The End Of The Beginning - Financial Markets Heads In The Sand

The process of flushing out losses among banks, hedge funds, insurers and others who devoured asset-backed debt during the securitisation spree may have only just begun. If so, the relief of recent days will prove fleeting.

The next brick to fall could well be commercial mortgages.
+++

The end of the beginning

Aug 26th 2007
From Economist.com
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=9708455&fsrc=RSS

Enjoy the relative calm, it may not last

THE relief is palpable, though it may prove short-lived. Efforts by central banks to jump-start stalled financial markets by injecting huge amounts of liquidity—and, in the Federal Reserve’s case, by cutting the lending rate at its banks-only “discount window”—have kept worst-case scenarios at bay. But uncertainty over who holds what assets, and what losses have hit where, should keep prudent investors on edge.

For better or worse, there are signs that investors are tiptoeing back into riskier assets, one toe at a time. On August 24th the yield on “safe-haven” three-month US Treasury bills rose for a fourth straight day, reversing an earlier collapse when money-market funds and others switched out of commercial paper and other short-term corporate IOUs (see chart).The market for short-term inter-bank loans, where the crunch began, has also loosened up. Stocks ended the week on a high, cheered by rare good news from America’s housing market, where home sales were up 2.8% in July, and strong durable-goods orders. Bank of America’s $2 billion lifeline to Countrywide, America’s largest mortgage lender, was reassuring proof that the financial titans see opportunities as well as threats.

Still, some corners of the markets remain dysfunctional, and others appear to have been strangled in their prime. As recently as a month ago around half of the commercial-paper market was made up of asset-backed commercial paper, secured against mortgages, credit-card receivables and the like; and its share was growing. Now almost no one will touch the stuff.

That is why the central bankers, though reluctant to cut interest rates, need to lubricate markets. The New York branch of the Fed, which oversees Wall Street, has told banks they can offer a broader range of commercial paper as collateral for discount-window borrowing. It had earlier eased the terms on which it lent out government securities.

Such moves may buy time, rather than treating the roots of the crisis. Confidence has been as brittle as a brandy-snap, not because there is too little money to go round, but because securitisation and other feats of financial alchemy have made it as clear as mud where credit exposures lie and how to value them. This eats into trust. And, as J. Pierpont Morgan put it during the panic of 1907, “A man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom.”

Today’s ultimate lenders to American homebuyers are not local banks, but Australian hedge funds, Middle Eastern investment firms, German Landesbanks, and so on. (Two German lenders with large subprime-mortgage exposures have already had to be bailed out.) They piled into exotic asset-backed products, such as collateralised-debt obligations; now they are stuck holding illiquid securities bought with borrowed money that are devilishly difficult to value, and where sales, if buyers could even be found, would crystallise big losses.

Most have buried their heads in the sand. Bad news has emerged in dribs and drabs, with investors seemingly admitting to losses only when these can no longer be concealed. This is not how markets like to receive their news. Bank of China joined the list of reluctant confessors this week, saying it holds nearly $10 billion of securities linked to American subprime mortgages.

This lack of transparency makes the crisis one of confidence (and pricing) rather than one of liquidity, reckons Josh Rosner, a structured-finance expert at Graham Fisher & Co, a research firm. More information about institutions' positions would at least give counterparties a clearer idea of whether they were dealing with a basket-case, and might encourage distressed-debt funds to swoop in and buy. “Without clearer disclosure of the size and nature of holdings, I can’t even dream about untangling the mess out there,” says one vulture.

Rating agencies could help by disclosing more about their methodologies, and by being more consistent. They have been changing their criteria for what constitutes a Triple-A-rated subprime security, for instance, while leaving many of those rated under the older criteria in the top category. This has sown confusion and encouraged investors to stay on the sidelines.

The Fed has also muddied the waters, says Mr Rosner, by offering 85% of face value for any as-yet-unimpaired subprime paper presented as collateral at its window, regardless of the actual prospects of default. This could do more harm than good if it sets a false price for the securities that is far above what they are really worth.

Worryingly, the stock of paper infected by rising mortgage delinquencies looks set to rise. Subprime defaults continue to climb, and the situation is deteriorating in the Alt-A market (for good-quality borrowers who present little or no documentation). The next brick to fall could well be commercial mortgages. The process of flushing out losses among banks, hedge funds, insurers and others who devoured asset-backed debt during the securitisation spree may have only just begun. If so, the relief of recent days will prove fleeting.

Labels: Financial Markets, Mortgages, False Price
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Edwards Goes After the 'Corporate Democrats' -- Is This a Turning Point for His Campaign?

It's time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over."
+++

Edwards Goes After the 'Corporate Democrats' -- Is This a Turning Point for His Campaign?

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet. Posted August 26, 2007.

http://www.alternet.org/story/60748/?page=2

In a dramatic speech, John Edwards fired a major broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, "corporate Democrats," -- the likes of which hasn't been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.

On August 23, John Edwards showed his populist mettle, firing a broadside against corporate America and, more significantly, corporate Democrats, the likes of which hasn't been heard from a viable candidate with national appeal in decades.

Edwards is en fuego right now, and if he keeps up the heat, his candidacy will either be widely embraced by the emerging progressive movement or utterly annihilated by an entrenched establishment that fears few things more than a telegenic populist with enough money to mount a credible campaign.

"It's time to end the game," Edwards told a crowd in Hanover, New Hampshire. "It's time to tell the big corporations and the lobbyists who have been running things for too long that their time is over." He exalted Washington law-makers to "look the lobbyists in the eye and just say no."

Real change starts with being honest -- the system in Washington is rigged and our government is broken. It's rigged by greedy corporate powers to protect corporate profits. It's rigged by the very wealthy to ensure they become even wealthier. At the end of the day, it's rigged by all those who benefit from the established order of things. For them, more of the same means more money and more power. They'll do anything they can to keep things just the way they are -- not for the country, but for themselves.

[The system is] controlled by big corporations, the lobbyists they hire to protect their bottom line and the politicians who curry their favor and carry their water. And it's perpetuated by a media that too often fawns over the establishment, but fails to seriously cover the challenges we face or the solutions being proposed. This is the game of American politics and in this game, the interests of regular Americans don't stand a chance.

It's a structural argument, and Edwards didn't pull punches in calling out his fellow Democrats, saying: "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other." The rhetoric was a clear signal that Edwards is going to beat the drums of reform as a contrast to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

About a third of the speech focused on the trade deals that Bill Clinton championed, and his argument that those "wedded to the past" can't provide the answers was a barely-veiled rebuke of the Clintonian arm of the party, and the media's chosen "front-runner" for the nomination.

If Democrats are engaged in an existential struggle between the party's establishment and its grassroots, Edwards is obviously betting that the grassroots' passion and energy will trump the Machine Democrats message apparatus -- this was a speech that was not written by the usual coterie of Beltway consultants.

The most striking aspect of Edwards' speech was his implicit argument that class still exists. For years, both parties have obscured the divisions that are so prominent in modern American society, painting a picture of a country in which we're all part of an entrepreneurial class with more or less similar interests -- a key ingredient in the false "center" to which politicians and Beltway pundits kow-tow. "Let me tell you one thing I have learned from my experience," Edwards said last week. "You cannot deal with them on their terms. You cannot play by their rules, sit at their table, or give them a seat at yours. They will not give up their power -- you have to take it from them."

It was an explicit rebuke of Obama's "new politics" -- Obama recently told the Washington Post that "the insurance and drug companies can have a seat at the table in our health-care debate; they just can't buy all the chairs." Obama's approach to "cleaning up Washington" is not bad, but ultimately tinkers around the edges of a corrupted legislative system.

Edwards is not so conciliatory on the subject. "For more than 20 years, Democrats have talked about universal health care," he said. "And for more than 20 years, we've gotten nowhere, because lobbyists for the big insurance companies, drug companies and HMOs spent millions to block real reform."

Contrast that naked confrontation of corporate power with the tepid appeals to working Americans that were a trademark of John Kerry's 2004 campaign. In announcing his candidacy, Kerry offered a bit of demagoguery about CEOs -- he segued from bashing Cheney and Halliburton --and boldly promised to end tax breaks "that help companies move American jobs overseas." Also in his plan for corporate accountability: "No more contracts for companies, no matter how well-connected they are, until they decide to do what's right."

Hillary Clinton's economic proposals track with the thinking popular among the ostensible "progressives" at the DLC and the Third Way -- policies that give Americans the "opportunity" to save for retirement, a decidedly centrist approach to spiraling college costs and other familiar policies from the 1990s. She's not a fair trader nor a free trader, she says -- she's for "smart trade," "pro-American" trade.

Edward's speech about the economy isn't the only time that he's strayed from the bounds of "respectable" discourse in Washington. In May, he said that the "war on terror" was a political "bumper sticker" that the administration used to "justify everything [Bush] does: the ongoing war in Iraq, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, spying on Americans, torture."

Edwards isn't the only candidate in the race making such bold statements, of course. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) has long spoken of economic issues in the kinds of terms Edwards used last week. But John Edwards was the vice presidential nominee on a presidential ticket that won 59 million votes and he's raised $23 million in the current cycle (20 times what Kucinich has raised), and that means that corporate media is forced to cover him. So far, they've mocked him, written stories about his haircuts, pushed shadowy innuendo about his personal business dealings and suggested his focus on poverty is disingenuous or hypocritical, but they simply can't write him off as a member of the fringe. Unlike Kucinich, they can't ignore him.

John Edwards is becoming a very different kind of candidate, and his growing message of empowerment and attack on the corporate class may prove to be the most interesting story of campaign 2008.

Labels: Edwards, Corporations, Decision Making
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Pilger: A Boycott Of Israel: Something Has Changed

The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this.

Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott?

Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose." And so would the rest of us.

+++

A Boycott Of Israel: Something Has Changed

by John Pilger
http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com/search?q=pilger

Saturday, August 25, 2007

From a limestone hill rising above Qalandia refugee camp you can see Jerusalem. I watched a lone figure standing there in the rain, his son holding the tail of his long tattered coat. He extended his hand and did not let go. "I am Ahmed Hamzeh, street entertainer," he said in measured English. "Over there, I played many musical instruments; I sang in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and because I was rather poor, my very small son would chew gum while the monkey did its tricks. When we lost our country, we lost respect. One day a rich Kuwaiti stopped his car in front of us. He shouted at my son, "Show me how a Palestinian picks up his food rations!" So I made the monkey appear to scavenge on the ground, in the gutter. And my son scavenged with him. The Kuwaiti threw coins and my son crawled on his knees to pick them up. This was not right; I was an artist, not a beggar . . . I am not even a peasant now."

"How do you feel about all that?" I asked him.

"Do you expect me to feel hatred? What is that to a Palestinian? I never hated the Jews and their Israel . . . yes, I suppose I hate them now, or maybe I pity them for their stupidity. They can't win. Because we Palestinians are the Jews now and, like the Jews, we will never allow them or the Arabs or you to forget. The youth will guarantee us that, and the youth after them . . .".

That was 40 years ago. On my last trip back to the West Bank, I recognised little of Qalandia, now announced by a vast Israeli checkpoint, a zigzag of sandbags, oil drums and breeze blocks, with conga lines of people, waiting, swatting flies with precious papers. Inside the camp, the tents had been replaced by sturdy hovels, although the queues at single taps were as long, I was assured, and the dust still ran to caramel in the rain. At the United Nations office I asked about Ahmed Hamzeh, the street entertainer. Records were consulted, heads shaken. Someone thought he had been "taken away . . . very ill". No one knew about his son, whose trachoma was surely blindness now. Outside, another generation kicked a punctured football in the dust.

And yet, what Nelson Mandela has called "the greatest moral issue of the age" refuses to be buried in the dust. For every BBC voice that strains to equate occupier with occupied, thief with victim, for every swarm of emails from the fanatics of Zion to those who invert the lies and describe the Israeli state's commitment to the destruction of Palestine, the truth is more powerful now than ever. Documentation of the violent expulsion of Palestinians in 1948 is voluminous. Re-examination of the historical record has put paid to the fable of heroic David in the Six Day War, when Ahmed Hamzeh and his family were driven from their home. The alleged threat of Arab leaders to "throw the Jews into the sea", used to justify the 1967 Israeli onslaught and since repeated relentlessly, is highly questionable.

In 2005, the spectacle of wailing Old Testament zealots leaving Gaza was a fraud. The building of their "settlements" has accelerated on the West Bank, along with the illegal Berlin-style wall dividing farmers from their crops, children from their schools, families from each other. We now know that Israel's destruction of much of Lebanon last year was pre-planned. As the former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison has written, the recent "civil war" in Gaza was actually a coup against the elected Hamas-led government, engineered by Elliott Abrams, the Zionist who runs US policy on Israel and a convicted felon from the Iran-Contra era.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is as much America's crusade as Israel's. On 16 August, the Bush administration announced an unprecedented $30bn military "aid package" for Israel, the world's fourth biggest military power, an air power greater than Britain, a nuclear power greater than France. No other country on earth enjoys such immunity, allowing it to act without sanction, as Israel. No other country has such a record of lawlessness: not one of the world's tyrannies comes close. International treaties, such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, ratified by Iran, are ignored by Israel. There is nothing like it in UN history.

But something is changing. Perhaps last summer's panoramic horror beamed from Lebanon on to the world's TV screens provided the catalyst. Or perhaps cynicism of Bush and Blair and the incessant use of the inanity, "terror", together with the day-by-day dissemination of a fabricated insecurity in all our lives, has finally brought the attention of the international community outside the rogue states, Britain and the US, back to one of its principal sources, Israel.

I got a sense of this recently in the United States. A full-page advertisement in the New York Times had the distinct odour of panic. There have been many "friends of Israel" advertisements in the Times, demanding the usual favours, rationalising the usual outrages. This one was different. "Boycott a cure for cancer?" was its main headline, followed by "Stop drip irrigation in Africa? Prevent scientific co-operation between nations?" Who would want to do such things? "Some British academics want to boycott Israelis," was the self-serving answer. It referred to the University and College Union's (UCU) inaugural conference motion in May, calling for discussion within its branches for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. As John Chalcraft of the London School of Economics pointed out, "the Israeli academy has long provided intellectual, linguistic, logistical, technical, scientific and human support for an occupation in direct violation of international law [against which] no Israeli academic institution has ever taken a public stand".

The swell of a boycott is growing inexorably, as if an important marker has been passed, reminiscent of the boycotts that led to sanctions against apartheid South Africa (for more information on the boycott click here). Both Mandela and Desmond Tutu have drawn this parallel; so has South African cabinet minister Ronnie Kasrils and other illustrious Jewish members of the liberation struggle. In Britain, an often Jewish-led academic campaign against Israel's "methodical destruction of [the Palestinian] education system" can be translated by those of us who have reported from the occupied territories into the arbitrary closure of Palestinian universities, the harassment and humiliation of students at checkpoints and the shooting and killing of Palestinian children on their way to school.

These initiatives have been backed by a British group, Independent Jewish Voices, whose 528 signatories include Stephen Fry, Harold Pinter, Mike Leigh and Eric Hobsbawm. The country's biggest union, Unison, has called for an "economic, cultural, academic and sporting boycott" and the right of return for Palestinian families expelled in 1948. Remarkably, the Commons' international development committee has made a similar stand. In April, the membership of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) voted for a boycott only to see it hastily overturned by the national executive council. In the Republic of Ireland, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has called for divestment from Israeli companies: a campaign aimed at the European Union, which accounts for two-thirds of Israel's exports under an EU-Israel Association Agreement. The UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, has said that human rights conditions in the agreement should be invoked and Israel's trading preferences suspended.

This is unusual, for these were once distant voices. And that such grave discussion of a boycott has "gone global" was unforeseen in official Israel, long comforted by its seemingly untouchable myths and great power sponsorship, and confident that the mere threat of anti-Semitism would ensure silence. When the British lecturers' decision was announced, the US Congress passed an absurd resolution describing the UCU as "anti-Semitic". (Eighty congressmen have gone on junkets to Israel this summer.)

This intimidation has worked in the past. The smearing of American academics has denied them promotion, even tenure. The late Edward Said kept an emergency button in his New York apartment connected to the local police station; his offices at Columbia University were once burned down. Following my 2002 film, Palestine is Still the Issue, I received death threats and slanderous abuse, most of it coming from the US where the film was never shown. When the BBC's Independent Panel recently examined the corporation's coverage of the Middle East, it was inundated with emails, "many from abroad, mostly from North America", said its report. Some individuals "sent multiple missives, some were duplicates and there was clear evidence of pressure group mobilisation". The panel's conclusion was that BBC reporting of the Palestinian struggle was not "full and fair" and "in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture". This was neutralised in BBC press releases.

The courageous Israeli historian, Ilan Pappé, believes a single democratic state, to which the Palestinian refugees are given the right of return, is the only feasible and just solution, and that a sanctions and boycott campaign is critical in achieving this. Would the Israeli population be moved by a worldwide boycott? Although they would rarely admit it, South Africa's whites were moved enough to support an historic change. A boycott of Israeli institutions, goods and services, says Pappé, "will not change the [Israeli] position in a day, but it will send a clear message that [the premises of Zionism] are racist and unacceptable in the 21st century . . . They would have to choose." And so would the rest of us.



-------
John Pilger is a world-renowned journalist, author and documentary filmmaker, who began his career in 1958 in his homeland, Australia, before moving to London in the 1960s. He has developed his reputation through both his reporting and the various books and documentary films that he has written or produced. He is best known in Britain for his investigative documentaries, particularly those on Cambodia and East Timor. He has acted as a war correspondent during conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Egypt, India, Bangladesh and Biafra. He has worked for BBC Television Australia, BBC Radio, BBC World Service, London Broadcasting, ABC Television, ABC Radio Australia, The Daily Mirror, The Guardian, The Independent, New Statesman, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation: New York, The Age: Melbourne, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin: Sydney, plus French, Italian, Scandinavian, Canadian, Japanese and other newspapers and periodicals.

To see the latest documentary by John Pilger entitled "The War on Democracy" click here.

For a South African perspective on this issue check out this article.

Posted by VINEYARDSAKER: at 6:09 AM 4 comments  

Labels:
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Hillary Clinton - INCRIMINATING VIDEO SURFACES IN FUNDRAISING CASE - Unreported $2 Million

<< Former Impeachment Counsel Schippers on the Issue >>

In another video prepared by Paul, David Schippers, former chief council of the Clinton impeachment (and a lifelong Democrat), makes the point that, in successfully keeping HRC out of a criminal case involving the gala, "the prosecutor if you recall made the statement that Hillary Clinton is not a part of this case, she has no connection with it in any manner whatsoever, you will hear no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in any manner whatsoever [with the fundraiser]." In other words Hillary Clinton was let off the hook through a false statement by the prosecutor. In fact, if Paul's statement to the court is correct, the incriminating video  "has been in the possession of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York pursuant to a search warrant served on Stan Lee Media, Inc" since 2000.


<< What's Next? >>

Paul's argument concerning the video will come before the California Court of
Appeals on Sept 7 and a decision is expected within ten days of the hearing.
+++


||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

INCRIMINATING VIDEO SURFACES IN HRC FUNDRAISING CASE

UNDERNEWS FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
AUGUST 26 2007 Edited by Sam Smith

LATEST HEADLINES & INDEX: http://prorev.com

[To understand the importance of the video we first need to give a bit of the back story - previously published here -  since the corporate media has steadfastly kept this matter from the public]

<< The Back Story >>

[]
PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - In August 2000 Hillary Clinton held a huge Hollywood fundraiser for her Senate campaign. It was very successful. The only problem was that, by a long shot, she didn't report all the money contributed: $800K by the US government's ultimate count in a settlement and $2 million according to the key contributor and convicted con Peter Paul. This is, in election law, the moral equivalent of not reporting a similar amount on your income tax. It is a form of fraud and you can go to jail for it. Hillary Clinton's defense is that she didn't know about it. That has so far worked in court but to some it has been what some lawyers call the ostrich defense: I had my head in the sand while everything was going on or, yes, I signed the letter but I never actually read it.

An initial reaction to the Clinton gala came from Lloyd Grove of the Washington Post on August 15 2000: "Is Hillary Clinton soft on crime? We certainly hope not, even though convicted felon Peter Paul--who served three years in prison two decades ago after pleading guilty to cocaine possession and trying to swindle $8.7 million out of the Cuban government-- helped organize Saturday's star-glutted $1 million fundraising gala for Clinton's Senate race at businessman Ken Roberts's Brentwood estate. . . [Paul] added that he only produced the gala and hasn't given or raised money for the first lady's New York campaign. 'And we will not be accepting any contributions from him,' Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson vowed.

Later, Paul would change his story, claiming that his involvement stemmed from his desire to hire ex-president Bill Clinton, a deal he claimed became contingent on his not only producing but funding the HRC gala, costing him $2 million in kind and in cash. The Clinton campaign would also have to change its story: by September, Paul's Stan Lee Media had contributed $100,000 to HRC's campaign despite Wolfson's protest. According to Salon, "Bill Clinton was reportedly promised an additional $15 million in Stan Lee stock to join the board. . . Paul also says then-DNC Chairman Ed Rendell said it would be 'nice' if Paul gave $150,000 to the DNC after Paul sought a presidential pardon for his two prior convictions."

The man with whom Clinton was allegedly going into business had a known criminal past. According to Worldnet Daily, "Paul has pleaded guilty to a 10(b)5 violation of the Securities and Exchange Commission for not publicly disclosing control of Merrill Lynch margin accounts that held stocks in his company, Stan Lee Media. . . Under the Carter administration, he was convicted for cocaine possession and an attempt to confiscate more than $8 million from Fidel Castro in a black market coffee transaction the Cuban dictator was using to defraud the Soviet Union."

The Washington Post reported that "In 1983, Paul violated parole by traveling to Canada under a false identity and ended up pleading guilty in federal court to making false statements to customs inspectors. Paul went to prison in California. When paroled, he stayed in California."

The Post also noted that, "In 1998, Paul co-founded Stan Lee Media, a Hollywood-based Internet animation studio. The company was named for Paul's business partner, Stan Lee, creator of Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk. Almost from the start, prosecutors alleged, Paul and a few co-conspirators manipulated the market for the stock of Stan Lee Media: They artificially inflated the stock to a peak value of $350 million, creating a false appearance of demand by making transactions through and between accounts that Paul controlled but maintained in the names of others. Paul and his co-conspirators misused the brokerage account to borrow more than $4 million from Merrill Lynch, money prosecutors say they used to buy real estate, travel and make political contributions. Stan Lee was never implicated in the scheme."

After the indictment and the collapse of his firm Paul filed suit arguing that Hillary Clinton had never properly reported his $2 million contribution to the campaign. The suit was thrown out because Paul had become a fugitive under arrest in Brazil. On his return, however the suit was refiled.

A Clinton fundraiser, David Rosen, was acquitted of three counts of election fraud but his superior, Andrew Grossman, admitted responsibility for three false FEC reports for which the campaign paid a fine of only $35,000.

A judge in Los Angeles dismissed Sen. Clinton as a defendant in Paul's civil lawsuit. . .

The story - and not just the characters behind it - is a remarkable one, making all the more incredible the failure of the establishment media to report it in more than a perfunctory manner.

<< The Video >>

HILLARY CLINTON TALKING WITH STAN MACK, PETER PAUL AND AARON TONKIN
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlN3LMvyWwo&eurl>
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlN3LMvyWwo&eurl=

<< From Peter Paul's Court Brief >>

As described in detail in the accompanying declarations of Peter Paul and D. [attorney] Colette Wilson, the five-minute videoclip contained on the July 17 DVD just came into Paul's hands two months ago. Although Paul participated in and personally filmed the telephone conversation captured by this videoclip, Paul has not had possession of the original or any copy of the VHS tape containing it since December 2000. That VHS tape, along with 81 other original videotapes Paul filmed during and prior to 2000, has been in the possession of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York pursuant to a search warrant served on Stan Lee Media, Inc. After years of trying to obtain copies of these videotapes, Paul was finally able to get the necessary authorization on April 11, 2007.  This motion is therefore the earliest Paul could have presented this evidence to any court. . .

The conversation in question took place the Monday following a large conference call on July 11, in which David Rosen, James Levin, [Aaron] Tonken, Paul, fundraising consultant Terri New, members of Gary Smith's production staff, and others, participating from Paul's office, strategized with members of HRC's campaign committee in New York (including HRC's campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson), as they worked out the details of the exact nature, size and anticipated cost of the Tribute. . . By the time HRC called Paul in his office on July 17, Paul had already entered into what he believed was a solid agreement with President Clinton that Paul would underwrite half the anticipated $1 million cost of the Tribute as part of President Clinton's compensation package for working as a "rainmaker" for Stan Lee Media, Inc. when the President left office in January 2001.

The July 17 DVD evinces seven key facts, all showing conclusively that HRC was directly and personally involved in soliciting Paul's contributions and coordinating his expenditures for the concert portion of the Tribute, which was that portion of the event designed to generate federal ("hard"-money) contributions for her campaign.

First, the July 17 DVD records a candidate (HRC) talking directly with a donor (Paul) on the subject of preparations being made for a large campaign fundraiser.

Second, HRC includes herself as among those who are working on organizing the Tribute.

Third, HRC admits to having intimate knowledge about what Paul and Tonken are doing for her, based on reports being made to her by Kelly Craighead, HRC's senior staff official.

Fourth, HRC implies that because Kelly, her highest staff member, has been and will continue to be involved with the organization of this event, she herself will continuously be keeping tabs on the preparations.

Fifth, HRC promises to make herself available to assist them.

Sixth, HRC admits that she "closed the sale" in calling and convincing Cher to perform at the event, after Tonken had apparently paved the way. Obtaining a commitment from a big name like Cher had a direct bearing on potential guests' willingness to pay $1,000 to attend HRC's private concert, especially given the short notice for such a major event.

Seventh, HRC effusively thanks all three -- Paul, Stan Lee and Tonken -- and encourages them to keep up their efforts. This constituted both an acceptance of Paul's contributions thus far and a solicitation for Paul's future expenditures.

<< Former Impeachment Counsel Schippers on the Issue >>

In another video prepared by Paul, David Schippers, former chief council of the Clinton impeachment (and a lifelong Democrat), makes the point that, in successfully keeping HRC out of a criminal case involving the gala, "the prosecutor if you recall made the statement that Hillary Clinton is not a part of this case, she has no connection with it in any manner whatsoever, you will hear no evidence that Hillary Clinton was involved in any manner whatsoever [with the fundraiser]." In other words Hillary Clinton was let off the hook through a false statement by the prosecutor. In fact, if Paul's statement to the court is correct, the incriminating video  "has been in the possession of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York pursuant to a search warrant served on Stan Lee Media, Inc" since 2000.

<< What's Next? >>

Paul's argument concerning the video will come before the California Court of
Appeals on Sept 7 and a decision is expected within ten days of the hearing.
Labels: Election, Clinton, Fundraising,
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Fed Breaks Rules To Bail Out Corporate Giants - Citigroup, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan? To Cover Their Bad Loans

waiving one of the most important banking regulations can only add nervousness to the market.
And that's what the Fed did Monday in these disturbing letters to the nation's two largest banks.


Fed Bends Rules to Help Two Big Banks
    By Peter Eavis
    Fortune Go to Original

    Friday 24 August 2007
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082507G.shtmlhttp://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082507G.shtml

If the Federal Reserve is waiving a fundamental principle in banking regulation, the credit crunch must still be sapping the strength of America's biggest banks. Fortune's Peter Eavis documents an unusual Fed move.

    New York - In a clear sign that the credit crunch is still affecting the nation's largest financial institutions, the Federal Reserve agreed this week to bend key banking regulations to help out Citigroup and Bank of America, according to documents posted Friday on the Fed's web site.

    The Aug. 20 letters from the Fed to Citigroup and Bank of America state that the Fed, which regulates large parts of the U.S. financial system, has agreed to exempt both banks from rules that effectively limit the amount of lending that their federally-insured banks can do with their brokerage affiliates. The exemption, which is temporary, means, for example, that Citigroup's Citibank entity can substantially increase funding to Citigroup Global Markets, its brokerage subsidiary. Citigroup and Bank of America requested the exemptions, according to the letters, to provide liquidity to those holding mortgage loans, mortgage-backed securities, and other securities.

    This unusual move by the Fed shows that the largest Wall Street firms are continuing to have problems funding operations during the current market difficulties, according to banking industry skeptics. The Fed's move appears to support the view that even the biggest brokerages have been caught off guard by the credit crunch and don't have financing to deal with the resulting dislocation in the markets. The opposing, less negative view is that the Fed has taken this step merely to increase the speed with which the funds recently borrowed at the Fed's discount window can flow through to the bond markets, where the mortgage mess has caused a drying up of liquidity.

    On Wednesday, Citibank and Bank of America said that they and two other banks accessed $500 million in 30-day financing at the discount window. A Citigroup spokesperson declined to comment. Bank of America dismissed the notion that Banc of America Securities is not well positioned to fund operations without help from the federally insured bank. "This is just a technicality to allow us to use our regular channels of business with funds from the Fed's discount window," says Bob Stickler, spokesperson for Bank of America. "We have no current plans to use the discount window beyond the $500 million announced earlier this week."

    There is a good chance that other large banks, like J.P. Morgan, have been granted similar exemptions. The Federal Reserve and J.P. Morgan didn't immediately comment.

    The regulations in question effectively limit a bank's funding exposure to an affiliate to 10% of the bank's capital. But the Fed has allowed Citibank and Bank of America to blow through that level. Citigroup and Bank of America are able to lend up to $25 billion apiece under this exemption, according to the Fed. If Citibank used the full amount, "that represents about 30% of Citibank's total regulatory capital, which is no small exemption," says Charlie Peabody, banks analyst at Portales Partners.

    The Fed says that it made the exemption in the public interest, because it allows Citibank to get liquidity to the brokerage in "the most rapid and cost-effective manner possible."

    So, how serious is this rule-bending? Very. One of the central tenets of banking regulation is that banks with federally insured deposits should never be over-exposed to brokerage subsidiaries; indeed, for decades financial institutions were legally required to keep the two units completely separate. This move by the Fed eats away at the principle.

    Sure, the temporary nature of the move makes it look slightly less serious, but the Fed didn't give a date in the letter for when this exemption will end. In addition, the sheer size of the potential lending capacity at Citigroup and Bank of America - $25 billion each - is a cause for unease.

    Indeed, this move to exempt Citigroup casts a whole new light on the discount window borrowing that was revealed earlier this week. At the time, the gloss put on the discount window advances was that they were orderly and almost symbolic in nature. But if that were the case, why the need to use these exemptions to rush the funds to the brokerages?

    Expect the discount window borrowings to become a key part of the Fed's recovery strategy for the financial system. The Fed's exemption will almost certainly force its regulatory arm to sharpen its oversight of banks' balance sheets, which means banks will almost certainly have to mark down asset values to appropriate levels a lot faster now. That's because there is no way that the Fed is going to allow easier funding to lead to a further propping up of asset prices.

    Don't forget: The Federal Reserve is in crisis management at the moment. However, it doesn't want to show any signs of panic. That means no rushed cuts in interest rates. It also means that it wants banks to quickly take the big charges that will inevitably come from holding toxic debt securities. And it will do all it can behind the scenes to work with the banks to help them get through this upheaval.

But waiving one of the most important banking regulations can only add nervousness to the market. And that's what the Fed did Monday in these disturbing letters to the nation's two largest banks.

Labels:
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Grace Paley, Activist, Acclaimed Poet, Writer, 84 Dies

[Grace Paley an elder, great human being speaks her mind as always in the interview below. Well worth watching or listening to - Watch 256k stream or listen Segment]

Grace Paley 1922-2007: Acclaimed Poet and Writer Dies at 84
Friday, August 24th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/24/1322211

Grace Paley 1922-2007: Acclaimed Poet and Writer Dies at 84

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3      
Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream
Help      Printer-friendly version       Email to a friend
 
The acclaimed American poet, short story writer, and anti-war activist Grace Paley has died. She was 84 years old and died Wednesday in her home in Vermont. We go back to a Democracy Now! interview with her talking about the peace movement and the role of poets in a time of war.
The acclaimed American poet, short story writer, and anti-war activist Grace Paley has died. She was 84 years old and died Wednesday in her home in Vermont.
A native of the Bronx, Grace Paley was the former state poet laureate in both New York and Vermont. She also received numerous prizes for her work including the Lannan Literary Award, a National Book Award, and a Senior Fellowship recognizing her lifetime contribution to literature from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since the 1960s Paley was very active in the anti-war, feminist, and anti-nuclear movements. She helped found the Greenwich Village Peace Center in 1961. Eight years later she went on a peace mission to Hanoi. In 1974 she attended the World Peace Conference in Moscow.

In 1980, she helped organize the Women's Pentagon Action. And in 1985 Paley visited Nicaragua and El Salvador, after having campaigned against the U.S. government's policies toward these countries. She was also one of "The White House Eleven," who were arrested in 1978 for unfurling an anti-nuclear banner on the White House lawn.

Just over four years ago, at the start of the war on Iraq, we interviewed Grace Paley. In February, 2003, the First Lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq.

Grace Paley, acclaimed poet and writer.
 

Grace Paley, Writer and Activist, Dies
By Margalit Fox

Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 by The New York Times
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3369/

Grace Paley, the celebrated writer and social activist whose acclaimed short stories explored in precise, pungent and tragicomic style the struggles of ordinary women muddling through everyday lives, died Wednesday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt. She was 84 and lived most of her life in Manhattan before moving to Vermont in 1988.

Her husband, Robert Nichols, told the Associated Press that she had battled breast cancer. The agency did not say whether her death was directly connected to that illness.

Ms. Paley’s output was modest, just 45 stories in three volumes: “The Little Disturbances of Man” (Doubleday, 1959); “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974); and “Later the Same Day” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1985). But she attracted a devoted following and was widely praised by critics for her pitch-perfect dialogue, which managed to be surgically spare and unimaginably rich at the same time.

Her “Collected Stories,” published by Farrar, Straus in 1994, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. From 1986 to 1988, Ms. Paley was New York’s first official state author.

Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailyness. She focused especially on single mothers, whose days were an exquisite mix of sexual yearning and pulverizing fatigue. In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind.

To read Ms. Paley’s fiction is to be awash in the shouts and murmurs of secular Yiddishkeit, with its wild onrushing joy and twilight melancholy. For her, cadence and character went hand in hand: her stories are marked by their minute attention to language, with its tonal rise and fall, its hairpin rhetorical reversals and its capacity for delicious hyperbolic understatement. Her stories, many of which are written in the first person and seem to start in mid-conversation, beg be read aloud.

Some critics found Ms. Paley’s stories short on plot, and in fact much of what happens is that nothing much happens. Affairs begin, babies are born, affairs end. Mothers gather in the park. But that was exactly the point. In Ms. Paley’s best stories, the language is so immediate, the characters so authentic, that they are propelled by an inherent urgency- - the kind that makes readers ask, “And then what happened?”

Open Ms. Paley’s first collection, “The Little Disturbances of Man,” to the first story, “Goodbye and Good Luck”:

“I was popular in certain circles, says Aunt Rose. I wasn’t no thinner then, only more stationary in the flesh. In time to come, Lillie, don’t be surprised - change is a fact of God. From this no one is excused. Only a person like your mama stands on one foot, she don’t notice how big her behind is getting and sings in the canary’s ear for thirty years. Who’s listening? Papa’s in the shop. You and Seymour, thinking about yourself. So she waits in a spotless kitchen for a kind word and thinks - poor Rosie.

“Poor Rosie! If there was more life in my little sister, she would know my heart is a regular college of feelings and there is such information between my corset and me that her whole married life is a kindergarten.”

Hooked.

For Ms. Paley’s immigrant Jews, the push and pull of assimilation is everywhere. Parents live in the East Bronx or Coney Island; their grown children flee to Greenwich Village. A family agonizes over its lively daughter’s starring role in her school’s Christmas pageant.

Later stories were even darker. Women are raped; children died of drug overdoses. Threading through the books are familiar characters, in particular Faith Darwin, the subject of many of Ms. Paley’s finest stories, grown older and world-wearier.

Though Ms. Paley’s work also rings with Irish and Italian and black voices, it was for the language of her childhood, a heady blend of Yiddish, Russian and English, that she was best known. Reviewers sometimes called her prose postmodern, but all of it - even the death-defying, almost surreal turns of logic that were a stylistic hallmark - was already present in Yiddish oral tradition. For instance:

A man meets a friend on the street.

“So, how’s by you?” the friend asks.

“Ach,” the man replies. “My wife left me; the children don’t call; business is bad. With life so terrible, better not to have been born.”

“Yes,” his friend says. “But how many are so lucky? Not one in ten thousand.”

Grace Goodside was born in the Bronx on Dec. 11, 1922. (The family changed its name from Gutseit on coming to the United States.) Her parents, Isaac and the former Manya Ridnyik, were Ukrainian Jewish Socialists who had been exiled by Czar Nicholas II - Isaac to Siberia, Manya to Germany. In 1906, they were able to leave for New York, where Isaac became a doctor. They had a son and a daughter, and, approaching middle age, a third child, Grace.

Her childhood was noisy and warm. There were stories and singing and good strong tea. Always, there was argument. The Communists hollered at the Socialists, the Socialists hollered at the Zionists, and everybody hollered at the anarchists.

Ms. Paley studied for a year at Hunter College before marrying Jess Paley, a film cameraman, at 19; the marriage ended in divorce in 1972. Hoping to be a poet (she studied briefly with Auden at the New School), she wrote only verse until she was in her 30’s. But little by little, the narrative speech of the old neighborhood - here, that of young Shirley Abramowitz in “The Loudest Voice” - began to assert itself:

“There is a certain place where dumb-waiters boom, doors slam, dishes crash; every window is a mother’s mouth bidding the street shut up, go skate somewhere else, come home. My voice is the loudest.

“There, my own mother is still as full of breathing as me and the grocer stands up to speak to her. ‘Mrs. Abramowitz,’ he says, ‘people should not be afraid of their children.’

” ‘Ah, Mr. Bialik,’ my mother replies, ‘if you say to her or her father “Ssh,” they say, “In the grave it will be quiet.” ‘ “

A self-described “somewhat combative pacifist and cooperative anarchist,” Ms. Paley was a lifelong advocate of liberal social causes. During Vietnam, she was jailed several times for antiwar protests; in later years, she lobbied for women’s rights, against nuclear proliferation and, most recently, against the war in Iraq. For decades, she was a familiar presence on lower Sixth Avenue, near her Greenwich Village home, smiling broadly, gum cracking, leaflets in hand.

Ms. Paley, who taught for many years at Sarah Lawrence and the City College of New York, was also a past vice president of the PEN American Center.

Some critics have called Ms. Paley’s work uneven, but what they really seemed to mean is that it was too even: similar people in similar situations in similar places. But the stories that worked - and many did - were so blindingly satisfying that the lesser ones scarcely mattered. In her best work, Ms. Paley collapsed entire worlds into a few perfect paragraphs, as in the opening of “Wants,” from “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute“:

“I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.

“Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.

“He said, What? What life? No life of mine.

“I said, O.K. I don’t argue when there’s real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.

“The librarian said $32 even and you’ve owed it for eighteen years. I didn’t deny anything. Because I don’t understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.

“My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.

“That’s possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began.”

Her other books include a collection of essays, “Just As I Thought” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), and three volumes of poetry, “Leaning Forward” (Granite Press, 1985); “New and Collected Poems” (Tilbury Press, 1991); and “Long Walks and Intimate Talks” (Feminist Press, 1991). A film, “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute,” based on three stories in the collection and adapted by John Sayles and Susan Rice, was released in 1983.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1978, Ms. Paley put her finger on the grass-roots sensibility that informed her work.

“I’m not writing a history of famous people,” she explained. “I am interested in a history of everyday life.”

Labels:
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

USA Betrayal Of Iraq

The Iraqis Don’t Deserve Us. So We Betray Them…
by Robert Fisk

Published on Thursday, August 23, 2007 by The Independent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/23/3354/

Always, we have betrayed them. We backed “Flossy” in Yemen. The French backed their local “harkis” in Algeria; then the FLN victory forced them to swallow their own French military medals before dispatching them into mass graves. In Vietnam, the Americans demanded democracy and, one by one - after praising the Vietnamese for voting under fire in so many cities, towns and villages - they destroyed the elected prime ministers because they were not abiding by American orders.

Now we are at work in Iraq. Those pesky Iraqis don’t deserve our sacrifice, it seems, because their elected leaders are not doing what we want them to do.

Does that remind you of a Palestinian organisation called Hamas? First, the Americans loved Ahmed Chalabi, the man who fabricated for Washington the”‘weapons of mass destruction” (with a hefty bank fraud charge on his back). Then, they loved Ayad Allawi, a Vietnam-style spook who admitted working for 26 intelligence organisations, including the CIA and MI6. Then came Ibrahim al-Jaafari, symbol of electoral law, whom the Americans loved, supported, loved again and destroyed. Couldn’t get his act together. It was up to the Iraqis, of course, but the Americans wanted him out. And the seat of the Iraqi government - a never-never land in the humidity of Baghdad’s green zone - lay next to the largest US embassy in the world. So goodbye, Ibrahim.

Then there was Nouri al-Maliki, a man with whom Bush could “do business”; loved, supported and loved again until Carl Levin and the rest of the US Senate Armed Forces Committee - and, be sure, George W Bush - decided he couldn’t fulfil America’s wishes. He couldn’t get the army together, couldn’t pull the police into shape, an odd demand when US military forces were funding and arming some of the most brutal Sunni militias in Baghdad, and was too close to Tehran.

There you have it. We overthrew Saddam’s Sunni minority and the Iraqis elected the Shias into power, and all those old Iranian acolytes who had grown up under the Islamic Revolution in exile from the Iraq-Iran war - Jaafari was a senior member of the Islamic Dawaa party which was enthusiastically seizing Western hostages in Beirut in the 1980s and trying to blow up our friend the Emir of Kuwait - were voted into power. So blame the Iranians for their “interference” in Iraq when Iran’s own creatures had been voted into power.

And now, get rid of Maliki. Chap doesn’t know how to unify his own people, for God’s sake. No interference, of course. It’s up to the Iraqis, or at least, it’s up to the Iraqis who live under American protection in the green zone. The word in the Middle East - where the “plot” (al-moammarer) has the power of reality - is that Maliki’s cosy trips to Tehran and Damascus these past two weeks have been the final straw for the fantasists in Washington. Because Iran and Syria are part of the axis of evil or the cradle of evil or whatever nonsense Bush and his cohorts and the Israelis dream up, take a look at the $30bn in arms heading to Israel in the next decade in the cause of “peace”.

Maliki’s state visits to the crazed Ahmedinejad and the much more serious Bashar al-Assad appear to be, in Henry VIII’s words, “treachery, treachery, treachery”. But Maliki is showing loyalty to his former Iranian masters and their Syrian Alawite allies (the Alawites being an interesting satellite of the Shias).

These creatures - let us use the right word - belong to us and thus we can step on them when we wish. We will not learn - we will never learn, it seems - the key to Iraq. The majority of the people are Muslim Shias. The majority of their leaders, including the “fiery” Muqtada al-Sadr were trained, nurtured, weaned, loved, taught in Iran. And now, suddenly, we hate them. The Iraqis do not deserve us. This is to be the grit on the sand that will give our tanks traction to leave Iraq. Bring on the clowns! Maybe they can help us too.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent.

Labels: Iraq, War On Democracy,
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World

Canada, USA, Mexico SPP Agenda -Harmonization For Corporations Not For People And Nature

Montebello: Harper, Bush and Calderon Will Have Plenty to Discuss
    By Hélène Buzzetti with Lisa-Marie Gervais
    Le Devoir Go to Original

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082107G.shtml 

    Monday 20 August 2007

    Ottawa - What have the Arctic, climate change, continental pandemics, lead-contaminated toys, and border security got in common? They will all be topics for discussion today when George W. Bush and Felipe Calderon arrive in Montebello for a two-day meeting with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. All the same, Jaime Gutierrez Novales, a simple salesman in a Mexican funeral home, hopes to invite himself into the leaders' conversation.

    The meeting will be the third since the March 2005 creation of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) which brings Canada, the United States and Mexico together. Mr. Harper will have a tête-à-tête discussion with Mr. Bush this afternoon and the three men will have supper together this evening. Their three-way work will really begin only tomorrow when 30 business personalities (10 from each country) will offer them a "reflection" on competitiveness.

    On the Agenda

    Subjects on the agenda are numerous, according to the briefing made last week by senior federal officials. Canadian sovereignty over the Arctic, which the Conservative government is determined to exercise more, will be discussed. "I should be surprised if the leaders did not bring up that question," indicated one official last Thursday. "They will want to take some time to discuss their respective interests in the Arctic, not only from a sovereignty perspective, but also as stewards of the resources found there."

    Faced with a growing number of recalls of goods made in China, the safety of imported goods is also likely to hew out a place for itself in the three leaders' short discussions (their meeting and three-man lunch will last around three hours). "I do not, however, expect that an agreement will result from it," the official indicated.

    Mexican Travelers Disrespected

    One of the subjects the Mexican president will most certainly address with Mr. Harper during their Wednesday morning tête-à-tête will be the treatment of Mexican travelers sent back at the Canadian border. A growing number of visitors have been refused access to Canada during the last year. With no explanation, they are intercepted by Canadian immigration agents and sent back to their country after being subjected to cavalier treatment.

    That happened to Jaime Gutierrez Novales. The man works as a sales coordinator in a funeral home in Mexico. On December 26, 2006, he landed in Montréal to visit a friend as a tourist with $1,500 cash in his pocket and a return ticket. After interrogating him, an immigration agent demanded to see the friend he was visiting - from whom he required $3000 to allow the new arrival's three-month stay. As that was impossible, Mr. Gutierrez Novales was led into a remote room where he underwent a four hour interrogation.

    That was only the beginning of a nightmare for the Mexican. He was hand-cuffed, imprisoned in a 3 meter x 3 meter cell for a good part of the night before he was taken along with other Mexican detainees to an immigration center in downtown Montréal. There he was allowed a shower, but given no meal. Although he concedes that he was never brutalized, Mr. Gutierrez Novales nonetheless had to get completely undressed ten times for complete strip searches. Early the next day, still handcuffed, he was taken back to the airport to be returned immediately to Mexico.

    "I was demonized. It was a traumatic experience. I didn't understand at the time why they were treating me that way and I still don't understand. I have money; I even own a house and an apartment," Mr. Gutierrez Novales related in an interview with Le Devoir. "I lost money because my ticket was not refunded. I wrote to the Canadian embassy in Mexico and the Foreign Affairs Ministry here and all I got for an answer was a message from the Ministry telling me that my complaint had been transmitted to the consulate in Montréal."

    At the Mexican embassy in Ottawa, they are compiling these sorts of cases, which stand at twenty for the moment. "The Mexican government does not contest Canada's sovereign right to accept or reject visitors, but we demand a more dignified and humane treatment," explains spokesperson Mauricio Guerrero. Mexico is now the country from which comes the greatest number of refugee status claimants, with 3,419 in 2006, four times more than nine years ago.

    Pesticides on the Menu

    These summit discussions are sometimes unstructured and produce declarations so general they don't seem to have any impact. Nonetheless, the results of the SPP are very concrete. Thus it has led to the will to harmonize regulation between the three countries and to reduce commercial irritants.

    Canada and the United States each test the harmlessness of new pesticides before authorizing their use. Now, the two countries will share the task. If one country authorizes a product, the other will authorize it also, without effecting independent research.

    Another consequence of the SPP, Canada has recently agreed to revise upward the allowable quantity of pesticide residues in fruits and vegetables on sale. With the divergent norms between Canada and the United States considered as "irritants" by agribusiness, the two countries chose to harmonize them. Canadian norms are stiffer than American ones for 40% of controlled pesticides and less severe for only 10%.

    But we won't hear about any of that at the summit. As the federal official indicated, "we don't expect the leaders to discuss any specific regulation, but one of the domains where significant progress has been made and where we expect to make more is regulatory cooperation." The subject will be addressed in public in a very general way to be discussed afterwards in its concrete applications by bureaucrats far from the cameras.

    It's precisely in reaction to this absence of public monitoring that Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion this week demanded that the identity of the work group participants and the state of progress of their work be divulged. So as to alert the public to what is being plotted. Moreover, Mr. Dion has deplored the downward revision of Canadian norms. "Let us align ourselves with the best norms, whether it's the Americans, the Canadians, and, if possible, the Mexicans who have implemented them. That's the solution; not the opposite," he declared Friday.

    According to the senior officials, one must not see this as an Americanization of the country. "It's not about abdicating our sovereignty. It's not about renouncing our ability to regulate in the name of Canadians. It's a question of adopting intelligent regulation that does not create useless costs for companies."

---

    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
Labels: SPP, Harmonization For Corporations, Corporations, North America, Pesticides, Deregulation
--

Subscribe to emails from :
- Better World News: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/bwn_at7l.us
- Learning News - children learning, how mind works: http://at7l.us/mailman/listinfo/learn_at7l.us
- Good Morning World - Robert & Barbara Muller's daily idea-dream for a better world: http://www.goodmorningworld.org/emaillist/#subscribe
or send a request a subscription to any of the three lists here.

View these blogs:
- Better World News
- Learning News
- Good Morning World