Monthly Archives: August 2009

Al Jazeera headline: ‘US officials bullish about growth’

Ha! I read “bullshit” instead of bullish. I thought it was embarrassing, but accurate. Here’s the article:

“US economic growth is highly likely to resume in the second half of the year, senior US administration officials have said.

But Timothy Geithner, the treasury secretary, warned in an interview with ABC television on Sunday that once recovery was regained, there would be “hard choices” to contain rising deficits.

He said he would not rule out higher taxes in the future, adding: “We’re going to have to do what is necessary.”

Geithner and Larry Summers, the White House economic adviser, went on the Sunday television talk shows to make the case that the economic stimulus programme by Barack Obama, the president, was gaining traction, despite rising unemployment and worries about the US deficit.

Summers told NBC television: “A very great likelihood – and this is what most professional forecasters say – is that we’ll see growth going forward in the second half of this year.”

The two men were seconded by Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, who told ABC the worst US financial crisis in a half a century was “not quite” over, “but we’re getting there”.

‘Pretty sure’

Greenspan said he was “pretty sure” the broader US economy had hit bottom and begun to turn around in mid-July.

Summers pointed to the success of a “cash for clunkers” programme where motorists can trade-in old vehicles for a government payment against a new one as a sign that the US car industry was coming back to life.

He said industries will have to replace inventories that have been massively cut.

But both he and Geithner acknowledged that the US jobless rate would continue to climb from its current level of 9.5 per cent.

Geithner cited private analysts as saying the rate will not start coming down until the beginning of the second half of 2010.

Gross domestic product figures released on Friday by the commerce department estimated that the US economy contracted 1.0 per cent in the second quarter, better than forecasters expected.

The administration said the new report showed the economy was in deeper trouble than believed when Obama took office but that its recovery programmes were working.” (Read more from english.aljazeera.net)

Obama praises his economic policy

The only good thing about Obama’s speech, is him calling bullshit on Newsweek.

Every single one of the things he takes credit for is Keynesian bullshit. If you print a bunch of money out of thin air, of course you can “create” jobs, and prop up artificially high home and stock prices.

People NEED to lose jobs. Values of things we don’t want NEED to drop. There has been so much mal-investment that resources need to realign in the production of goods and services that people actually want. Obama is making it worse.

Also, the vast quantities of money printed so that Obama can take credit for propping up prices and creating jobs are a huge transfer of wealth AWAY FROM the poor and working classes. When the government prints (ie legally counterfeits money) it is a transfer of wealth from money holders at large to the institutions who have the privileged of dealing directly with government – banks, military industries, our 22 million government employees, etc.

Haaretz Editorial: Settlers undermining legitimacy of Israel’s existence

“The representatives of the settler organizations have recently declared their intention to establish 11 new settlements in the territories, including some, according to media reports, on privately-owned Palestinian land. The operation is being depicted as having been inspired by the 11 tower and stockade communities in the northern Negev that were established just before Yom Kippur in 1946. This is not the first time the settlers have compared their efforts to the settlement activities that provided the foundation for the establishment of the state. There is no basis for such a comparison, which is nothing more than an act of forgery and fraud.

The basic difference between the two undertakings is that the settlement project that preceded Israel’s establishment was intended to create the territorial basis for the future Jewish state. It wasn’t intended to deprive the Arabs of everything that was left or, for that matter, their right to a state of their own alongside the Jewish state.

The 11 settlements in the northern Negev, meanwhile, were meant to ensure the inclusion of the Negev in the Jewish state upon the expected partition of the Land of Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state.

The current settlement campaign, on the other hand, like the unnecessary construction in East Jerusalem, is not designed to ensure the existence of the state of the Jews, but rather to deprive the Arabs of their state in the West Bank and their capital in Arab Jerusalem. That is precisely the difference between the just Zionism of self-defense and aggressive Zionism, which is totally dismissive of the Arabs and their human rights.

According to the settlers, the Jews have the right ‘to settle everywhere,’ and the Jews of course also have needs created by ‘natural growth.’ In their opinion, do the Arabs also have the right to settle everywhere, or is any construction by Arabs illegal for one reason or another? And don’t the Arabs have ‘natural growth’?

In the eyes of the settlers, the term ‘illegal’ only applies to Arabs, not to the settlers’ construction, because the source of their inspiration is divine and beyond the democratic context. According to this approach, the law only exists as a tool of the state, as the settlers’ subcontractor, to deprive the Arabs of what little is theirs.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

Israel targets U.K. funding of IDF veterans’ group that exposed ‘IDF crimes’ in Gaza

“Israel continues to ratchet up diplomatic pressure against European Union funding of a group that exposed what it described as war crimes perpetrated by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.

The deputy director-general of the Foreign Ministry, Rafi Barak, expressed ‘concern’ last week over Britain’s financial contributions to ‘Breaking the Silence,’ an organization founded by IDF veterans which collects testimonies from soldiers serving in the Palestinian territories.” (Read more from haaretz.com)

In a Savings Shocker, the Government Discovers That Paper Has Two Sides

“WASHINGTON — With the budget deficit soaring toward $2 trillion, the Department of Justice has figured out how to play its part: double-sided photocopying.

There are other acts of national sacrifice. The Forest Service will no longer repaint its new, white vehicles green immediately upon purchase. The Army will start packing more soldiers onto R&R flights. The Navy will delete unused email accounts.

Three months ago, President Barack Obama ordered his cabinet secretaries to find $100 million in budget cuts for the current fiscal year to emphasize the point that he, too, was serious about belt-tightening. They responded with $102 million. That is 0.006% of the estimated federal deficit.

The list of 77 spending cuts, which the White House is calling ‘the $100 million savings challenge,’ reflects the vastness of government — and its vast inefficiency. Hundreds of millions of dollars in savings were found simply by casting around for areas to trim.” (Read more from online.wsj.com)

Let us never forget that government is a disgusting, lazy, inefficient slob which finances itself by collecting money at the point of a gun. Let us be mindful of this when we consider giving government authority over, say, our healthcare, or anything else.

Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told

“Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.

The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.

It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as ‘highly sensitive classified US intelligence’.

However, David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has repeatedly told the court that the US would stop sharing intelligence with the UK if the CIA material was published.” (Read more from guardian.co.uk)

More change we can believe in?