September 14 - 20, 2008

Cleared! Jury Decides that Threat of Global Warming Justifies Breaking The Law.
by Michael McCarthy
“The threat of global warming is so great that campaigners were justified in causing more than £35,000 worth of damage to a coal-fired power station, a jury decided yesterday. In a verdict that will have shocked ministers and energy companies the jury at Maidstone Crown Court cleared six Greenpeace activists of criminal damage.
Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a "lawful excuse" to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of "lawful excuse" under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage - such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire. “ Read more: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/11-6 photo: Greenpeace UK

Monday, September 15, 2008
Published on Sunday, September 14, 2008 by the Boston Globe
Sleeping with the Industry
Editorial
FOR YEARS, critics have accused the Bush administration of being in bed with the oil industry. They thought they were speaking figuratively, but they weren't.
According to a scathing new report by the inspector general of the Interior Department, employees of the department who handle royalty payments from the oil and gas industry for drilling on federal land have accepted gifts from industry executives - and had sexual relations with them as well. With admirable understatement, Inspector General Earl Devaney declared, "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length."
His office's investigations, he said, revealed "a culture of ethical failure" and an agency rife with conflicts of interest.
The report justifies the skepticism of many in Congress over the industry's recent push to use high oil prices to win permission to drill in the Outer Continental Shelf. A department that is as cozy with industry as the report spells out cannot be counted on to protect the public's financial, safety, or environmental interests - especially if the oil industry starts drilling in crucial fishing areas like New England's Georges Bank.
read more: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/editorials/articles/2008/09/14/sleeping_with_the_industry/

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
By ERIC LIPTON
With White House Push, U.S. Arms Sales Jump
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies.
From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.
read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/washington/14arms.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The three trillion dollar war
Joseph E. Stiglitz on the true cost of the Iraq War
Winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, Joseph E. Stiglitz of Columbia University is the author of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. The book assesses the true cost of the Iraq War as $3 trillion - and counting - rather than the $50 billion projected by the White House and measures what the US taxpayer's money would have produced if instead it had been invested in the further growth of the US economy.
Watch “Frontline Club on “The Real News Network” http://therealnews.com/t/

McCain Would Privatize Social Security
by Dean Baker
McCain has repeatedly expressed interest in privatizing Social Security along the lines proposed by President Bush. For those who have forgotten that nightmare, Bush's plan would have reduced benefits by approximately one percent a year for many workers.
Workers who retired 10 years after the plan was put in place would see a 10 percent reduction in benefits compared with the currently projected levels. Workers who retired 20 years after the plan was implemented would see approximately a 20 percent cut in benefits and workers who retired 40 years after the plan started would see their benefits cut by close to 40 percent.
This schedule of cuts would apply to workers who earn $100,000 a year. Workers who earn $60,000 a year would see cuts of about half this size.
The losses to retired workers could mean big benefits for the financial industry. Under some versions of the plan, the financial industry would rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in fees and commissions over the next 40 years.
According to a recent World Bank analysis, the financial industry pocketed 15-20 percent of the money paid into the privatized Social Security system in Chile, which has often been held up as a model by privatizers in the United States. Given the losses that the millionaire Wall Street bozos have incurred with the housing crash, it is understandable that Senator McCain would want to help the very rich needy. Read more:http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/16

Thursday, September 18, 2008
US Seizes Control of AIG with $85 Billion Bailout
Michael Hudson: These are the people who sang, “There’s no money for Social Security. We’re going to have to privatize it. We’re going to have to turn over your Social Security to Bear Stearns, to AIG”—to the very people who have shown how they’re mismanaging money. Imagine if the Republican program had gone through and Social Security had been privatized and these were the jokers who were managing your Social Security. They’d stick you with the losses.

NOMI PRINS: The bailout of AIG is an example of the government having to step in and clean up a mess. It is not so much that subprime mortgages fell and that caused some losses to AIG. AIG was acting not simply as an insurance company; it was acting as a speculative investment bank/hedge fund, as was Bear Stearns, as was Lehman Brothers, as is what will become Bank of America/Merrill Lynch. So you have a situation where it’s bailing out not just the money, but taking on the risk of items it cannot even begin to understand, because if it had understood them, this would never have gotten to the point to which it has gotten.
AMY GOODMAN: How did it get to this point? How did it go beyond insurance?
NOMI PRINS: In AIG and in Lehman and with Merrill and every other company on Wall Street that has faltered or is faltering, it’s about taking on too much leverage and borrowing to take on the risk and borrowing again and borrowing again, twenty-five to thirty times the amount of capital, the amount of money that they had to basically back the borrowing that they were doing. Human regular borrowers cannot do this. This is something that is an item only of the banking industry.
AMY GOODMAN: But, of course, the argument was, if you don’t bail out AIG, it could lead to a global financial meltdown.
MICHAEL HUDSON: What you—it’s a meltdown of the gamblers, as Nomi said. These are people who’ve gambled. You had McCain saying they’re gamblers. If these people have gambled, we’re talking about derivative trades, billions of dollars of bets on which way interest rates will go, billions of dollars of bad loans beyond the ability of debtors to pay. Why on earth would you want to bail out these creditors?
AMY GOODMAN: So, what would happen if you didn’t?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Then you would prepare the ground for writing down the debts of the homeowners that have no way of repaying the exploding mortgages. Those interest rates are going to be jumping up this year. You would be able to bring the debts down to the ability of the economy to pay, and you would save these four million homeowners from defaulting and being kicked out of their houses. Now they’re going to be kicked out of the houses. The houses will be vacant. The cities are going to now say, “Gee, we’re going to have to cut the property taxes to enable the debts to be paid to save the financial system.” So, if they cut the property taxes, they’re going to have to cut back local expenditures, local infrastructure. The economy is being sacrificed to pay the gamblers.
read more: http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/17/us_seizes_control_of_aig_with

Friday, September 19, 2008
Watch new film and get inspired!
http://www.battleinseattlemovie.com/