Tag: ek Politics

There is an apocryphal story about a trial where the defendant is accused of gambling and his defense was that he was playing Poker, which is not gambling at all.

In Poker one of your strongest tools is the Bluff, where you make a strong hand appear weak and a weak hand appear strong (through we generally only think of the latter).  As Joanne Woodward says in Big Hand for a Little Lady– “It’s not cheating, it’s entirely in the spirit of the game.”

Administration Peddling Increasing Blatant Canards on Proposed “Trade” Deals

by Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

Posted on January 6, 2014

One of the tricks of dealmaking and legislating is to try to create the impression that the negotiations/vote herding are going well, even when they aren’t. That tactic was fully on display with the Administration’s failed effort to get Congressional approval for intervention in Syria. The White House kept messaging that it was getting support lined up even when whip counts showed that putting the measure to a vote would result in an overwhelming rejection.

Now while things are not as clear cut on the trade deals, they were already in trouble last year. Foreign news reports indicated that various proposed signatories to the TransPacific Partnership simply weren’t on board with provisions that the Americans regarded as critical. A State Department press conference after talks in Bali was so out of tune and arrogant that the press representatives there were openly skeptical. And that was before the Wikileaks disclosure of the text of one of the draft chapters, on intellectual property. It both showed how extreme the American position is and how much opposition it was getting from the other supposed “partners”. We don’t know as much about where the European deal stands, but there’s reason to believe that those potential signatories have much less reason to make the world safer for US IT companies in the wake of ongoing revelations about NSA snooping.

So what line is the Administration, via the Financial Times, pushing? (Note my surmise is this article comes directly or from sources close to the US Trade Representative’s office; it very mildly complains that Obama hasn’t spoken forcefully enough about trade, as if that’s going to make any difference).

In the article, Obama challenge on selling trade deals to resurgent left, there is astonishingly no mention of the issues the prospective partners have with the deal or how the Wikileaks publication showed that the critics if anything had understated how bad the deal is. And the headline pretty accurately reflects the spin of the article: Obama’s is supposedly those damned pinkos, as opposed to his lame duck status and the increasingly obvious outrageousness of the deal. But to an uninformed reader, it’s easy to sell the prejudice that only Luddite lefties are against the motherhood and apple pie of economists and the business community, “free trade”.

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Puhleeze. First, these “allies” that the Administration must manfully contend with are wusses. They make a show of opposition and let Team Dem carry on catering to powerful monied interests as usual.

Second, the notice how opposition to the deals are subtly presented as uninformed, as mere prejudice? The resistance is based on mere “belief”. In fact, NAFTA led to nearly a million lost jobs, and as we recounted in a weekend post, also wrecked much of the agricultural sector in Mexico. Tell me exactly how that helped regular people? And further notice the subtle bias in “ordinary workers”. To an FT reader, those are not part of their cohort, which are those directly connected to capital and the technocratic elite (executives, senior managers, policy wonks).

Third, the resistance extends well beyond the usual toothless leftie suspects. Over 200 Representatives, including some Republicans, have signed letters or otherwise voiced reservations about the trade deals. and another 30 to 40 are believed to be concerned. The opposition goes well beyond the small cohort of “progressives”.

Fourth, the Financial Times, rather than doing actual journalism (as in investigating) runs the blatant lie that the Administration is working to get tougher regulations via these deals. The most fundamental provisions of both pacts involve gutting regulations via strengthening the rights of foreign investors to sue governments at all level for anticipated losses (mind you, they don’t even have to prove they’d occurred) before secret international tribunals. As the group Public Citizen has documented in considerable detail, these panels are corrupt and bend over backwards to issue pro-investor rulings.

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The Senate Finance Committee is gearing up to move a Trade Promotion Authority, which is just another term of art for what is also called “fast track”. Fast track give Congress a limited amount of time to respond to a tabled trade deal with a simple up or down vote. This is just the old effort to move the pacts forward.

But this messaging means the Administration is still keen to get these deals done, which means it is also incumbent to keep the pushback going. Please call or e-mail your representative and tell them “Hell no!”

Zapatista Uprising 20 Years Later: How Indigenous Mexicans Stood Up Against NAFTA “Death Sentence”

Democracy Now

On the same day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect on Jan. 1, 1994, the Zapatista National Liberation Army and people of Chiapas declared war on the Mexican government, saying that NAFTA meant death to indigenous peoples. They took over five major towns in Chiapas with fully armed women and men.

Zapatista’s Warning Over NAFTA Rings True 2 Decades Later

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(note: This is Timothy A. Wise, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University not Timothy J. Wise, anti-racism activist and writer)

How beer explains 20 years of NAFTA’s devastating effects on Mexico

Timothy A. Wise, Global Post

January 2, 2014 07:00

NAFTA produced a devastating one-two punch. For the first 10 years, the flood of US exports of corn, wheat, meat and other staples drove Mexican producer prices well below the costs of production.

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By the mid-2000s, Mexico was importing 42 percent of its food, mostly from the United States. Corn import dependence had grown from 8 percent before NAFTA to 32 percent. Mexico was importing nearly 60 percent of its wheat where before it had imported less than 20 percent.

Import dependence was more than 70 percent for soybeans, rice and cotton.

Then came the sucker punch. In 2007, international prices for many staple crops doubled or tripled, and so did the cost of importing them. Countries like Mexico that had gotten hooked on cheap imports paid a heavy price. Call it the Age of Dependency.

US policies had as much to do with these high and volatile prices as they had with the Age of Dumping. Now, instead of price-depressing surpluses caused by US agricultural policies, US subsidies and incentives were diverting 40 percent of US corn – 15 percent of the global supply – into ethanol production.

This drove up the price of corn, but also prices for related crops, like soybeans and wheat, and the livestock products that had relied for so long on cheap feed.

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(T)he beer sector is a perfect example of the kind of integration NAFTA can achieve.

“Look, Mexico’s even importing the barley malt from us to make its beer!” I said.

I took another sip.

“So Mexico’s agricultural contribution to its beer exports is … what?” I asked.

Nervous laughter.

Here is a case where NAFTA has gotten the United States to open its market to something of value that Mexico can export, and Mexico can’t even capture the value from it. The industry’s growth benefits US barley growers and US malt makers. Mexico can’t even import the barley and make the malt themselves.

So the country is basically a maquiladora for beer bottling. I guess Mexico contributes the water. Which it doesn’t have enough of.

20 Years on, Mexico is NAFTA’s Biggest Lie

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(note: David Bacon is an award-winning photojournalist, author, and immigrant rights activist who has spent over twenty years as a labor organizer.)

NAFTA Hurt Workers on Both Sides of the Border

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By Pushing the TPP, Obama is Repeating the Mistakes of NAFTA

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By Democracy Now featuring Julian Assange, Sarah Harrison, and Jacob Appelbaum.

Though the math is hard the concept of Quantum Mechanics is easily graspable by most intelligent individuals.  The key is realizing that what you think of as reality isn’t really very real at all, and is instead the product of your observation.

The classic case is of course Schrödinger’s cat where the cat is either alive or dead based on a quantum state that theoretically can not be known until you measure it at which time it’s resolved in a binary fashion.  The cat is either alive OR dead.

Of course common sense tells you that any cat you keep locked up in a box since 1935 is pretty surely dead, but quantum mechanics is designed for the study of very small and ephemeral items like photons at which it has amazingly useful predictive value.

Now that’s all very well and good, but what has physicists scratching their heads is the asymmetry of the forces we see working on a large scale, like cats for instance, and the distinct lack of anti-cats (cats made of anti-matter) when at a quantum level there is no reason to favor one over the other.

Another puzzler is that in the Standard Model (that’s why the Higg’s Boson is such a big deal is that it confirms the Standard Model) Quantum Entities are most often created in pairs and it is possible to infer the value of one member of such a pair by examining the other regardless of the distance between them.

Yup, faster than the speed of light.

Now one of the interesting limitations of modern computers is that they use electrons to store and process information and electrons, while fast, are no faster than light speed.  The late great Grace Hooper used to carry around 11.8 in lengths of copper wire to illustrate how far a nanosecond was.  If you read the specifications of RAM a speed of 8 or 9 nanoseconds (which is pretty gosh darn fast actually) means an electron can travel no more than about 8 feet.

Quantum computing erases that speed limit (in addition to some other wackier things like storing information in several dimensional states instead of a simple binary on/off condition).

In any event the NSA has been experimenting with quantum computing in the hopes of solving the most difficult encryption available in reasonable amounts of time instead of some point after the heat death of the Universe.

Despite the scary title the good news from this report is that they haven’t gotten much farther along than anyone else.

NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption

By Steven Rich and Barton Gellman, Washinton Post

Thursday, January 2, 4:24 PM

The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields like medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure Web sites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.

Physicists and computer scientists have long speculated whether the NSA’s efforts are more advanced than those of the best civilian labs. Although the full extent of the agency’s research remains unknown, the documents provided by Snowden suggest that the NSA is no closer to success than others in the scientific community.

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Quantum computing is so difficult to attain because of the fragile nature of such computers. In theory, the building blocks of such a computer might include individual atoms, photons or electrons. To maintain the quantum nature of the computer, these particles would need to be carefully isolated from their external environments.

“Quantum computers are extremely delicate, so if you don’t protect them from their environment, then the computation will be useless,” said Daniel Lidar, a professor of electrical engineering and the director of the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology at the University of Southern California.

This is of course due to their quantum nature.  Once someone, anyone, looks at the cat they’re either alive or dead.

ave you checked out Black Agenda Report?

You really should.

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Helping Colombian Military Drop ‘Smart Bombs’ on Rebel Leaders

By: Kevin Gosztola, Firedog Lake

Monday December 23, 2013 4:28 pm

A major investigative report by The Washington Post’s Dana Priest shows the CIA has overseen and helped the Colombian government target and assassinate rebel leaders. Forces from Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) have also provided assistance to the Colombian government, mounting operations to find hostages taken by guerrilla groups. It is all a part of a military assistance program called “Plan Colombia.”

Since 2006, the CIA has contributed “real-time intelligence” to allow Colombian forces to “hunt down” leaders from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN). They have transformed “less-than-accurate” 500-pound gravity bombs into precision-guided munitions (PGMs) or “smart bombs” by attaching a “$30,000 GPS guidance kit” to the gravity bombs.

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Lawyers for the White House, including officials in the CIA, Justice Department, Defense Department and State Department, initially wondered if it was legal for the US to target individual FARC leaders with “smart bombs.” Would this be assassination, something prohibited under US law? One lawyer asked, “Could we be accused of engaging in an assassination, even if it is not ourselves doing it?”

The White House’s Office of Legal Counsel decided to employ the same legal basis used to justify targeting and killing alleged members of al Qaeda and its “associated forces.” Lawyers determined, “Killing a FARC leader would not be an assassination because the organization posed an ongoing threat to Colombia. Also, none of the FARC commanders could be expected to surrender.” Plus, FARC was a “threat to US national security” because of Reagan’s finding issued in response to “crack cocaine epidemic” on the streets of America. (Note: Much of this “epidemic” was fueled by the Contras in Nicaragua, which Reagan was backing in a violent struggle against the Sandinistas.)

The US government recognized that Colombia might use the “smart bombs” to go after “perceived political enemies.” From 2006 to 2010, the CIA retained control over the use of “smart bombs” by inserting an encryption key into the bomb. It would be impossible for a bomb to hit its target without the key. If misuse occurred, “the CIA could deny GPS reception for future use.”

The National Security Agency has provided intercepts to troops on the ground or pilots before and during an operation, which are considered a “game changer.”

The use of “smart bombs” to kill rebel leaders in Colombia began before the US began to escalate “targeted killing” operations in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Therefore, the decision to target rebel leaders should not be seen as one directly influenced by what the US was doing to fight known and suspected members of al Qaeda in the Middle East. That is what makes the existence of this program so alarming.

As noted, the legal basis for the CIA’s involvement in the “targeted killing” of Colombian rebel leaders stems from the same dubious criteria used by the US government to argue it can launch drone strikes against “suspected al Qaeda militants” in Pakistan, Somalia or Yemen. It is influenced by the doctrine of preemptive war developed by President George W. Bush’s administration.

No member of the FARC or ELN could reasonably be said to pose any immediate or imminent threat of violent attack against the US. They are fighting the Colombian government, not the US.

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The government cannot continue to kill FARC members (with full US support) and expect to achieve any meaningful success in negotiations for peace. Of course, the Colombian military establishment may not truly desire peace. They may want to keep on fighting FARC and the peace talks in Havana may be an avenue to further coerce revolutionary groups into submitting to the government’s power.

On Apri 23, 2012, according to Nazih Richani, a professor of Latin American studies at Kean University, more than 100,000 people participated in a “Patriotic March” in Bogota, Colombia, to call for an “end to political violence, oppression and poverty” that has plagued the country.” The march was a result of organization by the National Patriotic Council, which consisted of 4,000 representatives from more than 1,700 grassroots organizations. However, General Alejandro Navas, the head of the Colombian Armed Forces, “accused the Patriotic March of being infiltrated by guerrillas.” Two retired generals also called for a coup because Santos was willing to hold peace talks with the FARC while the strength of a popular movement was increasing.

The bloated Colombian military-including 500,000 soldiers and police-cannot be sustained unless the civil war continues, or unless the United States can find an international role for the behemoth institution,” Richani concluded. “The enemies of peace and social justice in Colombia are many, but their friends are potentially much more numerous. The question is: Can the Patriotic March harness this potential to empower and unite the millions to reach a tipping point for peace?”

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The Obama administration may insist it is not continuing a policy of assassination that was supposed to have been outlawed by President Gerald Ford, but, in fact, this program continues a dirty war, which America has been fueling for decades through its actions.

It is easy for Americans to look at the record of violence by guerrillas from the FARC and ELN and conclude the Colombian government is justified in bombing its leaders to crush them. It is much harder, especially if one is ignorant of history, to understand that the US has played a role in enabling violent oppression of peaceful resistance. But, history must be consulted and it should be recognized that the government bears responsibility for contributing to conditions that led to the emergence of liberation groups willing to use violence to achieve political objectives.

The Fear Economy

By PAUL KRUGMAN, The New York Times

Published: December 26, 2013

Some people would have you believe that employment relations are just like any other market transaction; workers have something to sell, employers want to buy what they offer, and they simply make a deal. But anyone who has ever held a job in the real world – or, for that matter, seen a Dilbert cartoon – knows that it’s not like that.

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We can actually quantify that weakness by looking at the quits rate – the percentage of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs (as opposed to being fired) each month. Obviously, there are many reasons a worker might want to leave his or her job. Quitting is, however, a risk; unless a worker already has a new job lined up, he or she doesn’t know how long it will take to find a new job, and how that job will compare with the old one.

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Now think about what this means for workers’ bargaining power. When the economy is strong, workers are empowered. They can leave if they’re unhappy with the way they’re being treated and know that they can quickly find a new job if they are let go. When the economy is weak, however, workers have a very weak hand, and employers are in a position to work them harder, pay them less, or both.

Is there any evidence that this is happening? And how. The economic recovery has, as I said, been weak and inadequate, but all the burden of that weakness is being borne by workers. Corporate profits plunged during the financial crisis, but quickly bounced back, and they continued to soar. Indeed, at this point, after-tax profits are more than 60 percent higher than they were in 2007, before the recession began. We don’t know how much of this profit surge can be explained by the fear factor – the ability to squeeze workers who know that they have no place to go. But it must be at least part of the explanation. In fact, it’s possible (although by no means certain) that corporate interests are actually doing better in a somewhat depressed economy than they would if we had full employment.

What’s more, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that this reality helps explain why our political system has turned its backs on the unemployed. No, I don’t believe that there’s a secret cabal of C.E.O.’s plotting to keep the economy weak. But I do think that a major reason why reducing unemployment isn’t a political priority is that the economy may be lousy for workers, but corporate America is doing just fine.

A reprint from 2007 but as true today as it ever was.

From Wikipedia’s entry on the American Revolutionary War

Early in 1775, the British Army consisted of about 36,000 men worldwide… Additionally, over the course of the war the British hired about 30,000 soldiers from German princes, these soldiers were called “Hessians” because many of them came from Hesse-Kassel. The troops were mercenaries in the sense of professionals who were hired out by their prince. Germans made up about one-third of the British troop strength in North America.

On December 26th 1776 after being chased by the British army under Lords Howe and Cornwallis augmented by these “Hessians” led by Wilhelm von Knyphausen from Brooklyn Heights to the other side of the Delaware the fate of the Continental Army and thus the United States looked bleak.  The Continental Congress abandoned Philidephia, fleeing to Baltimore.  It was at this time Thomas Paine was inspired to write The Crisis.

The story of Washington’s re-crossing of the Delaware to successfully attack the “Hessian” garrison at Trenton is taught to every school child.

On March 31, 2004 Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah ambushed a convoy containing four American private military contractors from Blackwater USA.

The four armed contractors, Scott Helvenston, Jerko Zovko, Wesley Batalona and Michael Teague, were dragged from their cars, beaten, and set ablaze. Their burned corpses were then dragged through the streets before being hung over a bridge crossing the Euphrates.

Of this incident the next day prominent blogger Markos Moulitsas notoriously said-

Every death should be on the front page (2.70 / 40)

Let the people see what war is like. This isn’t an Xbox game. There are real repercussions to Bush’s folly.

That said, I feel nothing over the death of merceneries. They aren’t in Iraq because of orders, or because they are there trying to help the people make Iraq a better place. They are there to wage war for profit. Screw them.

(From Corpses on the Cover by gregonthe28th.  This link directly to the comment doesn’t work for some reason.)

Now I think that this is a reasonable sentiment that any patriotic American with a knowledge of history might share.

Why bring up this old news again, two days from the 231st (237th) anniversary of the Battle of Trenton?

Warnings Unheeded On Guards In Iraq

^{Despite Shootings, Security Companies Expanded Presence}

By Steve Fainaru, Washington Post Foreign Service

Monday, December 24, 2007; A01

The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.

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Last year, the Pentagon estimated that 20,000 hired guns worked in Iraq; the Government Accountability Office estimated 48,000.

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The Defense Department has paid $2.7 billion for private security since 2003, according to USA Spending, a government-funded project that tracks contracting expenditures; the military said it currently employs 17 companies in Iraq under contracts worth $689.7 million. The State Department has paid $2.4 billion for private security in Iraq — including $1 billion to Blackwater — since 2003, USA Spending figures show.

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The State Department’s reliance on Blackwater expanded dramatically in 2006, when together with the U.S. firms DynCorp and Triple Canopy it won a new, multiyear contract worth $3.6 billion. Blackwater’s share was $1.2 billion, up from $488 million, and the company more than doubled its staff, from 482 to 1,082. From January 2006 to April 2007, the State Department paid Blackwater at least $601 million in 38 transactions, according to government data.

The company developed a reputation for aggressive street tactics. Even inside the fortified Green Zone, Blackwater guards were known for running vehicles off the road and pointing their weapons at bystanders, according to several security company representatives and U.S. officials.

Based on insurance claims there are only 25 confirmed deaths of Blackwater employees in Iraq, including the four killed in Fallujah.  You might care to contrast that with the 17 Iraqis killed on September 16th alone.  Then there are the 3 Kurdish civilians in Kirkuk on February 7th of 2006.  And the three employees of the state-run media company and the driver for the Interior Ministry.

And then exactly one year ago today, on Christmas Eve 2006, a Blackwater mercenary killed the body guard of Iraqi Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi while drunk at a Christmas party (the mercenary, not the guard or Vice President Abdul-Mahdi who were both presumably observant Muslims and no more likely to drink alcohol than Mitt Romney to drink tea).

Sort of makes all those embarrassing passes you made at co-workers and the butt Xeroxes at the office party seem kind of trivial, now doesn’t it?

So that makes it even at 25 apiece except I’ve hardly begun to catalog the number of Iraqis killed by trigger happy Blackwater mercenaries.

They say irony is dead and I (and Santayana) say that the problem with history is that people who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it.