. This election is about a set of ideas and a philosophy about America's future. Taking a quick look at the Bush record, and particularly Bush's record of substantially increasing the footprint of the Federal Government and the amount of Federal debt, it is quite clear that we cannot, and must not continue with these failed policies of "big government". When we look at our economic situation, and the economic assault that we're under from China, we must remember that Congress, with its "big government" economic policies has effectively rendered America unable to compete via laws and regulations. America needs change!

If we wish to place blame for the current economic situation in America. Look no further. The Federal Reserve and Congress are to blame via their inept attempts to centrally plan an economy based upon a mirage of housing and debt. America must change. American must change away from the "big-government" policies of the Bush administration and today's congress!

So, remember, this election is about a competing set of ideas and philosophies. On one side, we have Barack and Joe, interested in continuing the "big government" policies of the past administration and on the other side we have McCain and Palin, interested in returning freedom and liberty to the people of America. My fellow Americans, that is the change we need.

Yours truly,

Jamari Jones

Good Grief! I Have More Foreign Policy Experience Than Sarah Palin

Charley James — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:12:35 EDT

Mother Jones has unearthed official Alaska government records documenting Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience over the 19 months she’s been governor. Including the time she spent with 10 foreign exchange high school students, attending a reception at the Italian embassy in Washington and a 15 minute taping of a video message shown at a trade fair in China, as governor she spent approximately 12 hours either talking to or meeting with people who could be loosely called a “foreign leader.” (See box below)

I’ve never been in government and am not a politician but it turns out I have more experience in serious, substantive meetings with foreign leaders –real ones – than does a candidate for Vice President of the United States. I have the photos hanging in my office to prove it and my experience was acquired during a brief interlude when I worked in business.

May 1989 – Hosted a three hour dinner in Minneapolis with Boris Yeltsen, including a half-hour private meeting with the soon-to-be President of Russia in his limo en route to the dinner venue.

Nov. 1989 – Held a two hour meeting with Lech Walesca, about to become president of Poland, in his office in Gdansk to discuss building American business investment interest in Poland.

Jan. 1992 – With two other people, participated in a one hour meeting with Michael Wilson, Canada’s Minister of International Affairs and Foreign Trade on China-Canada trade issues.

Feb. 1992 – Held a half day meeting in Johannesburg with Nelson Mandella and the head of economic development for the African National Congress on building Canada-South Africa business ties as a precursor to a conference in Toronto.

April 1992 – Participated in a private, two hour dinner in Toronto for leaders of South African businesses and senior officials of the ANC.

June 1992 - Participated with one other person in a private, two hour dinner with South Africa's High Commissioner to Canada to discuss post-apartheid trade and business opportunities.

April 1993 – With three other people, attended a one hour meeting in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People with Zhu Rongji, then Senior Vice Premier for economic modernization.

April 1993 – Attended a two hour lunch in Beijing with China’s Minister of Foreign Trade with six other people including Canada’s Ambassador to China.

May 1993 – Participated in a three hour private dinner in Toronto with Zhu Rongji.

June 1993 – Participated in a two hour negotiating meeting with Zhur Rongji in Beijing’s Jong Non Hi compound.

Sept 1993 – Participated in a two hour private meeting with Chnia’s Foreign Trade minister, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien and six Canadian executives.

My total experience in meeting with foreign affairs and international trade leaders: 24 hours; Sarah Palin: 12 hours, including the meeting with high school students in Alaska on a foreign exchange program.

Why wasn’t I asked to be someone’s vice presidential candidate? I’ll be entertaining offers throughout the three day weekend, except when the Red Sox playoff game is on television during which time I’ll be busy with Red Sox Nation.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Sarah Palin’s “Foreign Policy” Experience: 12 Hours Over 19 Months

Jan 19, 2007 – Palin meets with Fentie for 30 minutes, with Lloyd for 30 minutes, and with Bell for 30 minutes. She does not attend the PNWER dinner hosted that night by the Canadian government for Alaskan officials and business leaders.

Feb 24, 2007 – In Washington, DC, for a National Governors Assn. meeting, Palin attends a reception at the Italian embassy. She stays for 30 minutes before leaving for a dinner hosted by the Republican Governors Assn.

Mar 10, 2007 – Palin hosts the annual Fur & Ice reception in Fairbanks for about 30 diplomats and international tourism representatives. A Palin news release issued before the event noted, "Governor Sarah Palin will welcome members of Alaska's diplomatic corps to Fairbanks to view the ice carvings of Ice Alaska's 2007 World Ice Art Championship." Following the afternoon reception, Palin attends the NCAA rifle championships.

Mar 19, 2007 – Palin meets with 10 foreign exchange students. April, 3, 2007 – Palin spends 15 minutes filming a short video message for a trade show in China. April 4, 2007 – In Juneau, Palin meets with British Columbia's premier Gordon Campbell and several of his aides for about 90 minutes.

April 16, 2007 – Palin meets with Taiwanese officials for an hour. May 15, 2007 – Palin holds a "brief courtesy" meeting with Martin Uden, then the head of the British consulate in San Francisco. The calendar notes, "He'll be visiting Juneau today off of one of the Cruise Ships."

July 23-26, 2007 – Palin visits Kuwait to meet with members of the Alaska National Guard. (After Palin was selected as McCain's running mate, her aides, referring to this trip, said she travelled to Ireland, Germany, Kuwait and Iraq. But on this visit, she did not go beyond the Kuwaiti-Iraq border and her “visit” to Ireland consisted of a refuelling stop.)

Aug 27, 2007 – David Akov, Israeli consul general for the Pacific Northwest, pays a 30-minute "courtesy call" on Palin.

Sept 12, 2007 – Palin holds a 15-minute-long "courtesy" meeting with Hideo Fujita, the new chief of Japan's consulate in Anchorage.

Sept 13, 2007 – Palin holds a 15-minute long "courtesy" meeting with Peng Keyu, the head of the Chinese consulate in San Francisco.

Oct 15, 2007 – Palin meets Iceland's president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, for 30 minutes. Grimsson is in Alaska to attend the Arctic Energy Summit Technology Conference. (After she became McCain's running mate, she was asked if she had ever met with a world leader. She said, no — forgetting this meeting.)

Jan 4, 2008 – Palin holds a 10-minute-long phone conversation with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice. Her calendar also refers to "Canadian officials phone calls" that day.

Jan 21, 2008 – Palin is schedule for a brief "stop by" visit with Joe Balash, a Palin aide, and Brian Mason, a member of the legislative assembly of Alberta, Canada. The calendar says, "Balash Office would like a picture w/GOV."

March 8, 2008 – Palin welcomes guests to the 2008 Fur & Ice reception for the diplomatic corps. Diplomats from the Philippines, South Korea, the Slovak Republic, South Africa, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, Finland, Germany, and Egypt attend. Her calendar lists no separate meetings with any of them.

May 22, 2008 – At 7:15 am, Palin calls Yukon Premier Dennis Fentie; for ten minutes they discuss news that her administration will ask the state legislature to award a license for a 1,715-mile-long natural gas pipeline to TransCanada. (Her administration has turned down bids from other conglomerates, including ConocoPhillips.) Later, she has a five-minute-long phone call with Canadian Minister of Industry Jim Prentice.

Aug 11-12, 2008 – Palin attends a reception and delivers welcoming remarks for the 8th Conference of Arctic Parliamentarians which includes delegates from Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States. This year, it holds panels on human health in the Arctic region, Arctic marine policy, adaptation to climate change, and energy resources in the Arctic. After welcoming the delegates, Palin leaves to attend a "dedication and blessing ceremony" for a cultural and visitors center in Fairbanks.

Data: Mother Jones

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Where's John McCain?

Tim — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:44:24 EDT

Where does John McCain's stand on these issues?

$57 Trillion in debt (incl medicare and social security)
Energy (peak oil and its consequences)
Global warming
Trade Imbalance
Education reform
Crumbling national infrastructure
Permanent underclass
Foreign policy challenges; i.e. Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Russia, China, North Korea. Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, etc. etc.

How about Sarah Palin? Do they agree with each other? I'd like to know. Where's John McCain?

Republicans want China to own your SS Benefits!

Omar Dyer — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 10:41:08 EDT

Are we getting this foolish on matters that have nothing to do with this election, and forget about the outsanding facts. When John McCain gets into office he will take us to war, he will make you SS benefits open to the stock market where China can control your retirement funds. Just think about it would China allow America to own their retirement funds: NOT A CHANCE. John McCain is so out of touch, that we are fool by subtance, and not actuality. Here's you chance to make an important vote from and this will be a pettition sent to washington to stop them from placing SS benefits into the exchange market.

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Fannie and Freddie takeover for dummies...

Jose — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:18:08 EDT

For those of you who aren’t clear on the details, heres a "dumb down" explanation of the fannie mae and freddie mac takeover explanation. Its pretty straightforward, and before reading you should read up on what a bond is if you don’t already know.

Bond Definition: (read the first paragraph alone and you’ll understand.)

In a nutshell, the “real estate bubble" burst and the value of homes plummeted. This caused interest rates for loans from banks to soar, and those families that barely made payments were now facing mortgage defaults. Millions of people couldn’t afford the new mortgage payments, which *had* the cost of essential commodities not soared along with the cost of gasoline AND healthcare, millions of people would have had a few more dollars to pull out of their pockets for their homes. This rule is applied across the board to millions of homeowners. Well we all know that when you buy a home it’s a mutual risk between you and the bank. However all the risks the bank takes with millions of people is indirectly propagated to financial institutions like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. They in turn will go out and sell bonds to raise the money for those loans to overseas and domestic investors.

Problem is that banks took in way too much risk, which indirectly eroded fannie and freddie with concerns over its financial integrity. Can a single company take in 5 trillion dollars of debt? This makes foreign and domestic investors alike think twice about buying bonds from fannie and Freddie. These concerns together with the 5 trillion dollars in debt started to slowly affect the influx of investors buying bonds from fannie and Freddie. This in turn forced fannie and Freddie to raise interest rates on the banks loans to still be able to raise money for future loans, which then in turn forced banks to raise interest rates on homeowner’s loans to still make a profit. That means they began pinching the people whom were already suffering from financial instability caused by the rising cost of living (gas, food, healthcare to name a few). End result, fannie and Freddie would have gone down the drain and the cost of living would have soared over night even further because banks would not have had a stream of cash flow to pay for the crucial roles they fill in our economy. Could this have been avoided? Sure, if we had someone who knows how to run the economy leading us.

Heres a great CNN money article that explains how we got to where we are regarding Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Foreign Policy Association's US Foreign Policy Election Guide

DNMP — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 16:00:47 EDT

Visit http://www.electionvoice.org to vote your opinion on various US Foreign Policy views as well as see how Obama and McCain stand on the same issues. You can also see how the rest of the country feels on the issues.

Enjoy this resource!

DNMP

Chinas Oylmpic Gold and Religious Persecution

Bertram — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:29:28 EDT

09/01/2008
Fascinating! I can't help but be hopefull that in China's new found stature, increase in wealth (in no small part due to the purchasing power of the rest of the world{made in China}) and beautiful winnings in the olympics will have any effect whatsoever on its governments blind fear of religious freedom. Bravo China for "trying" to throw off the shackles and chains of the middle ages but the chi gong that is developing from the moral vacumn of religious persecution will be fatal. Is the government of China that insecure as to need to torture and kill old men, women and children and request other political officials in other countries (San Diego, USA) to not support Falun Gong? Buddhism, Falun Gong and Tai Chi are some of the most peaceful religions and ways of thought known to mankind and a great gift from the people of Tibet and China to the world. What is there to fear in love, foreberance and understanding? When will you really become the PEOPLE'S Republic of CHIna?

Thank you for tuning in!

Andrew Duggan — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:27:07 EDT

We want to thank KCEO AM 1000 San Diego, and their BizTalkRadio program, for helping us to spread the word about the urgency of renewable energy investments. The time frame for action is short. We need everyone on board and taking action here and now.

As I mentioned in the interview, I see a time frame of perhaps only 10-15 years before we have major global problems if we don’t pull together and change course.

<b>We have a great opportunity to make lasting change, especially in this election year, by letting our politicians know that they MUST make renewable energy a priority for this nation now and in the future.</b>

McCain Thinks Phalen Can Handle Russia, China, and Iraq Plus Military

Madera Strong - Team Co-ordinator For City of Madera — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:41:37 EDT

Phalen is totally not equipped to handle the complex international situation in which we find ourselves today. Russia, may decide to get rid of McCain, and let America flounder under the "leadership" of Phalen. Phalen does not even understand the role of a Vice President (her own words, "What does a Vice President do?")

If Phalen wants to ride the coat-tails of her son"Track," maybe she also needs to enlist in the U.S. army. Did Phalen's husband serve in the military?

There Are Presently 90,000 Chinese Soldiers In Uniform 20 Miles South Of Tijuana

Cynthia — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:21:04 EDT

I found this on the net, we need to get pictures of these troops as proof.

______

There Are Presently 90,000 Chinese Soldiers In Uniform 20 Miles South Of Tijuana

Hey guys take a gander at this. As usual we really can't tell if this has any truth in it but stay alert anyway. We have been hearing about this from several sources and there are a lot of differing opinions about it. However I think it would be wise to stay aware. Frank sent this to me.

From: XXXX

This information is being sent for your prayerful consideration. The source is realizable.- Mary

Col Farrell: A friend of mine gets info from a couple who have many contacts among military and CIA intelligence people. One of them relayed information from a 12-page report to her. Here are some of the notes she took: There are presently 90,000 Chinese soldiers in uniform 20 miles south of Tijuana (border of Mexico and California). Most of those people in intelligence have removed their families out of the country. He states most of these people are now gone (from U.S.) 75% of the economy is coming down. 10,000 Class 1 Al Kida ( phonetic sp) in U.S. now (high-trained troops); and 20,000 Class 2 (trained troops) - all set to go. Bush is getting all of our military out of the country so we have no protection. Bombs are already in placed and our cities will be nuked one at a time. All food crops will become unusable. A "Suicide squad" that will be using crop dusters and dropping small pox on our populations. They will pick locations where there are steady, 8-mile-an-hour breezes so that the contamination will travel. They predict 20 million deaths to occur. The U.S. will be giving Cuba "free trade" status; Cuba will be the third such country to have this. Three weeks after Cuba gets free trade status - Israel will attack first; we will follow.

Bush will send 690,000 troops to North Korea; we will be fighting a war on three fronts (Iraq, North Korea and [do not have 3rd country in notes]. Everything is going to shut down in this country; there will be absolutely no travel. January 9th, 2003, commenced the two-year countdown that the U.N. believes will result in their complete take over of this country. A Saudi Arabia newspaper said the Chinese are going to invade us on all fronts. They have naval base in California and on east coast; they will also swarm in from Canada and Mexico.

The three phases of the take-over of this country will be: Phase 1 - war; Phase 2 - disease; Phase 3 - famine. George Bush will destroy one of our own ships and kill 2,000 to 5,000 of our servicemen. A strategic part of take-over will happen during the Christmas season. New Zealand has offered all our officials asylum.

Frank Eugene

===

Charlie

I moved from Tucson in December to the four corners area. What is contained in the article you sent was the primary reason. I am aware of Mexican military incursions into the U.S. In one of these incursions the village of San Pedro was sealed off by the Mexican military for 3 days, probably to protect a huge drug shipment. I know that many folks of many nationalities are coming across the border, mainly around the Tohono O'Odham Indian reservation. Many of the folks there, most of whom make money as coyotes, either for illegals or drugs, have told me personally of Orientals and middle-eastern types being among the border crossers they have escorted.

I have had first hand reports of Chinese Military maneuvers in the Naco area across the border from Douglas AZ. Some involving armored vehicles. Just had one such report this morning, although it came from a source of which reliability is questionable.

Charlie, I have no reason to doubt we are in serious trouble here. I have moved to a remote area, have plenty "supplies," and contingency plans for my family.

Your comments Sir?
Mike
http://www.rightwingnews.com/crackpots/reddragon.php
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BORDER - CHINESE SOLDIERS DRESSED LIKE MEXICANS?

Posted By: rmagent11
Date: Friday, 5 January 2001, 6:17 a.m.

BORDER - CHINESE SOLDIERS DRESSED LIKE MEXICANS?

(snip)

We continue to hear reports from illegals coming across the border that swear they have seen Chinese soldiers dressed like Mexicans,” a senior San Diego law enforcement officer said. “No one is paying attention but there is a core of officers who know what is going on and we’re worried. Being an ex-military guy it scares the hell out of me.
(end snip)

FULL ARTICLE:

Scott Gulbransen

Cubans May Be Active Near U.S-Mexican Border - 1/2/2001

http://www.strategicjungle.com/scott/0102_01sg.html

In another disturbing development, more foreign troops and military advisors have been reported near the U.S.-Mexican border near San Diego.

Several U.S. and Mexican officials have reported to the Strategic Jungle Syndicate over the past three weeks sightings and reports of Cuban military advisors in the area.

One Mexican law enforcement source said the heaviest activity and most sightings have occurred in between the Baja California border towns of Tijuana and Mexicali. Numerous reports of Cuban military officials emerging from the desert and countryside to buy supplies and run them back to remote camps have sprouted up since the beginning of October.

One Mexican official said the Cubans have become well known to the villagers due to their friendly demeanor and ability to pay top prices for supplies.

A Mexican factory worker stated her brother had been hired by a Cuban man out of Mexicali to help construct a retaining wall some 20 miles southeast of Mexicali.

“The men with my brother made nearly $300 to help build this wall in two
days,” the worker said. “They called the boss ‘Fidel’ because he had a
beard just like Castro.”

The woman said two American men and one Asian male who all spoke Spanish and English accompanied the Cubans. All were dressed in military clothing. The Cubans wore olive green uniforms without markings and the Americans and Asian were wearing Mexican army fatigues.

“You can tell the Cubans because they speak so fast,” she said. “My brother said they had many tents and vehicles but everything was covered.”

When asked what people think about Cubans in Mexico, the factory worker shrugged it off.

“They seem to be doing something with the army so it’s no big deal. They’re nice and they have been spending a lot of money which is good for Mexicali.”

The reports of Cuban military personnel in Mexico come on the heels of an announcement last week between the Castro government and China. The agreement calls for more military cooperation between the two countries including joint military operational exercises and the sale of military hardware to the Castro regime.

American law enforcement sources also report continued sightings of Asian soldiers in border areas. After the Oct. 24, 2000, shooting incident involving Border Patrol agents and what appeared to be Chinese soldiers in Mexican army uniforms near Otay Mesa, sightings have increased but no further incidents have been reported.

“We continue to hear reports from illegals coming across the border that swear they have seen Chinese soldiers dressed like Mexicans,” a senior San Diego law enforcement officer said. “No one is paying attention but there is a core of officers who know what is going on and we’re worried. Being an ex-military guy it scares the hell out of me.”

Due to the massive migration of illegal farm workers north to better paying jobs in the United States, word is now starting to leak out. Although no major mainstream media outlets have covered the story, people in the border regions from San Diego to the Texas Panhandle are growing concerned.

“We suddenly find ourselves in a situation where now two Communist nations have soldiers on our southern border,” the San Diego official said. “There are two questions you need to ask yourself: why isn’t our government doing something and what are the Mexican’s up to?”

With the popular shift in government in Mexico, the masses seem to be happy with their new president, Vincente Fox. But Fox’s “globalization” mentality has many concerned that he may know of these troops within his country and is choosing simply to do nothing about it.

“Just as Americans were distracted by your election mess the people in Mexico are drunk on Vincente Fox,” the Mexican law enforcement official said. “They don’t care what he’s doing yet so no one is paying attention. It’s still a party.”

The increased activity on the borders is becoming louder but is anyone listening?

“I really don’t know what’s going on but people in those areas need to keep an open eye and a keen ear,” a San Diego County Sheriff’s deputy said. “They’re up to something and I know I’m getting real nervous.”
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=6333

Is John McCain too angry to lead?

Matthew Lenell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 14:20:16 EDT

A family member sent us a link to clips of the Saddleback Forum and asked my wife to watch them and come to her own conclusions. After watching several clips, other than saying watching them made her feel even more comfortable in her support of Senator Obama, she mentioned something that really separated the two candidates: Barack Obama was calm and thoughtful in his responses but John McCain appeared, well, angry. This got me thinking, Is John McCain just too angry to be the President of the United States?

Our country's position as a respected world leader is greatly diminished since we decided to invade Iraq unilaterally. Our next President must repair that or we risk being isolated and a target for attack either economically or through all-out war. Already countries like Russia, Iran and Venezuela are thumbing their respective noses at us because they know that we are overextended and can do nothing about it. China knows that as long as they own and buy our debt that we can say nothing about human rights abuses. There is nothing good that can come from this position and we must improve it. A President Obama would make a concerted effort to work with world leaders to improve our world standing, a President McCain would not.

Based on his posturing over the Russia/Georgia conflict, John McCain would have rushed to war with the Russians. He tastelessly taunted Iran with his "Bomb, bomb, bomb...bomb, bomb Iran" joke. Though he denies it, there is also the instance of the Nicaraguan offical that he reportedly "roughed up" as reported by fellow Republican Senator Thad Cochrane, R-Miss. Several current and former senators have expressed that they have been the brunt of his anger. Is this man a ticking time-bomb? Yes he is and the American public needs to know.

So here is my solution to the Senator McCain problem. I propose that in response to the bogus and repetitive "Not ready to lead" that the Obama Campaign respond with "McCain: too angry to lead." It will not take much to get people from both sides in Washington to verify his temper as being unfit for a President of the United States. It will also make Senator McCain very, very angry. At worst, the McCain campaign will have to back down on the attack dog tactics because it will make the American Public take notice of just how angry he is (angry little man.) At best, it will push him over the edge and can become a debate topic that he will lose. The message is also a fair contrast of character: it shows that, opposed to Barack Obama who is a voice of reason and gets angry only when necessary, Senator McCain has a fuse that is always ready to blow and is quick to retaliate. Whatever way you look at it, it is a win-win for the Obama Campaign and the United States.

Note:

Just be prepared for the McCain campaign to try to spin this one and have him say: "Yes, I'm angry and I'm angry because..." It must be framed such that it shows that his general temperament is in question and that he is dangerous in general because he cannot control it. John McCain seems to get angry simply because someone disagrees with him or he doesn't like somebody or something irrationally. It is not about his deep dislike of one or two issues, he is angry in general and the country can't afford a loose cannon in the White House in these times of trouble.

Republican Deceit.

slack3r — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 02:50:04 EDT

The last 30 years of Republican policies has failed America. They beguiled and swindled the people, led them along the primrose path to a worse quality of life. Sure you can have the big house, an SUV in the driveway and a $3,000 television while earning $25,000 a year (as long as you mortgage your life away and live under a mountain of credit card debt).

But the system was rigged; it was rigged in favor of Big Oil and the plutocrats; it was rigged precisely to keep the average American under that pile of debt; and it was rigged by the most cynical politicians, with the most utter contempt for government in the Western world. They damningly decry as “Socialism” any government program that actually helps Americans—Medicare and social security; they cynically decry as “socialized medicine” any attempt to rend away the massive profits from insurance companies and healthcare providers that they make off the backs of many Americans; and they have the gall to scream “class warfare” at any attempt to denounce the real and great disparity in incomes that exists today in America , because of income tax policies created by the wealthy for the wealthy. But year after year they manage to hoodwink a plurality of the population, and that’s enough—enough to win but not to govern. Year after year the quality of life for most Americans gets worse and worse, the American dream slipping further and further away, and year after year Americans send them right back to Washington.

And as long as Americans were fat and happy it wasn’t a problem. The Republicans would have offered everyone the moon if they thought it would give them another term in office. But the complete failure of Republican policies over the last 30 years has caught-up with all of us. The reality-based community is calling in all of our IOUs. There is a reason that gas prices are at all time high. There is a reason that we are massively indebted to the Chinese and there is a reason that a middle class family can barely afford to send their children to college or pay for healthcare. This lapse in the American dream doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s not a cyclical blip in the economy. It’s the result of decades of Republican policies geared to comfort the comfortable at the expense of everyone else, and the people these policies affect the most go right back into the voting booth with a smile on their face; “Yes sir! May I have another?” the say.

Given all this it is very refreshing that Obama chose an attack dog for the working class in Joe Biden. Because we truly can no longer elect politicians who govern like it is still 1984, instead of 2008; politicians who act as if they can buy off voters by raging against abortion like they’ve been doing since the ‘70s, meanwhile selling them out to China and the Oil and insurance companies. This cannot stand if America is to remain the shining city on the hill.

Energy Policy, Timely Action, and our Core Values are Pivotal to America’s Future

Dr. Jeffrey Kargel — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:13:18 EDT

Every period of history has written its own future; that’s the nature of the Universe. One moment conditions and strides into the next. That’s obvious. However, there are relatively stable times when likely future paths are more predictable or more controllable and less prone to deleterious derailments than other times. This is not one of those stable times. It’s not stable economically, politically, or environmentally. There are times so precarious, due partly to careless human management of affairs on our planet and partly just because of physics and geology, that decisions or events pushed one way would create a totally different future than decisions or events pushed another way. Precarious times make fertile grounds for revolutions. Think about the time of the World War II years and the development of the Cold War. Or the American Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution. The question during such revolutionary times is always which way to go? Whose revolution will it be? Whose strength will become dominant and whose world order will prevail over the others? Whose ideals will become embedded in society and institutions of the future? And now we ask, whoever comes to dominate the new order, will logic and respect prevail, or will one disaster presage the next in a cascading sequence of traumas delivered to everybody and everything on the globe? Or will this century be much less about domination and much more about sound persuasion and allowance for being different?

Will China replace America as the pre-eminent economic and military power, and if so, what path will they take in their superpower management of our planet, including the global environment and America’s and the democratic free world’s economies and political institution? Will Russia’s relations with the West take a turn back to the Cold War? Will neglect of real issues in the Islamic World press them to take increasingly militant stances, including support for al Qaeda, and will our continuing response render democracy and freedom something of the past? Will increasing American dependence on foreign petroleum spur opposition to America and the democratic free world by China, Russia, and al Qaeda all in the same generation? Surely we cannot struggle against all three at once. Fortunately, the possibility exists that we might need not struggle against any one of them, if we and they are wise. If I wax too optimistic about this, at least we can avoid a global free-for-all. We can avoid it, but will we? Will we destroy ourselves and all the ideals America has grown to represent by trying vainly to tackle foreign adversaries in short-sighted and ineffective ways? Will uncontrolled fear drive America and the democratic free world to embrace step-wise lowering of our standards of freedom and technological encroachments on our privacy, such that eventually individuals and unsanctioned groups have no standing with increasingly totalitarian-minded governments? Will we do to ourselves what no totalitarian ideology has been able to achieve?

The threats are not only about human relations. Will growth in global burning of fossil fuels bring on climatic shifts so profound that the major economies and powers of the world collapse under the burdens and damages wrought by this generation’s decisions? Will climate change or depletion of nonrenewable resources be foremost in wringing failure from civilization’s technological success?

The decisions and paths taken over the next few years will substantially determine our American path and the global future. These times are as serious and globally consequential as any time in history, for better or worse.

I ask some serious questions, as though there may be a dire fate we are thrusting ourselves into. However, I am optimistic that America will reassert itself as a positive force in the world; reassert its insistence that all men and women are created equal and embody the individual and collective pursuit of happiness; reassert itself through the power of knowledge, logic, and compassion as well as through steadfast opposition to ideologies—foreign-born and domestic-- that would overturn a millennium of human progress in well being and civic freedom. I am optimistic that if we try to be better as a people, work even harder than ever, keep and reinforce our core values when devaluation threatens, then we will be as successful as geology and physics and logic can make us. I believe--not in some blind-follows-the-blind way, but in a "trust but verify" type of way-- that Barack Obama has the ideas, the advisors, the good sense, and the boldness that will be needed to take us where we must go. I am optimistic about America and about our world.

Letters From The Field: The Great Wall Of China

Josh In Michigan — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 11:52:50 EDT

I just got sent this photo of a group of Michiganders in China showing their support for Senator Obama at the Great Wall of China.

Economic Globalization Endangers Americans

Madera Strong - Team Co-ordinator For City of Madera — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:16:22 EDT

Globalization – defined as the intertwining of our American economy with the economies of other countries - endangers American national security, economy and sovereignty.

There are many who would love to destabilize the American economy and lifestyle. Hence, China sends us poison food, poison toys, and poison medications. These evil deeds may be blamed on one person by China. This person will be reported "killed" and the event ends. No further repercussions or clarification of the issue.

Americans define themseles as moral. Yet, American museums purchase from China well-preserved human bodies, without evidence of what caused death, and display the humans in American galleries. Americans are awestruck - yet, no outcry for the in-humane system which allows this to happen.

Americans, like McCain, must quit isolating France, which is closer to our values, and work towards international unity.

Motivational Note

Friends of President Barack Obama — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:19:02 EDT

Even though it may not look like it or feel like it, you are making progress.

Continue working towards progress instead of perfection.

Nothing or no no one is perfect.

Just keep taking steps.

Keep making those phone calls.

Continue following your plan.

Remain focused on your goal.

Do what you have to do right now to get to the next level.

Complete every task.

Keep every promise and commitment.

Don't look back.

Stay on track.

Let no one weaken your walk of faith and determination.

Remain teachable.

Place yourself in a blessing position by associating with people on-the-grow.

Talk with teachers.

Walk with winners.

Climb with champions.

Study successful people.

Something great is about to happen for you!

Start giving thanks right now before you can even see the outward manisfestation of your prayers and desires.

Everything you do from this day forward will take you further away or closer to your potential for successful living.

-by Dr. Jewel Diamond Taylor, Motivational Speaker & Author

Important Fact....from a 08/09/2008 Post down...

Tony — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:08:50 EDT

Look At the end of the post, a day before Russia's Invasion calling them "Unfriendly", it's here down 3 posts, like this:

".....I place a prediction that Chavez is losing this referendum battle at present by 51% No, 49% Yes, and this may deteriorate even more if oil prices keep going lower as the military apparatus is big, secret numbers and ineficient officials with low intelligence that I can call them donkeys as all they do is buy weapons from unfriendly russia and none of them even invent a rifle, a bunch of low life worthless people in uniform which I believe will never stand a fierce battle".

..yes, I lost the prediction however there were rumors that some kind of fraud was committed and this technique is used even from the past right governments, they use a list of dead people and register them but there is a limit to it and it's rumored also this was used in venezuela in the last vote where the NO won by small margin so that is why the confidential internal polls of gov done before this november election where several governors posts are at stake and it shows them with a lesser than 50% approval so the NO vote even won by a wider margin, and this technique they tell each other cronies to use it, but a heavy opposition turn out can offset this unethical maneuver.

Why should America care what happens in China?

SRG_Legal — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 22:18:12 EDT

Why Every American Should Care About China

The Emerging Superpower Is Forging Relationships Where the U.S. Isn't By BOB WOODRUFF, GABRIELLE TENENBAUM, SUSAN SCHAEFER and MEENA HARTENSTEIN
Aug. 6, 2008

When the Olympics begin Friday in Beijing it will be a "coming out" party of sorts for China.

Beijing hopes this will be a bright spot in what has otherwise been a tough year -- the country was hit by a devastating earthquake and rocked by scandals over tainted food and medicine and toxic toys.

There have been protests, both within China and in other countries, about its human rights policies in Tibet and Darfur.

Even the Olympic torch relay, normally a celebratory event, sparked demonstrations around the world.

Now billions of eyes will be focused on a nation that has become so important to so many, yet remains misunderstood. Many people, perhaps most vocally in the United States, fear China's growing power and influence around the world. But it is unavoidable.

"The rise of China is the single most important geopolitical event of the 21st century," said John Thornton, professor and director of Global Leadership at Tsingua University in Beijing. "And the implications of that rise are enormous."

OBAMA TALK: We Need a stronger military?

James — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:33:16 EDT

Hopefully the Georgia-Russia conflict displays that we need to keep our military strong. We even need to be stronger. F-22 should continue to be made until we reach 381. Russia is still a potental threat. NATO should be expanded to include Ukraine & Georgia. We need a Ballistic Missile Defense and should not cave into Russian pressure. China is emerging as a superpower. Taiwan is still an issue between the US and China. Politicians are only focusing on terrorism but there is still a good chance we WILL go to war with a major dominating military force... like Russia or China for example.

Obama should be talking about this in detail.

Lets yoke our dragons

Ed Conley — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:33:28 EDT

While waiting for the Olympics to come on last night I dropped in on a history channel documentary about the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1912 (?), and if you want to find what awakened the sleeping dragon of China, this might have been the jab in its side that woke her up. China was humiliated by the Western powers in the small but very significant war (if you can call it that) where it failed to throw out the Europeans and Japanese who had arrogantly carved up China into market shares. With that humiliation a hundred years of turmoil began that has now ended with the coming out party of the 2008 Olympics.

But I couldn't help but draw the connection between China's awakening dragon (creative power) and our own struggle to ride our dragon. WWII awoke our dragon and we rode her to world power.

But the Cold War and the ideological divide that split the world made us forget how to ride our dragon. Only a whole mind can ride the dragon. And ever since WWII our national mind has been divided an at war with itself. A divided mind is a fearful mind, and dragons sense fear in their riders and will turn and burn them up with their breath of fire.

We have lost our wholeness over the last 40 years as division replaced division. Never mind what we were divided over, once the mind is divided it just finds new content to satisfy the formula. A divided mind is not a creative mind because a divided mind consumes itself in mindless conflict. While the planet dies, we worry over gun rights or school prayer.

And there was Bush at the Olympics, our great divider. And there is Obama—the man who is awakening our nation’s whole mind that transcends division. The passion we feel for Obama is our sleeping dragon that is now once more waking up. Both individually and collectively, something is stirring, something is getting warm, and we can feel a living movement once more. When the dragon stirs, we feel hope, we see potential, and we lose our fear.

China, lets yoke our rising dragons and save our planet.

CHINA showed itself to be awesome

Madera Strong - Team Co-ordinator For City of Madera — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 14:41:15 EDT

China's display of its people on Friday informed the world that China is a formidible world player. It massive population and technological skills let us know that in the future war is not the way to go.

The U.S. owes China trillions of dollars. China built and controls most American computers.

We need a leader who is strong-minded, able to communicate effectively and collaborate without threats of violence or war.

McCain focuses mostly on war and past war efforts.

OBAMA is continuously meeting, collaborating, discussing and negotiating with those of other opinions.Like-minded countries need to bond and we don't need a "leader" who wants to continually criticize the French, as McCain does.

The right way to work with China needs evolve, but McCain's quick temper and foul language is surely not the way to go.

PLEASE VOTE FOR OBAMA.

...

Prediction: 1st Leftist Government to Fall

Tony — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 00:56:47 EDT

With no polls of any kind but a lot of unrest by the opposition party in Bolivia, Evo morales I predict will lose the Referendum that will tell him NO...I hope all countries including the US include referendums like this on their constitution so mediocre government like Evo and Bush can be kicked out and show real democracy when a leader is a big liar to the people. These socialists are deemed to destroy themselves as they are all a bunch of people who betray between themselves..and next in line next year when Sen Obama will be in the presidency the one up for referendum is Chavez and I have confidential information that internal polls they have done shows an approval of less than 50% and they are worried a bunch low inteligence polititians who abuse power and laugh at their own people. Due to this, the mediocre Chavez government is planning a massive voter registration but the variation here is they are gonna do like Peru's Garcia who bought the vote from poor people by taking them a bag of groceries or other needed things while they visit to register people as venezuelans grow inept at seeing their country with record oil income but lack of good jobs and inflation make them miserable while at the same time seeing government corruption at record high numbers. I place a prediction that Chavez is losing this referendum battle at present by 51% No, 49% Yes, and this may deteriorate even more if oil prices keep going lower as the military apparatus is big, secret numbers and inneficient officials with low intelligence that I can call them donkeys as all they do is buy weapons from unfriendly russia and none of them even invent a rifle, a bunch of low life worthless people in uniform which I believe will never stand a fierce battle.

080808: a day of War and Celebration

Emma — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:31:01 EDT

The opening ceremony today of the Olympic Games in Beijing was an awe-inspiring display of the extraordinary achievements mankind can accomplish when the desire for it is deep enough. For a hundred years China has longed to be a part of the world, to be seen as an equal among the powers of Europe and the Americas. But as the giant nation has been unwilling to accept the rules the other powers had laid out, our views on human rights, on labor laws and democracy, China’s isolation seemed unbreakable.

But time changes and the world changed with it. As China grew, so did the dream. Eight years ago this dream began to take form and today they were realized. The world watched intently as China invested billions on transforming itself, merging its history with the expectations of the future. This ancient nation had a lot to show off, both of historic achievements and of the astonishing evolution the country has gone through the past few decades, and did so with an unapologetic and unabashed pride.

The number eight in Chinese apparently sounds a lot like the word rich, making this day an especially lucky day for the Chinese. Not so for the people of Georgia though.

Texas lost 200,000 jobs to China over last seven years

Williamson County Coordinated Campaign — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 09:47:03 EDT

By the Austin Business Journal

Texas has lost more than 200,000 jobs to China since 2001, including 34,100 jobs in 2007 alone, according to a new study released by the Economic Policy Institute.

The massive U.S. trade deficit with China is largely responsible for the growing problem, the study says.

Although the job losses hit a variety of industries, the computer and electronic products manufacturing industry was particularly hard hit. More than 90,400 employees in that sector were displaced.

On a national level, 2.3 million U.S. jobs went to China since Beijing's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization, including 366,000 in 2007 alone nationwide.

Not only is the U.S. losing jobs to China, workers' wages are also being affected. U.S. workers displaced by China trade lost an average of $8,146 in wages last year -- a total of $19.4 billion overall -- as they took lower-paying jobs.

"Our flawed trade relationship with China is destroying good jobs in Texas," says Scott Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. "All manufacturing is facing a critical challenge, as we know, but what may surprise people is how hard workers in advanced technology are being affected. As China diversifies its export base -- and it's already expanding its electronic products, aircraft, auto parts and machinery -- more American products will be unfairly disadvantaged."

www.americanmanufacturing.org

Yes We Can - Yes We Must!

Phil from Bethesda, MD — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 12:00:53 EDT

Back in December last year, while his candidacy still looked pretty iffy, I first heard Barack Obama speak the words "Yes We Can" and, like so many others, became immediately inspired. As he himself is the first to realize, his whole life is an example of how the most seemingly impossible things can and do happen. We can each and all of us make a difference and I believe that we must, if America and the planet as a whole are to keep the various looming catastrophes that we face from becoming a terrible legacy for our children.

So I sat down to write a book, something I had always wanted to do but had never found the motivation and the discipline to get started on. As an international consulting economist, I have been able to see a lot in many parts of the world during the last 30+ years. Like Barack Obama, I am bicultural, having been born to a Latin American Mother and American Father who was a U.S. Foreign Service Officer at the time. My upbringing and early childhood spent in places as diverse as Nicaragua, Lebanon and Holland gave me the opportunity to broaden my horizons from the start, and both the inherent goodness of all peoples and the senselessness of so much avoidable human suffering and so much destruction around the world made an early impression on me.

The book is entitled "YES WE MUST! Fix Our Broken System" and it is available for purchase online on LULU.COM. Proceeds from the first 1,000 copies are going to be donated entirely to the FairShare Foundation, an organization that makes small loans to poor people in different parts of the world.

I urge you to read it. Let's then get together with Barack Obama and with one another to make the real and lasting changes that are needed to bring justice, health and happiness to all the people that share the Earth and the marvelous gift of life with us.

We CAN do it. I know that for a fact. www.lulu.com/content/2485478

Our Dependence on Russia & China

Mike P — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 01:02:15 EDT

As we're wasting precious time talking about Oil, we are forgetting other more vital commodities. I regard them as more vital because they are specialized metals that are, for instance, being used in plane engines. For instance, Cobalt (one such vital product) is being produced primarily in the Democxratic Republic of Congo--one of the most corrupt countries in the world. One of the challegnes of the next President is to totally analyze the extent of American Vunerability to such basic commodities. We are not ready to deal with it.

No More Donations Until Obama Talks About Tawain

James — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:39:40 EDT

Obama is getting no more money until he starts tackling the harder issues. I want to hear him talk about Tawain & China controversy. We might go to war over this and these candidates should be at least talking about it. If not, we should not be giving money to any of them. I gave Obama $450 dollars, when I am unemployed, he should at least respond to my one question I keep on submitting to his campain by email.

Obama should never give any of his supports the cold shoulder.

Please pass this on.

Thanks,

James

Whosoever Controls Your Money......

Michael Hubbard — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:41:20 EDT

While you read this, remember that when you go in and punch that time clock and fight those nasty office politicians that part of that hunk o' tax they take out of your check is going back into your company's CEO and board members pockets by way of corporate welfare....all so they could pit you in competition with communists overseas.

Still gonna vote Republican??

From our good friends over at conceptual guerilla....

http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/625

Greetings good citizen,

Are you sick and tired of hearing what a 'great deal' free trade is (especially when your own experiences with 'global labor arbitrage' have come back to haunt you recently). Your paycheck couldn't feed a fly and you have zero leverage to demand a raise.

Well, how about if I were to tell you that it's even worse than that?

You know how I'm always saying 'whosoever controls your money, controls you'?

Well, the 'evidence' that some elite group has indeed seized control the global economy by creating a 'monopoly' on how goods are priced (as well as having 'a near' monopoly on being able to create that currency as well) puts 'free trade' in a somewhat different light.

From today's Asia Times we have this piece from Dr. Henry C.K. Liu:

CHINA'S DOLLAR MILLSTONE, Part 1
Breaking free from dollar hegemony [The following is from page one]

Page 1 of 4
CHINA'S DOLLAR MILLSTONE, Part 1
Breaking free from dollar hegemony
By Henry C K Liu

The vast expansion of US-led globalized trade since the Cold War ended in 1991 had been fueled by unsustainable serial debt bubbles built on dollar hegemony, which came into existence on a global scale with the emergence of deregulated global financial markets that made cross-border flow of funds routine since the 1990s.

Dollar hegemony is a geopolitically constructed peculiarity through which critical commodities, the most notable being oil, are denominated in fiat dollars, not backed by gold or other species since then president Richard Nixon took the US dollar off gold in 1971. The recycling of petro-dollars into other dollar assets is the price the US has extracted from oil-producing countries for US tolerance of the oil-exporting cartel since 1973. After that, everyone accepts dollars because dollars can buy oil, and every economy needs oil. Dollar hegemony separates the trade value of every currency from direct connection to the productivity of the issuing economy to link it directly to the size of dollar reserves held by the issuing central bank. Dollar hegemony enables the US to own indirectly but essentially the entire global economy by requiring its wealth to be denominated in fiat dollars that the US can print at will with little in the way of monetary penalties.

So, the US has a 'lock' on the world's economy. What Dr. Liu is pointing out here is that the world has been turned into some greedy fuck's piggy bank because they control the 'asset' used to price all of those goods.

The arrow points to Ben Bernanke, but I will remind readers that our 'central bank' the Federal Reserve is not a part of the Federal Government and that its full name is the Federal Reserve CORPORATION! A company that is 'privately held' and reputed to be 'owned' by several foreign banks/banking 'families'.

Well good citizen, somewhere within this snake pit is a 'cartel' or a single individual that quite literally 'owns the world'! (And he or she used the US nuclear card to get it.)

Since whoever it is has been actively working to destroy the US economy, I don't think this individual is a US citizen…not that it particularly matters. Let us continue:

World trade is now a game in which the US produces fiat dollars of uncertain exchange value and zero intrinsic value, and the rest of the world produces goods and services that fiat dollars can buy at "market prices" quoted in dollars. Such market prices are no longer based on mark-ups over production costs set by socio-economic conditions in the producing countries. They are kept artificially low to compensate for the effect of overcapacity in the global economy created by a combination of overinvestment and weak demand due to low wages in every economy.

Such low market prices in turn push further down already low wages to further cut cost in an unending race to the bottom. The higher the production volume above market demand, the lower the unit market price of a product must go in order to increase sales volume to keep revenue from falling. Lower market prices require lower production costs which in turn push wages lower. Lower wages in turn further reduce demand. [You see, an 'unending death spiral'…]

To prevent loss of revenue from falling prices, producers must produce at still higher volume, thus further lowering market prices and wages in a downward spiral. Export economies are forced to compete for market share in the global market by lowering both domestic wages and the exchange rate of their currencies. Lower exchange rates push up the market price of commodities which must be compensated for by even lower wages. The adverse effects of dollar hegemony on wages apply not only to the emerging export economies but also to the importing US economy. Workers all over the world are oppressed victims of dollar hegemony, which turns the labor theory of value up-side-down.

In a global market operating under dollar hegemony, the world's interlinked economies no longer trade to capture Ricardian comparative advantage. The theory of comparative advantage as espoused by British economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) asserts that trade can benefit all participating nations, even those that command no absolute advantage, because such nations can still benefit from specializing in producing products with the lowest opportunity cost, which is measured by how much production of another good needs to be reduced to increase production by one additional unit of that good.

This theory reflected British national opinion at the 19th century when free trade benefited Britain more than its trade partners. However, in today's globalized trade when factors of production such as capital, credit, technology, management, information, branding, distribution and sales are mobile across national borders and can generate profit much greater than manufacturing, the theory of comparative advantage has a hard time holding up against measurable data.

Under dollar hegemony, exporting nations compete in the global market to capture needed dollars to service dollar-denominated foreign capital and debt, to pay for imported energy, raw material and capital goods, to pay intellectual property fees and information technology fees. Moreover, their central banks must accumulate dollar reserves to ward off speculative attacks on the value of their currencies in world currency markets. The higher the market pressure to devalue a particular currency, the more dollar reserves its central bank must hold. Only the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, is exempt from this pressure to accumulate dollars because it can issue theoretically unlimited additional dollars at will with monetary immunity. The dollar is merely a Federal Reserve note, no more, no less.

Dollar hegemony has created a built-in support for a strong dollar that in turn forces the world's other central banks to acquire and hold more dollar reserves, making the dollar stronger, fueling a massive global debt bubble denominated in dollars as the US becomes the world's largest debtor nation. Yet a strong dollar, while viewed by US authorities as in the US national interest, in reality drives the defacement of all fiat currencies that operate as derivative currencies of the dollar, in turn driving the current commodity-led inflation. When the dollar falls against the euro, it does not mean the euro is rising in purchasing power. It only means the dollar is losing purchasing power faster than the euro. A strong dollar does not always mean high dollar exchange rates. It means only that the dollars will stay firmly anchored as the prime reserve currency for international trade even as it falls in exchange value against other trading currencies.

In recent decades, central banks of all governments, led by the US Federal Reserve during Alan Greenspan's watch, had bought economic growth with loose money to feed debt bubbles and to contain inflation with "structural unemployment", which has been defined as up to 6% of the workforce, to keep the labor market from being inflationary. Central banking has mutated from being an institution to safeguard the value of money so as to ensure wages from full employment do not lose purchasing power into one with a perverted mandate to promote and preserve dollar hegemony by releasing debt bubbles denominated in fiat dollars. (See Critique of Central Banking, Asia Times Online, November 6, 2002.)

Despite all the talk about globalization as an irresistible trend of progress, the priority for the United States in the final analysis has been to advance its superpower economic objectives, not its obligations as the center of the global monetary system. This superpower economic objective includes the global expansion of US economic dominance through dollar hegemony, reducing all domestic economies, including that of the US, to be merely local units of a global empire. Thus when the US asserts that a healthy and strong economy in Europe, Japan and even Russia and China, all former enemies, is part of the Pax Americana, it is essentially declaring a neocolonial claim on these economies.

The concept of "stakeholder" in the global geopolitical-economic order advanced by Robert B Zoellick, former US deputy secretary of state and now president of the World Bank, is a solicitation from the US to emerging economic powerhouses to support this Pax Americana. The device for accomplishing this neo-imperialism is a coordinated monetary policy managed by a global system of central banking, first adopted in the US in 1913 to allow a financial elite to gain monetary control of the US national economy, and after the Cold War, to allow the US as the sole remaining superpower controlled by a financial oligarchy to gain monetary control of the entire global economy.

Move over Napoleon, Hitler, Caesar, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed, someone's about to show you the 'right' way to conquer the planet. Where both military might and God have failed, money (and anonymity) may well succeed.

With the help of supranational institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of International Settlements, the US aims to negate national economic sovereignty with globalization of unregulated trade conducted under dollar hegemony. Unregulated trade globalization in the 21st century aims to neutralize national economic sovereignty to preempt national development financed by sovereign credit. Trade through export has become the sole operative path for national economic growth in a political world order of sovereign nation states that has existed since the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648. No national domestic economy can henceforth prosper without first adding to the prosperity of US-controlled global economy denominated in dollars.

Before you start 'jumping for joy' I'd like to point out that the US is merely the vehicle chosen to 'execute' this plan…it has not nor will it 'benefit' the US or its citizens. No good citizen, whoever is behind this diabolical scheme has deliberately placed us/this nation in the crosshairs of every freedom loving nation in the world.

Holy Dollar Empire

Echoing the Holy Roman Empire, the global economy has been operating as a global Holy Dollar Empire with [someone inside] the Federal Reserve as the Holy Dollar Emperor. Similar to the Holy Roman Empire, which disintegrated from the rise of Lutheran nationalism, this Holy Dollar Empire will eventually disintegrate from progressive centrifugal forces of a new populist economic nationalism. This new nationalism is not to be confused with regressive trade protectionism. The formation of the new Group of Five (G5 - China, Brazil, India, Mexico and South Africa) in the 2008 Group of Eight Summit in Tokyo (G8 - the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Russia and the European Union) is a sign of this new trend of progressive economic nationalism. The 2008 US presidential election may herald in a new populism in US history to reform the structure of US debt capitalism. [The latest attempt to resuscitate the Doha round of trade talks ended in failure today…]

In his speech to the G5 leaders, China's President Hu Jintao said: "It is necessary to take into full account the issue of food security in tackling the challenges in energy, climate change and other fields." Apart from calling for the setting up of an UN-led international co-operation mechanism and a global food-security safeguard system, Hu said all countries should strengthen cooperation in grain reserves, a process of proven success in China but not recommended by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, which views such scheme as a distortion of trade.

Liberation from this Holy Dollar Empire of dollar hegemony can only come from sovereign nations withdrawing from the global central banking regime to return to a national banking regime within a world order of sovereign nation states to put monetary policy back in its proper role of supporting national development goals, rather than sacrificing national development to support global dollar hegemony through wage-suppressing export-led growth.

While Dr. Liu is absolutely right, he faces the same problem we confront when it comes to the 'political will' to make the necessary changes.

Perhaps more importantly is what will happen if the US fails to drive this demon from its bosom. Think about it good citizen, would our creditors even hesitate to pull the plug on the dollar?

They needn't 'invade' or risk the nuclear wrath of the world's only remaining superpower…all they need to do is stop accepting our 'scrip'…and it's 'game over'.

The question to ask yourself good citizen is do you want to die defending the right of this reckless, greedy S.O.B. to exploit the world?

I didn't think so,

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

BLACKS BANNED FROM BARS IN BEIJING DURING OLYMPICS!!!

Diva JC — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:10:24 EDT

BLACKS BANNED FROM BARS IN BEIJING DURING OLYMPICS!!! READ ARTICLES NOW!

This should cause a real flurry amongst Blacks around the world!

After working in China for five months straight, in 2006, I'm really shocked by this! Then, I took a good look at the facts. ALL THE SINGERS AT THE CLUBS WHERE I WORKED IN SHANGHAI were black. The musicians could be white, chinese or black, but the singer had to be BLACK to authenticate the jazz/blues/r&b. Amazing. The Chinese are racist from the word "GO!" But they understand the fact that it takes a BLACK WOMAN to make "the music" happen. Sheeesh!

Funny, I was working toooo hard to get some jazz gigs for many musicians in Beijing and Tianjin during the Olympics, but nothing worked, nothing happened.

The real rub is the number of Chinese, males and females, who asked me about coming to America. Everybody wants to come here. People hate living in their own country. They all think America is the land of opportunity. I've even started to write a book - WHAT DOES AMERICA MEAN TO US?

How many of us watched BLACKS IN AMERICA in the past two days?

Click the bold letters to read the stories.

BLACKS BANNED FROM BARS IN BEIJING DURING OLYMPICS!!! READ ARTICLES NOW!

www.fyicomminc.com/gaianews/speech78.htm

Wonder Why 500 People Apply for One Posted Job?

Michael Hubbard — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:44:22 EDT

http://www.aflcio.org/issues/jobseconomy/globaleconomy/ns03162004.cfm Sadly this was first printed in 2004.....Who the hell is "anti-American? Republicans are the ones who fight the hardest to keep this sort of thing going, well against the will of most of the American people, at least the ones who have "dirtied" their brains against the Limbaughs and Hannitys. If you're a non union worker making a good living in this country and think that the Republicans have yours or America's best intrests at heart, keep reading, you'll be a believer too one day...........I'm afraid.

June 8, 2006—China's frequent violations of workers' rights give that nation an unfair trade advantage that has cost more than 1 million U.S. jobs, according to a petition filed with the U.S. Trade Representative by the AFL-CIO and the Industrial Union Council (IUC), made up of nine industrial unions. The petition calls on the Bush administration to take immediate action to impose trade remedies against China and negotiate a binding agreement to reduce the trade remedies if China enforces workers' rights. Chinese Workers' Low Wages Reduce Cost of Chinese Exports The 179-page petition extensively documents that China prevents workers from joining unions and bargaining collectively, denies its citizens safe working conditions, provides no minimum wage and uses forced labor. As a result, Chinese workers' wages are between 47 percent and 85 percent lower than they should be, which in turn reduces the price of Chinese manufactured goods. If China did not violate workers' rights, the price of Chinese manufactured goods would increase by 12 percent to 77 percent, according to the petition. Jing-Hua Lu, a former factory worker in China and a forceful advocate for international workers' rights, told reporters that it's imperative the U.S. government take action against China now. "The U.S. administration should take this petition seriously," Lu said. "Chinese workers need to be able to exercise their right of freedom of association. It is a basic right, and a basic answer to the dilemma of Chinese workers and the flight of jobs to China to exploit low wages." The U.S. trade deficit with China is the largest in U.S. history with one country—$201 billion. The trade deficit affects the nation's jobs: cheaper foreign imports of products formerly made in the United States mean America's workers lose jobs as companies move overseas. In fact, the Economic Policy Institute estimates the trade deficit cost the United States 410,000 manufacturing jobs between 2001 and 2005. "I look around my town and think about the people who stood next to me on the plant floor," says Teresa Luna, a member of USW International Union Local 1191, who lost her job when the Magnequench missile technology plant in Valparaiso, Ind., closed and relocated to China. "I hear how every time there is any type of job opening, hundreds of applicants show up to fill one spot. The jobs are just gone." Trade Law Previously Used Only to Aid Corporations Mark Barenberg, a Columbia University law professor, prepared the petition, which was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The petition was filed under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974. The act allows the government to take action against countries that engage in unfair trade practices against the United States. Although the regulation has been used extensively to protect corporate interests, the first time Section 301 was invoked to protest a nation's labor practices was when the AFL-CIO filed its first petition on China's workers' rights violations, in 2004. That petition was rejected by the Bush administration. The Bush administration's refusal to comply with the Trade Act allowed workers' rights violations in China to get worse and contributed to the loss of hundreds of thousands of additional American jobs. Under the law, the Bush administration has 45 days to decide whether to accept the petition. If it accepts the petition, it has 60 days to hold a hearing and one year to decide what actions to take. The AFL-CIO is seeking immediate action by the Bush administration to impose trade remedies against China, such as sanctions or tariffs, and to negotiate an agreement that connects China's progress in enforcing workers' rights with trade sanction relief. If the White House rejects the petition, Barenberg says, it must find that China either does not repress workers' rights or that the repression does not adversely affect the U.S. economy. "Exploitation of human beings through repression of fundamental rights for economic gain is both morally repugnant and economically dangerous," AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka says. "The fact is that China is violating international trade law, and our nation is doing nothing about it." "I wonder: Do these corporations realize that they are trading away our lives?" Luna asks. "We must stop these corporations from making their own rules. This is not what our country is about."

The future is looking back at us...

Osita Iroku — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:29:17 EDT

What is ‘wisdom,’ if not just the recognition of a few lessons that history has begged us to learn? One of which is that there are forces beyond our perception exerting an influence on our lives. A second is that these forces compete against each other. A third is that the friction between these forces steers the destiny of men. If you were to lay out a chart tracking the occurrences of these frictions over time, it would illustrate a pattern of spikes and lulls in human development. These recurring patterns, the rise and fall of icons and empires, would give the impression that history is repeating itself. Even more to the point of this blog, the chart could serve as a roadmap to narrowing the possibilities for the future.

That's the point of this blog: with our collective thinking, knowledge, and experience we can chart a path of predictable events of global magnitude; and help our next President prepare himself for this transition to the next epoch.

To start, let's try a simple excercise: Imagine the next few months go as planned, and Obama wins the general election by a repectable margin. What's the boldest move any foreign head-of-state (friend or foe) could do to steal some headlines in the first week after the election?

Tax Policy and you, Cha-Ching!!

Nia "Hussein" J. — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 06:16:22 EDT

I received this via email and I thought that I would share...

Five Stunning facts that could not only change the outcome of this election, but with regard to the first two points, they could change the results of every election for
years to come if we make enough people aware of them.

I encourage you to share this information with as many people as you can

1) Over 70% of our National Debt was created by just 3
Republican presidents.

Go ahead, get out your calculator and add up debt by the party that claims fiscally responsibility thinks it's ok to borrow massive amounts of money from foreign countries like China. Consider that we spend hundreds of billions of dollars in interest payments on this debt each year. That means more and more of your hard earned money is going to make interest only payments on what is basically a Giant National Credit Card. Not to mention the fact our debt/deficits are largely behind the weakness of our dollar, which in turns makes gas more
expensive and creates other serious problems. If you want to learn more about the National Debt, check out these links:

> http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock /
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20...
> http://zfacts.com/p/447.html (A running clock with the
> cost of the war)
> http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/business...

2) According to new research from Larry Bartels out of Princeton, real middle class wage growth is double when a Democrat is president compared to when a Republican is
president.

Qoute:"...Even more remarkable, the real incomes of
working-poor families...grew six times as fast when Democrats held the White House. Only the incomes of affluent families were relatively impervious to partisan politics, growing robustly under Democrats and Republicans alike...":
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/magazine/27wwln-ideal...

Here is a short summary of this research:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008...

And here is a good, short audio interview with Larry
Bartels:
> http://youngturks.wmod.llnwd.net/a591/o1/4-25-08Bartels...

3) 90% of Americans would pay less taxes under
Obama's proposed tax plan compared to McCain's. This is according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Institute.
as reported by CNN:
> http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/11/news/economy/candidates...

People making under $112,000 a year in individual (not household) income would pay less taxes under Obama's plan. By contrast, John McCain's tax cuts mostly benefit the
top 10% of Americans. Under McCain's plan, people making
over 2.9 million dollars in individual annual income would get almost a million dollar tax break.

4) Last week, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a new report by Michael Ettlinger estimating that under McCain's tax plan, he and his wife, Cindy, would save $373,429. That's nearly $400,000 -- per year, not over the course of their lifetimes. (Under Barack Obama's plan, the McCains would save less than $6,000. The Obamas would save nearly $50,000 under McCain's plan, and slightly more than $6,000 under Obama's plan own plan.)
> http://mediamatters.org/items/200806270008

5) A running clock showing the cost of the war in
Iraq: http://zfacts.com/p/447.html

Conclusion: Countless millions of Americans vote Republican because they believe they'll pay less taxes and that they'll have their money spent more responsibly. As you can see, those beliefs are directly contradicted by the facts. Of course we can choose to ignore the facts and
instead focus on which candidate is wearing a flag pin (you ever notice that Hillary and McCain don't wear them? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vi5nbZvS9cg ) but I think we're a smarter country than that.

*Also take some time to reserach who owns the federal reserve....public and private.

Relationship with China and rest of the World

Gina from Irvine, CA — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:26:00 EDT

Dear Mr. Obama,

When you have language like "work to ensure that China plays by international rules", do you assume China does not play by the international rules, and are international rules set up by the United Nation with all nations participation or they are invented along the way by the G8 of such (like rules for Sovereign-wealth fund were never there before China has a fund and then, nobody in the capitalist society has never thought about putting restrictions on the money people has to invest).

I am a typical Hillary supporter who have hundreds upon hundreds Asian American women around us who have similar views regarding American's foreign policy towards Asia, in particular, China and India. I believe that you have a vision for America and you have an indepth grasp of foreign affair of this country as compare to GWB. I consider Nixon had vision although he made many inexecusable mistakes. Engaging China positively will be in the best interest of America and rest of the world. The west should acknowledge the significant achievement China has made over the past 3 decade (1978 -2008) (I have witnessed the change firsthand through my adult life) for its own people and as well as for the rest of the world.

here are some suggestions:

rather than going back to protectionist, solve the healthcare issue of our country so we can be more competitive (take the burden off our people at individual and enterprise level).

rather than going back to protectionist, push China to have a meaningful Union to protect workers' rights. rather than going back to protectionist, push China to ensure its own product quality and safety for its own people and its trading partners.

rather than going back to protectionist, balance the budget so we do not have to borrow so much from the Chinese and then ask them to write down T-bill and t-notes principle in the name of Currency reevaluation (how long can we play this game until they realize that they have to check our government's credit report before buying of government debt).

rather than blaming all the ills to free trade, take responsibility and make our great country as great as it can be. It reminds me so much of the 19th and 20th century, when China was poor, weak and ill prepared to compete with the west, it used to blame free trade for all of its problems.

Besides trade, there are environmental issues, geopolitical issues, and many other issues, we need to be positive and have the moral high ground in dealing with China as much as we can. The average Chinese on the street used to look up to us (not in the past 8 yrs) for guidance and to benchmark their government performance against ours (even they can not vote). Not anymore,

American's ill is the result of greedy capitalistic ideas, from Enron, Worldcom, Anthur Anderson, Stock option back dating, analyst conflict or interest, to the current Subprime mess, people are losing faith in our financial, market and governmental systems. It is a crisis of faith, faith in the system, in the rule of law, and in the decency of our people.

Hope is on you. I hope you can have all of those in mind before and after you win this election.

WE CAN NOT AFFORD THE WAR - FUTURE BLEAK

Madera Strong - Team Co-ordinator For City of Madera — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 23:15:54 EDT

$536,458,000,000 spent on the war up to 7/13/08

How much does the war cost each of us?

$5,840 per household.
$2,147 per person.
$341.4 million per day.

Bush gave some people $600 in refunds, he spent millions to send out the notices and the money. Gas, food, and utility costs rise. Houses abandoned because there is not enough money. People can not afford to drive to work. Cities fail and dams burst, leaving floods behind.

We can not afford the financial cost of the war....so we borrow money from CHINA, with a substantial interest rate. China sends up poisoned medications, poisoned foods, and toxic toys. China gives some of the money or sells the loan notes to Arab countries for their oil. Our war is being financed by people who don't like us and by the people we are fighting in the war.

China, Arab-related countries and other foreigners buy large buildings in major cities all over U.S. Now that they own the properties, the owners and their employees can come and go in the U.S. at will. Bin Laden is a son of our Arab friends - so he could be receiving some of our U.S. money.

As Afghanastan revives its economy, it returns to heroin production and sales. Our soldiers get hooked and buy the drugs. Again, our money going to the people we are fighting and some of our soldiers return addicted.

Sound like a set-up for another massive assault on America?

CHINA TODAY

simonebars — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 12:32:09 EDT

My dear all,
Do you think it is possible today, in 2008, that people are severed knocked because followers of a religion ?
"Asia News" reports that the Chinese Catholic Community of Fanzhi (Shanxi) they lived such a experience !
After 50 years, and they still have not a place where to pray God, because locals sell their building, all this without any respect of the law !

Nowdays China is investing millions to organize the Olympic Games, but they have no respect to folks !
Wasn't better to invest in the school system, or in social affairs, to "knock out" the ignorance ??

I think sport comes after religion..or I'm wrong ?

Your friend from Italy,
Simone

10 things you should know about John McCain...

WeDemocrats — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:56:34 EDT

Unfortunately this is but a tip of the iceberg!

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws. *1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi." *2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban. *3

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned." *4

How to counter Mccains economic reform policy

Damir from Wilmette, IL — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:32:19 EDT

I believe that we can make a difference when it comes to regulating the irresponsible spending that has gone on inside the Bush administration. McCain's argument seems to be that he will balance the budget by restricting earmarks and other unnecessary spending. I am wondering why Obama has not countered by asking McCain to clarify exactly where in the current budget he plans to administrate these cuts. Especially when you consider that he plans to continue to support a surge policy in Iraq along with "Dramatically increased spending" in nuclear energy and other renewable resources. It also baffles me that despite his promise to balance the budget he has continued to say that he will renew the Bush tax cuts and make them permanent. Barack must appear stronger on the economy by not pandering to those that do not understand the crisis and give a real speech with all his knowledge about the effects of such irresponsible spending policy on the dollar worldwide and the increased liability of having china own so much US debt. This fundamental republican issue can turn into gold for the democrats with the right speech. Let me know what you all think and I would love to hear from anyone inside the camp on what you think.

Fixing the economy

Rick — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 10:51:08 EDT

To me, fixing the economy is a simple thing, one any President could do. What drives the economy is a thriving middle class. Why is that so hard to understand? Creating good middle class jobs is the solution. That fact that corporations are collectively driving down labor cost is self-defeating and the effects are starting to be felt and in serving the interest of those corporations the government has exasperated the problem. If you took the money we spend in Iraq and had invested it in creating jobs our economy would be thriving, companies would be making huge profits, the dollar would be stronger, and gas would be much cheaper ... the jobs we could create rebuilding roads, bridges, schools, refineries but also we Americans have to change our habits ... we share some of the blame as well, every time we go into Wal-Mart and buy cheap crap from China. We need to change our thinking and support local business instead of big boxes and get back to buying "Made in the USA". Buy local produce ... how many of us pass a farmers stand to save a few cents buying foreign produce at the big box! And it's not always cheaper! The reason these big box super clubs are so successful is because most Americans can't count! I remember just recently a guy in Sam's club saying to me ... isn't this a great deal, 10 pounds of sugar for $5 .... I said no, you could get a 5-pound bag at Food Lion for $1.89! Yea but this is 10 Pounds for just $5.00!

And one more thing ... I don't think any foreign products should be allowed in this country that have been made by slave labor ... there needs to be a global minimum wage or some form of living wage that protects people all over the world from exploitation … it is the hidden agenda of a global economy and it's making China a very powerful enemy at the expense of their people and the middle class in our country.

How many Americans were lost in Korea and Viet Nam defending freedom against communism? And yet we forget that China is communist and one day will become the strongest nation on earth by our hands ... all those lives wasted because in the end, we allowed communism to win because of our greed!

Love Ob!

Unknown user — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:18:14 EDT

Hope OB can be the next American president.

He can end up Bush's wartime world.

Interesting in me? Visit my Chinese (Simplified) blog. ^_^

Made in China

Dr. Mark Elrod — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:27:57 EDT

A story in the New York Times today reports that the American military trainers in Guantánamo Bay based an entire interrogation class on a chart copied from another source.

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

I think this is probably the same manual they used when I was going through Naval aircrew survival training in 1977.

I remember being told to never get caught in a lie because your interrogators will make your life miserable. On the other hand, it was okay to give misleading information up to the point where they conclude that you are an idiot.

That's always worked for ME.

But as we prepare to celebrate 232 years of freedom, the last thing thing in the world I need to know is that my government has been imitating the bad guys all these years.

Buyers like China are bypassing commodities markets altogether and going right to the source

Inspired in Florida - a Recovering Republican — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:59:31 EDT

The Republicans keep saying the price of oil is driven by basic market fundamntals scoffing at the rise of pure speculators looking to make a quick buck. It's both, IMO...BUT, WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT CHINA BUYING STOCKPILES DIRECTLY, AND TAKING THAT SUPPLY OFF THE MARKET?

I still don't understand why we buy lead laden toys and tainted drugs from a Communist Nation, a Communist Nation with a horrific Human Rights record. Then again, we are borrowing billions from the Chinese to fund the war in Iraq.

When will we learn we need to make a firm commitment and deadline to get OFF THE OIL ADDICTION? What do Kosova, Bosnia, Iraq, Iran and Zimbabwe all have in common? Vast oil reserves.

As this article sums it up, inevitably, more and more commodities will be taken off the global markets. At some point, the Americans and the Europeans will realize that paying market prices alone is not enough to secure supplies. As more supplies are locked up, geopolitical tensions are bound to rise. What can't be bought might simply be taken by force.

Supply on demand

ERIC REGULY

From Friday's Globe and Mail

June 27, 2008 at 5:20 AM EDT

Two CEOs I know—one at an oil company, the other at a gold miner—recently had strange encounters with Chinese counterparts. A Chinese oil company and its apparent partner, Standard Bank of South Africa, offered to buy a lot of oil for five years. It would be a direct sale—no middlemen, brokers or spot market involved. "They didn't care about the price," the oil executive says. "All they cared about was locking up the supply."
The gold company had a similar experience. The price offered was extraordinarily high, but the Canadian CEO didn't bite. He wondered what the Chinese knew about long-term demand that he didn't. Maybe in five or 10 years, the price won't look as high as it does today.
Welcome to the world of direct-sale commodity deals, better known as "off-take" deals and sometimes bilateral deals. In such arrangements, the commodity—oil, natural gas, base minerals, precious metals, iron—doesn't go to the London Metal Exchange (LME) or other public energy markets. There are no intermediaries. The commodity is, in effect, locked up and taken off the global market. These kinds of deals are suddenly everywhere, to the point that some energy and mining bosses think that the whole concept of open and transparent global commodity markets, where the highest bids get the shipments, is coming to an end.
Off-take deals are nothing new. The Japanese have been crafting them for years, buying up minority stakes in Australian coal mines in exchange for off-take supply contracts. Until recently, however, they were predominantly the preserve of junior companies looking to secure financing.

The US position in the world

Ron Kaplan — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 21:04:42 EDT

This hegemon will not last. As my first blog entry, I will make a controversial statement that the US cannot remain the #1 economy in the world. We will go the way of the Dutch, Spanish, English, French and Germans who preceded us from centuries past. We will hand the reins over to someone else. In this case, the Chinese and Indians will surpass our GDP in the coming decades.

The 21st century will be remembered as the century that saw for the first time since the industrial revolution non-western countries as the hegemonic powers of the world. True: China and India must dedicate a disproportionate amount of their GDP to infrastructure and reducing poverty, but their productivity could be less than 50% of the US levels, and their economies will still EACH be bigger than our own.

The environmental impact and the shift in political power from the West to the East will be unprecedented from world history. However, we have an opportunity to cooperate and make a peaceful transition from our hegemony to theirs. Cooperate does not mean give up. Look at former super-powers, and you can see middle-class, modern nations at peace.

I do not fear being #3 in my lifetime. It might be nice to stop being the #1 target in the world. Plus, with threats from nihilists the world over, we might be able to enjoy greater stability with help from the future #1 and #2 (China and India).

What do you think?

How is McCain going to spin this?

Marie — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:00:40 EDT

Contribution from Amanda Kato's Blog:

How is McCain going to spin this? I see a big issue here.........June 20, 2008 - 12:21am

article tools: email | print |

China admits taking, burying US POW from Korea By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
Thu Jun 19, 7:12 PM ET

WASHINGTON - After decades of denials, the Chinese have acknowledged burying an American prisoner of war in China, telling the U.S. that a teenage soldier captured in the Korean War died a week after he "became mentally ill," according to documents provided to The Associated Press.

China had long insisted that all POW questions were answered at the conclusion of the war in 1953 and that no Americans were moved to Chinese territory from North Korea. The little-known case of Army Sgt. Richard G. Desautels, of Shoreham, Vt., opens another chapter in this story and raises the possibility that new details concerning the fate of other POWs may eventually surface.

Chinese authorities gave Pentagon officials intriguing new details about Desautels in a March 2003 meeting in Beijing, saying they had found "a complete record of 9-10 pages" in classified archives.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080619/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_china_pow_revelation
.................................................

Keep in mind John McCain has been no friend to the
POW advocates including Rolling Thunder.
In the 90's, he was rude to the sister of a POW still missing from Vietnam when he kept insisting there were
no more Prisoners of War. The senator almost single
handed stopped all further searches for Prisoners of War. He has lost many a veteran vote on this one issue alone. I hope someone or maybe Obama himself
will bring this issue up on the campaign trail. The
article was sent to the AP from Advocates for POW searches. I hope someone can get this little doozy of info to the Mainstream media, not that they will show this but Olberman just might.
If we are just finding out about a Korean war vet,
how many more were sent to other countries especially
China while all the while McCain and his surrogates
continue to harp on Obama regarding unconditional negotiations with our adversaries.

Meanwhile, we have a huge trade with China and the
Senator from Arizona helped negotiate and resume relations with Vietnam without any conditions of
info regarding prisoners of war. The fact is, he
flat out denied that anymore prisoners were beng held anywhere. Many veterans of the Vietnam era believed all along
that POW's were moved to Laos or China. China would be
very probable due to their part of the war and supplying the North Vietnames Army with weapons against American troops.

McCain has a huge problem with this veteran voting
bloc that appears to have just gotten bigger. If we
are just learning about Korean POW'a what about the Nam POW's? Pretty embarrasing time for this article to surface, what with Cindy in Vietnam doing her charity work in that neck of the woods. Someone needs to ask a former POW why he just doesn't feel
other POW'a or their remains need to be discovered?

Don’t Even Think About Going to the Olympics!

Jerod Poore — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:17:02 EDT

China really, really doesn’t want to have anything to do with the mentally interesting during the Olympics. And when they hosted the Special Olympics in Shanghai back in October 2007 they made sure that everything looked good. Go anywhere else though, and when it comes to actually providing services for the developmentally disabled the government talks a good game but when it comes to actually providing services it’s worse than some places in the US.

A look at the shape of things to come under a McCain administration, or just another good reason to avoid buying goods made in China whenever possible and disliking President Bush even more for going to the opening ceremonies?

Read on…

Small-business problems

carole natale — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:19:03 EDT

June 12, 2008 Small-Business Agency’s Problems Linger as Leader

Moves on to HUD By ELIZABETH OLSON

WASHINGTON — Steven C. Preston’s signature accomplishment as head of the Small Business Administration was overhauling the agency’s disaster loan assistance program, a program that was foundering under the crush of Hurricane Katrina claims when he took over nearly two years ago.

Mr. Preston has now moved on. He started this week as secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While he streamlined the way the S.B.A. worked, he left behind various problems that critics and small-business groups say are particularly troublesome in a weakened economy. They cite the need for greater availability of loans in particular.

And because his departure comes in the waning months of the Bush administration, it is unlikely that a permanent leader for the S.B.A., with a mandate to make major changes, will arrive before next year.

“While they focused on disaster assistance, there has been criticism that the agency has ignored small-business concerns,” said Karen A. Kerrigan, president and chief executive of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council, which represents 70,000 small businesses.

The agency’s difficulties in getting hurricane assistance to small businesses and homeowners showed how years of cuts by the Bush administration had taken a toll. The S.B.A.’s budget this year, $482 million, was less than half its budget in 2001.

Critics say the S.B.A. needs to broaden access to federally guaranteed loans, which carry lower interest rates and lower fees than their commercial counterparts, so that they are more attainable for entrepreneurs and small-enterprise owners.

Minority business owners also complain the agency is not doing enough to help them find financing and contracts. Female entrepreneurs are angry that the S.B.A. has not done more to help deliver a higher percentage of contracts, even though the agency was ordered to do so by Congress eight years ago.

While Mr. Preston faced no opposition at his confirmation hearing for the job at HUD, Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, Democrat of New York and head of the House Small Business Committee, gave his stewardship of the S.B.A. an incomplete. “Unfortunately, he was not at the agency long enough to have a lasting effect,” she said.

Jovita Carranza, now the acting administrator and a former executive of United Parcel Service, is likely to run the agency until a new administration arrives.

Even with Mr. Preston’s efforts to speed up disaster assistance, Congress recently pushed ahead with provisions, part of the farm bill, that amounted to its own overhaul of the S.B.A. disaster loan program.

The legislation’s provisions, said Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts and chairman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, would “cut through red tape, increase resources, bring private lenders into the response and help bridge that gap while disaster victims begin the process of building their lives.”

And last week, the Senate voted to add $101 million to the agency’s budget. The move was also supported by Senator Kerry’s Republican counterpart on the committee, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine. Both senators argue that the agency needs to step up its efforts since less capital is available elsewhere in the current sluggish economy.

“There is a contraction in the lending program, which I think is antithetical to what the S.B.A. is supposed to be doing,” Mr. Kerry said. “This is a moment where the credit crunch requires the S.B.A. to fill the gap.”

The number and amount of federal loans under the main loan guarantee program, called 7 (a), has fallen to 50,546 through the end of May this year, from 63,945 loan approvals through the end of May 2007. The loan amounts dropped as a well, to $8.24 billion from almost $9 billion.

“Our overall lending volume is down 8 percent,” Mr. Preston said in an interview last week. “And the dollar volume from the riskiest lenders is down 34 percent because they have pulled back the most.”

The agency, he said, has adopted procedures for greater automation, which should streamline lending and make it more attractive for banks to handle S.B.A. loans.

But small-business owners like Frances Richards, who heads Arlean & Company, a construction program management firm in Las Vegas, say they do not see any relief. Her efforts to tap into the area’s commercial expansion have been thwarted by difficulties in getting a $25,000 loan to hire the employees necessary to qualify for a subcontract.

“I’m in a Catch-22 because I’m not going to get a contract unless I have the capacity to handle it,” Ms. Richards said. “But that requires more money than I can get from my credit cards.”

The S.B.A. loan program is also contentious because of accusations of inadequate oversight of lending institutions. The agency’s inspector general found recently that flawed oversight had resulted in a $329 million loss in recent years. Mr. Kerry and Ms. Snowe this month asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate the S.B.A.’s system for monitoring lender portfolios and identifying risky lenders.

“The whole process of overseeing lenders is under review,” Mr. Preston said. “We’ll be putting clear rules in place to determine what we should do for lenders,” although he said he would not be around to see it through.

The most vociferous criticism has been about the S.B.A.’s handling of government contracts, about $400 billion yearly — 23 percent of that is supposed to be for small businesses. The American Small Business League, which sued and won release of S.B.A. data, maintains that large corporations are receiving contracts meant for small business.

Last year, the agency changed its rule to require businesses to certify their size every five years to prevent large corporations from winning contracts.

Female business owners are pursuing legal action to force agency compliance with Congress’s directive, passed in 2000, that they receive 5 percent of federal contracts. This year, the agency issued a regulation that included only four industries, infuriating female business groups.

If anything, minority small businesses are even more irate at the S.B.A., though the agency this year started an initiative aimed at helping inner-city enterprises. For minority businesses, “the S.B.A. isn’t even in the picture,” complained Harry C. Alford, president and chief executive of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. “We are not looking for giveaways, but in contracts and loans we are looking for them to loosen rules and make them more accessible.

“So right now, we’re not counting on the S.B.A.”

Ahat happened? Clinton during his presidency suggested that 5% of government contracts should go to women and minorities businesses. The SBA instead for the past 8 years at least or more put out misleading information and studies..........Chaina instead has encouraged entrepreneurship.

Where Trickle Down Economics leaks.

Ty — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 08:06:52 EDT

Trickle Down Economics is still the basis of Republican taxation policies. The idea is that a tax cut for the investment class will create more investment & more jobs. The problem is that in today's global economy, new investment will seek the best return, and that can often be somewhere outside the US. So the idea of trickle down economics may be good for the China but no so good for America.

Lobbyists - What's At Stake Here

smffy — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 10:34:23 EDT

By March of this year, 28% of Americans had no idea how many had died in Iraq. There are many reasons news from that war torn country never makes it to the nightly news let alone the first page of the newspaper (not all of them conspiratorial). The American people are quite distracted by the economy, by the drama of the elections, by rising gas prices. More than that, they feel totally helpless to stop this war now that it has begun.

In the wrong hands, the government will not stop this war. We have seen how ineffective the efforts of Congress have been to even scale down the proportions of the war. We are building battleships and jet fighters to fight an enemy that doesn't own a rowboat or any kind of jet. They are fighting with equipment you can get at any radio shack and we're boasting of "winning." People never pay attention to or know about all the attacks on the Green Zone because they're so common nobody reports on them anymore (with the exception of a few obscure news sources).

I know one man cannot do anything to stop this machine by himself. It will take a whole natiion to rise up and say "no more of this." Before that will happen, they have to hear about what's really going on. Yes. We have hope. We need and have more than that. We have a candidate who isn't owned by the same companies that are profiting big by this war. Not even China can be the boogie man. They are borrowing us the money to spend a trillion dollars just this year on defense spending. They are laughing all the way to the bank. They've established peaceful relations with Taiwan and strong ties to the U.S. economy. Why would they rock our boat? We're the goose that laid their golden egg.

I think it is better explained in the following news piece. I hope you will take the time to read it.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080531_the_corporate_state_and_the_subversion_of_democracy/

The Future of America

SITALCES — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:07:48 EDT

The disgusting spectacle of an American president groveling before a foreign parliament (Israel's Knesset) like a whimpering serf before his lord is a sign that America is not really as free as we would like to believe. A truly free people will not tolerate lies, deceit, mass murder of innocents, outright theft, assassinations, and all the other rogue activities their government instigates. It is therefore, obvious to me and many other people that America has been taken over by forces which seek to irreversibly destroy all that it stood for, and what was passed on by several American generations from the Founders. I tend to believe that these forces are also responsible for the horrors that America inflicts on other nations and peoples such as torture without charges or trials, invasions and occupations of sovereign states based on fabricated evidence, the contravention of international law, and the confiscation of other peoples resources in the name of freedom and democracy. Under this alien influence, America has never stooped so low in all its history as to be distrusted and reviled by the majority of nations on our planet.Because of the ignorance of the leaders we have elected, and their refusal to face the realities of our age, the United States will continue to entangle itself in one foreign debacle after another and in the next four years will have bancrupt its treasury and exhausted its capacity to borrow money. At that point America will follow in the footsteps of the Romans and withdraw its forces to its home soil, in order to quell internal revolts initiated by desperate citizens. Naive politicians, like John McCain, cannot grasp that the days of occupation and colonization of foreign lands are over. He does not understand that the excuse of "bringing democracy and freedom" is an outdated message that people are no longer falling for. As American and NATO armies continue to bleed in Iraq and Afghanistan, it will become abundantly clear even to the most "patriotic" American that we were suckered into expensive unwinnable wars by Israel and its plan to survive at all cost (to us). Ask yourselves why our leaders keep us in the dark by being very careful not to tell us the real reasons for our involvement in adventures that seem to fail big time. John McCain recently admitted, perhaps by error, that the war in Iraq was for oil. George Bush keeps telling us that he is convinced we are doing the right thing, but he gives us all the wrong reasons. Whatever the reasons behind this mystery one thing is certain: The war abroad and the curtailment of our freedoms here at home are not in our best interest and that is why we are kept in the dark so far. But are we in total darkness or do we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel? Friends, after six years of observation one must be uninterested not to see what's go on. The present situation is about oil, but not the oil that's under Iraq alone. Vast amounts of oil that worth at least 100 trillion dollars are yet to be discovered and piped to friendly ports. Let us take a look at Unocal. Unocal was one of the key players in the CentGas consortium that attempted to build the trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to run from the Caspian sea, through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Indian Ocean. One of the consultants to Unocal at that time was Zalmay Khalilzad, former US ambassador to Afghanistan then to Iraq and currently to the UN. The present occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and the tight control of Turkey, not to mention the mobilization of Islam to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s are reflections for the wars for oil we have seen in the last quarter of a century. But greatly ambitious plans such as the control of the world's oil resources are not cheap to implement. Such plans generate powerful coalitions of enemies that if they fail, they can haunt their creator for a long time to come. At this time incompetence and delays have created powerful enemies that would be almost impossible for us to challenge in an open conflict, and therefore, the Caspian oil stays where it is for the time being, underground. These enemies are not only the Muslims, but also the Chinese and the Russians and in many aspects our own European allies.

In my opinion, it is a matter of time before a Muslim radical gets his hands on some nuclear weapons and gives the United States what it has long sought, deep within its subconscious: a genuine, long-range threat to its soil and security. Not the phoney threat concocted by Israelite agents to spook Americans into clobbering other nations for Israel, but something real to worry about. The most likely place these weapons can come from is Pakistan, not Iran as many are lead to believe. Pakistan is a country ready to enter into a civil war, the beginning of which was foretold by Benazir Bhutto's assassination. In a civil war scenario it is anybodys guess as to who will wind up with that country's nuclear weapons. Our Pentagon has some contingency plans for securing those nukes in the event of a civil war; however, the best laid plans can go awry in a Muslim dominated country. The United States and its Israelite advisers have made a bloody mess of the Middle East. No matter what America does in the next year with regard to Iraq---stay or withdraw---the sectarian conflicts there will intensify and spread, affecting the supply of existing oil to the rest of the world. Economically, we are skating on very thin ice, and not only because of Iraq, thanks to the irresponsible twits who populate our Congress and White House. The other danger lurking silently is China. China is a global power that wields considerable influence over our economic well-being. Should China encounter a couple more disasters like the recent earthquake which rattled its economy, it could very well start to unload substantial quantities of its dollar holdings, in order to import more food and other provisions for its citizens. That kind of move could trigger a stampede of foreign dollar holders for the exits, giving birth to an inflationary tsunami and the skyrocketing of oil and gold prices.

It is my guess that whoever wins in November, whether McCain or Obama, the U.S. will choose to retain its troops in the Middle East and continue to meddle in other peoples affairs. The U.S. will have to rely more and more on its air power in future conflicts, because our ground troops and equipment are worn out, and incapable of conducting large scale ground operations, like those mounted in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means that a military draft is in our future, regardless of what the politicians tell us. This means that you can expect more of your children to be utilized as cannon fodder in these expanded wars on terror. With McCain in the White House, that is practically a guarantee, because he owes much to the Israeli Lobby. It was this Lobby, and its front-man, Joe Lieberman, that resurrected his campaign when it was on the ropes a few months ago, so he'll have a bill to pay as soon as he lands in the White House. His promise to win the war in Iraq, and bring stability to that nation, is not to be taken seriously. I believe that, before four years have passed, history will show that the Iraq invasion was one of the worst military blunders ever, and our country will have been reduced to Third World status because of it. The last eight years have been fraught with lessons for our people, but the one over-riding lesson was this: With the wrong people at the helm of government, entire populations can be lulled into the approval of ghastly deeds. There can be no greater example of this than the blind support of the American people for the Bush-Neocon-Israelite wars, and the horrors perpetrated by those criminals upon other human beings in the name of freedom and democracy. To this very day, the majority of Americans believe that the American army is in Iraq to defend their freedom, and will make a big to-do about yellow ribbons, military parades, and supporting our troops. It is pure Orwellian fantasy. Such appalling ignorance has cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocents on both sides of these wars, maimed many thousands more, made refugees of over two million souls, and brought misery to countless others. And still they cannot understand why America is so hated by the Muslim world. What is wrong with those towelheads anyway? It must be their horrid Muslim religion, which teaches them to hate Christians and Jews. Propaganda, in the hands of evil people, is a terrible weaponfar more destructive than any hydrogen bomb, or plague virus. It can destroy our lives, our civilization, and our planet.

The other lesson that was drilled into the brain of every thinking citizen is this: because of our inherent tendency to trust government, and have not taken the time to monitor its activities, as good citizens should, we have allowed it to squander our wealth in the pursuit of dubious objectives, which have benefitted a small elite, but robbed the working class of its nest egg. Baby-boomers are going to be in for a shock in two years or so, when it begins to dawn on them that their retirement has been spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They will come to understand that, by paying for yet another elite-sponsored conflict, based on lies and deceit, their government squandered any chance it ever had of fixing Social Security or Medicare. In fact, it will not surprise me at all to see those same protesters of the 1960's and 1970's back on the streets again, old and gray, but still able to throw rocks at police. It is not a scenario any of us wants to witness, but such scenarios are inevitable unless we opt out of the corrupt 2-party system this November and install a true patriot in the White House, who will put an end to our foreign meddling, and set us on a path of fiscal responsibility.Our governments have become tyrannical over the years because we allowed ourselves to become distracted from our primary purpose as citizens, which is to preserve those freedoms enshrined in the constitution for future generations. Instead, we have allowed the absurd to embrace us. As an example: people paint their faces up, scream violently at football games, cry when their team loses, and then go on and on for hours about how they have been let down. If they cared about their freedom as much as they do about football, our nation would neither be on its economic knees, nor at the mercy of a criminal elite.It is important for those of us who are beginning to wake up to the gravity of our situation to understand that what underwrites Americas steadily deteriorating condition is the appalling quality of its educational system. In essence, Americas destiny lies in the hands of a dumbed down citizenry that cannot pinpoint the location of either Iraq or Afghanistan on a world map. Much less do they understand why their armies are bogged down in those two countries, or why trillions of their tax dollars are being spent to keep those armies there. Since government took over the running of the American School System, the job of the schools has been, not necessarily to educate, but to indoctrinate. Their overall mission is to produce obedient little statists, who will embrace the existing order, and get with the program, not educated, self-sufficient folk who can think for themselves, and can challenge the system. And if the graduates cannot read, write, or converse intelligently, so much the better. Such functional illiterates will, sooner or later, wind up in Congress, and become willing pawns of the elite. With few exceptions, they will be socialistic in outlook, and firm believers in the power of the state. They will also be far removed from the traditional concepts of liberty, self-sufficiency, free enterprise, and individual rights. This type of re-engineering of society lays the foundation for the Orwellian state that our Controllers have been seeking for America. It will ensure their continued rule for a long time to come.

For a preview of whats coming to America, keep one eye on Britain. Britain is on a faster track to this Orwellian nightmare than we are, and the re-engineering of English society is moving along at a much brisker pace. Mindless surveillance and state control will mark this New Order, and these things will spawn increased regimentation (what citizens can and cannot do), the carrying of identity papers, rationing of all sorts, more propaganda and squelching of free speech, and the manufacture of external enemies to keep the masses focused. Muslim terrorists will have a major role to play in this staged production for some time to come.I see no evidence that the British people are putting up a resistance to this creeping curtailment of their liberties. British journalist, Jennie Russell, underscored the danger of creeping fascism and the onset of tyranny by stealth when she wrote:

In a democracy, personal liberties are rarely diminished overnight. Rather, they are lost gradually, by acts of well-meaning people, with good intentions, and public approval. But the subtle loss of freedom is never recognized until the crisis is over, and we look back in horror. And then it is too late.It is instructive to note that the most powerful of our Controllers (i.e. the owners of the Federal Reserve and Bank of England) reside in the City of London, also known as Londons Financial District. That would be the epicenter, or eye, of the Illuminati-banker generated wave that is giving the world an Orwellian make-over, and perhaps that is why Britain is being quickened the most. For a sneak peek at the inside of this invisible empire outside of our visible Matrix, pick up a book titled Empire of the City by E.C. Knuth. I believe that this book was written in 1946, but you will find that little has changed since.If we want the kind of country that America was intended to be, we must find a way to get government out of the education business, and give that responsibility back to individual communities. Washington must also learn to leave other people alone, something it has not done since the Spanish-American War. More importantly, for prosperity to return to our land, bringing with it a robust and dynamic middle class, we require peace above all else. Resist, with all your might, the elite attempt to convert our nation into a full-time war economy by involving us in never-ending wars, using one pretext or another to do so. Remember that what doomed the Soviet Union, and relegated it to the trash heap of history, was its bloated, resource-consuming military. It ate up so much of the nations productive capacity, under the false pretense that it was protecting the people, that there was precious little left for the people to enjoy. The Soviet system was based on corruption, lies, incessant propaganda, hard labor for the common man, and a pampered elite. It literally drove the people to drink. Which is exactly where we are headed, folks.I should like to see this essay in the hands of every American who cares for this country, because time is perilously short, and because I have spent a goodly amount of time preparing it for others to read. If you believe that this essay has merit, and it strikes a chord within you, I will ask that you please pass it on. Feel free to e-mail me and let me know what you think, and if you wish to add anything to what I have already presented.

Did Capitalism Kill China?

SRG_Legal — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:53:10 EDT

Reformer with an iron fist Deng was the great reformer, a man who initiated the process of change in China Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997)

"Whether a cat is black or white makes no difference. As long as it catches mice, it is a good cat."

(CNN) -- Deng Xiaoping's greatest contribution to modern China came when this veteran revolutionary was well into his 70s, and the backlash against the Cultural Revolution had propelled him to the top of China's ruling elite.

Ascending to power in 1978, Deng ridiculed the Cultural Revolution slogan that held it was "better to be poor under socialism than rich under capitalism." The blunt, practical Deng offered instead: "Poverty is not socialism." He encouraged the creation of a market economy and capitalist-like enterprises, and by the early 1990s his reforms had helped lift an estimated 170 million peasants out of extreme poverty.

Read Story

Links of the Week 16 May 2008

DNMP — Sun, 18 May 2008 18:11:07 EDT

Top Five of the Week
(in no particular order)
HRC Saturday Night Live Parody: http://zennie2005.blogspot.com/2008/05/snl-hillary-clinton-opening-my-supports.html
This is the SNL skit where HRC lays out why she will be the Democratic nominee.

Multilateral Like Bush: http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=ab15aa4c-568a-4000-ad7d-7cda6d2b2695
So this article shows McCain's stances on various foreign policy situtations.

If Clinton Wants VP, Obama Can't Stop Her...To continue reading visit: http://sentimentsofkornbread.blogspot.com/2008/05/links-of-week-16-may-2008.html

Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost

Chinni — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:04:27 EDT

When I heard from my dad back in India about the outrage Bush's statements on food prices have caused there, I wasn't sure exactly how to feel.. Yeah, US consumption trumps every other people in the world but, isn't increasing consumption in countries India and China a fact?.. Now I saw this piece in NY times..

Indians Find U.S. at Fault in Food Cost

Instead of blaming India and other developing nations for the rise in food prices, Americans should rethink their energy policy — and go on a diet.

That has been the response, basically, of a growing number of politicians, economists and academics in this country, who are angry at statements by top United States officials that India’s rising prosperity is to blame for food inflation.

The debate has sometimes devolved into what sounded like petty playground taunts over who are the real gluttons devouring the world’s resources...

David Sirota: A new NAFTA-Clinton-Indiana-China issue

SPENCER ADAMS — Thu, 01 May 2008 18:31:21 EDT

This post by Sirota in the Huff blog illustrates a new issue that I haven't heard in the MSM; please read this and spread the word:

ABC Digs Into Clinton Trade Hypocrisy - Clinton Campaign Responds With More Deception

Posted April 30, 2008 | 03:42 PM (EST)

On Monday, I wrote about Hillary Clinton airing an ad decrying the closure of a defense manufacturing factory that her husband, Bill Clinton, helped close by approving the sale of the company to a Chinese state-owned firm. Now, ABC News is running with the story, and uncovers some more ugly details. The Clinton campaign has responded not by fessing up, but by putting out more dishonest deceptions.

From Jake Tapper:

"A memo prepared for [Indiana Senator Evan] Bayh by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service earlier this year stated that the Clinton administration could have objected to the sale under CFIUS, but it did not...In 2000, also during Bill Clinton's presidency, Magnequench purchased from UGIMAG the factory in Valparaiso that manufactured the Neo magnets. President Clinton's administration took no steps to stop the purchases in 2000, either."

The sale was a pretty serious national security issue, not so much because the technology was sensitive, but because the sale means our military has to rely on foreign companies for critical weaponry. Here's Tapper:

The two Chinese companies were headed by the husbands of the first and second daughters of then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. One of those daughters was at that time "vice minister of China's State Science and Technology Commission, whose responsibilities included acquiring military technologies by whatever means necessary," according to David Cay Johnston in Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Corporations Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You With the Bill).

"Complaints about the sale of Magnequench were made to the U.S. government because of the military applications for the magnets," Johnston reports. "Still, the Clinton administration, an ardent proponent of globalization, approved the sale."

Around that time, Shingleton says, "there was talk about the national security issue and the loss of jobs because they were leaving. Some of the higher-wage jobs left immediately [in 2000]. I knew personally some people who were managers and who lost their jobs."

Not surprisingly, the Clinton campaign is compounding its deception with more deception as it tries to explain away this latest controversy. McClatchy today quotes Clinton spokesman Jonathan Swain claiming that "In 1995, when this group bought Magnequench, there were assurances made that production would stay in the United States." But as ABC recounts, the Congressional Research Service reports that the state-owned Chinese company that Clinton allowed to purchase Magnequench "promised to keep those Anderson, Ind., jobs in the U.S. only until 2005."

This is about as pristine an example of Clintonian deception and parsing as you are going to find. First comes the pander - an ad that conveys that signature Clinton bite-the-bottom-lip, feel-your-pain message of empathy and outrage. Then comes the revelation that the whole thing Clinton supposedly feels bad about was originally brought about by the Clinton administration, which she endlessly touts. And finally there is the lying - pretending that there were "assurances" that what happened wouldn't happen, when in fact those assurances were not what's being claimed.

With both Indiana and North Carolina being among the two worst-hit states by the Clinton-backed NAFTA/PNTR policies that this Magnequench controversy epitomizes, you would think this would make a perfect issue for Barack Obama to start talking about.

Indiana Factory closed and Millitary Information diclosed

LuAnn in Indiana — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:36:22 EDT

I received this and wanted to share it. It is just another of "Hillary's twisted truths"

This is rich:

Clinton Criticizing Closure of Indiana Factory That Clinton Helped Close

Clinton is airing an advertisement in Indiana, bemoaning the closure of a defense contractor Magnequench's manufacturing plant in Valparaiso (she is also echoing this line in her stump speeches). Looking at the camera, she tells us she's upset that the 200 jobs that were sent to China, and that "now America's defense relies on Chinese spare parts." And then comes the kicker: She tells viewers that "George Bush could have stopped it, but he didn't."

Clinton is certainly right that it is a tragedy that 200 American jobs were killed in a corporate deal that also exported sensitive military technology to China. But she forgets to mention that it wasn't George Bush who was in the key position to stop it -- it was Bill Clinton.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/clinton-criticizing-closu_b_98972.html

McCain Looking to Start a New Cold War?

Bill Marjenhoff — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 10:30:06 EDT

Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International and former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, notes that in his March 26 foreign policy speech, Sen. John McCain proposed the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years. Yet almost no one noticed. In his speech McCain proposed that the United States expel Russia from the G8, the group of advanced industrial countries. Moscow was included in this body in the 1990s to recognize and reward it for peacefully ending the cold war on Western terms, dismantling the Soviet empire and withdrawing from large chunks of the old Russian Empire as well. McCain also proposed that the United States should expand the G8 by taking in India and Brazil—but pointedly excluded China from the councils of power. We have spent months debating Barack Obama's suggestion that he might, under some circumstances, meet with Iranians and Venezuelans. It is a sign of what is wrong with the foreign-policy debate that this idea is treated as a revolution in U.S. policy while McCain's proposal has barely registered. What McCain has announced is momentous—that the United States should adopt a policy of active exclusion and hostility toward two major global powers. It would reverse a decades-old bipartisan American policy of integrating these two countries into the global order, a policy that began under Richard Nixon (with Beijing) and continued under Ronald Reagan (with Moscow). It is a policy that would alienate many countries in Europe and Asia who would see it as an attempt by Washington to begin a new cold war. More on this story here: http://www.newsweek.com/id/134317

Let's Send A Message to China

Ethan from Chevy Chase, MD — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:30:05 EDT

It is shameful that as one observer wrote that it will take the equivalent of a Tiananmen Square massacre for most of the world's political and religious leaders to organize a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

The fact that this situation could have been predicted does not make it any less shameful. China's perceived economic clout allows it to act with relative impunity with respect to observing internationally-recognized human rights (e.g. the situation in Tibet) or humanitarian norms (e.g. China's support of the Sudanese regime).

French President Nicolas Sarkozy's and British Prime Minister's Gordon Brown's discussion of a boycott of the games' opening ceremony (but not the games themselves), received extensive media coverage only due to the absence of an appropriate response to the Chinese Government's conduct by others.

It appears almost certain that the Games will go on (even if the ritual of the passing of the Olympic Torch does not). Ethical individuals should empower themselves by refusing to travel to China this summer.

Let the Chinese hold their games and the athletes compete before empty stadiums. It may not be too late to cancel airplane and hotel reservations. In addition, if consumers were to boycott the goods of those corporations that sponsored this year's Olympics and/or advertised on television stations broadcasting the games, the International Olympic Committee would certainly take notice.

4/21 Articles, with some comments.

EMK — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:59:56 EDT

Well, here are some articles you might like to look at.

Autism

Virtual reality used with people with autism

China

Don't ask for heparin if it's "Made in China."

Debates

Obama: Let's campaign, not have more debates: I agree! There's no substance to them, anyway.

Humor & Insults

WWE invites candidates with smackdown.

McCain, don't insult us about Obama by insinuating a Hamas endorsement.

And, by the way, about Hamas...

A truce? Maybe it was a good idea after all!

Bush: Canada & Mexico

Even with "anti-trade" sentiment, Bush is still working on "expanding commerce" with Canada and Mexico, and they are meeting at New Orleans using Katrina as a backdrop. And my opinion about that are available here, here, here, and here. (Note: even though some of my blogs I referenced here are less to do with NAFTA and more to do with China and taxes, the issues that are presentedby them are relevant to Canada and Mexico as well, even though we still need work with them.) We should be paying attention Bush's meeting right now as we need to "watch our rights!"

One last thing: even though I cite mainly from MSM, that doesn't mean I don't like seeing info or even debating with info from non-MSM sources, as I actually use them to support my points, so please bring it!

"The society's deprevations relies/ not on our differences/ but the separation within."
--Linkin Park, "Frgt/10."

EMK