"Rose Aguilar" - US Jobs in Danger as NAFTA-Style Deal Heads to Congress

Tuesday 11 October 2011

by Rose Aguilar: , Truthout 

http://www.truth-out.org/us-jobs-danger-nafta-style-deal-heads-congress/1318253738

Despite campaign promises to reform trade deals, President Obama has asked Congress to approve three NAFTA-style deals - negotiated by former President George W. Bush - with Panama, Korea and Colombia. The House and Senate are expected to vote on these deals on Wednesday.

Tim Robertson, director of the San Francisco-based California Fair Trade Coalition, says the deals, which continue to ignore labor and environmental rights, have barely changed under the Obama administration.

"They're now running the campaign, along with GOP leaders, to get them passed," he says.

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"Staff Writers" - Could a Mega-Tsunami Wipe Out the Eastern Seaboard?

by Staff Writers
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Oct 12, 2011

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Could_a_Mega_Tsunami_Wipe_Out_the_Eastern_Seaboard_999.html

As scientists have been baffled by earthquakes in the U.S. and a tsunami in Japan, there is one thing some of them seem to agree on - something really bad is about to happen and it's going to happen soon.

That's the news uncovered by New York Times best-selling novelist Steve Alten from the research he performed for his new book, Phobos: Mayan Fear, a fictional tale of the Mayan 2012 doomsday prediction.

His story incorporates the very real existence of a volatile volcano in the Canary Islands that some scientists believe could pose a catastrophic threat to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. What's worse is that many believe the volcano is close to erupting.

"Scientists have been tracking this since 2001," said Alten.

"Ten years ago, Dr. Simon Day, of the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre at University College London, predicted that if the volcano, called Cumbre Vieja, was to erupt, it would cause a landslide, which in turn would create a massive mega-tsunami.

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"Dean Baker" - Excuses for a Pathetic Recovery

October 11, 2011

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/excuses-for-a-pathetic-recovery/

by DEAN BAKER

The September jobs report showed that the U.S. economy created just 103,000 jobs in the month, 45,000 of which were the jobs of Verizon workers who were returning from a strike in August. The economy has created 99,000 jobs a month over the last three months, about 9,000 more than it needs to keep pace with the growth of labor force. At this pace, it will be around 80 years until the economy gets back to normal levels of unemployment.

Nonetheless, the news accounts told the public that the jobs numbers were better than expected. After all, at least the number of jobs is growing; the economy has not sunk back into recession.

Of course slow growth is better than a recession. But this is like saying that we are better off with one major hurricane hitting the East Coast than two. This is true, but why would we expect that two major hurricanes would hit the East Coast in the same year?

This is the same logic with the double-dip recession story. In the last several months many economic analysts have been running around with scary stories about a double-dip recession. While the stories were scary, they never made much sense.

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"Rev. Jesse Jackson" - Winning the Class War: Don't Sleep Through the Revolution

October 11, 2011

by Rev. JESSE JACKSON

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/10/11/winning-the-class-war/

Occupy Wall Street protests have now spread to some 800 cities.  It’s spreading like a fire on a strong wind over a dry field.  The heat is likely to keep on building.

Conservatives have fallen over themselves rushing to side with the top 1% against the rest.  Eric Cantor, House majority leader, denounces “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.”  Herman Cain dismisses the demonstrators as “anti-American.”  Mitt Romney accuses them of waging “class warfare.”

But class warfare is the reason Occupy Wall Street has sounded such a chord.  Sure there’s class warfare, one of America’s richest men, Warren Buffett, concluded, “and my class is winning.”

Last week just before I left for Europe, I joined the Chicago “wing” of the Occupy Wall Street movement last week.  I spoke to students who dropped out of school because they couldn’t afford tuition; now they are left with guaranteed student loan debt.

Students graduate with average student loan debts of over $20,000, and the bankers lobby passes a law that forces payment of those debts, even after bankruptcy.  Now students are graduating from college laden with debts and without a job.  Any wonder they are protesting.

I spoke with professors and teachers who have lost their jobs, as state’s face declining revenues – driven in part by the foreclosure/housing crisis and resulting loss of property tax revenues.

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"Lawrence Wittner" - Romney’s Neocon Foreign Policy Plan

By Prof. Lawrence S. Wittner

Global Research, October 11, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27026

Presidential contender Mitt Romney has laid out his vision for a foreign policy in a Romney administration – and it looks like it could have been dreamt up by the same neocons who guided George W. Bush’s disastrous pursuit of permanent U.S. military dominance. 

If current polls are correct, Mitt Romney seems likely to become the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and, quite possibly, the next president of the United States.

Therefore, we should carefully examine his first major foreign and military policy address — delivered on Oct. 7 at the Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina — and ponder the question: Is Mitt Romney ready for the world?

Romney began his speech with a heavy dose of fear. Iran, he warned, could well become “a fully activated nuclear weapons state, threatening its neighbors, [and] dominating the world’s oil supply.” Indeed, “Iran’s suicidal fanatics could blackmail the world.”

In Afghanistan, the Taliban might well “find a path back to power,” with the country sinking “back into the medieval terrors of fundamentalist rule.” Pakistan’s instability could end up placing nuclear weapons “in the hands of Islamic jihadists,” while “the malign socialism” of Venezuela and Cuba could “undermine the prospects of democracy” in Latin America.

Then, of course, there are the heavy dancers. China’s leaders could well take that nation down “a darker path, intimidating their neighbors, brushing aside an inferior American Navy in the Pacific, and building a global alliance of authoritarian states.”

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"Wayne Madsen" - Next Stop is Pakistan

By Wayne Madsen

Global Research, October 10, 2011

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27013

Paraphrasing the old anti-Vietnam War song,

"And it's one, two, three,

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Pakistan"

It does appear that for some Pentagon brass, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta; the CIA under former U.S. Central Command and Afghanistan commander General David Petraeus; and top Republican and Democratic politicians that, indeed, Pakistanis next on the target list of nations that will soon be feeling the military muscle of the United States. Unlike other Muslim nations that have been subjected to U.S. military intervention, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya, Pakistan’s ultimate prize for the West is its nuclear weapons arsenal…

A number of observers, including former senior figures with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, have made no secret of western contingency plans, which appear to be going active, to secure Pakistan’s nuclear weapons in order to eliminate the nation as a nuclear weapons power. The plans have been coordinated between the CIA, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) intelligence service, and Israel’s Mossad.

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"Mimi Whitefield" - China will displace U.S. as top exporter by 2025, HSBC warns

Posted on Wed, Oct. 12, 2011

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/10/12/126971/china-will-displace-us-as-top.html

Mimi Whitefield | The Miami Herald

October 12, 2011 

An HSBC forecast released Tuesday projects U.S. trade will rise by $4.4 trillion, up more than 62 percent, over the next 15 years, even as the U.S. share of the world market shrinks.

The inaugural Trade Connections forecast by the London-based banking and financial group predicts that the U.S. share of the world market will fall from 11.3 percent (2010) to 9 percent by 2025, and that China’s share of world trade will reach 13 percent by then to overtake the United States as the world’s top exporting nation.

In the short-term, U.S. traders are jittery. The latest HSBC Trade Confidence Index, which also was released Tuesday, found that only 49 percent of U.S. respondents expected a slight or significant increase in trade volumes over the next six months. That was a 13 percent drop from the response in the first half of the year and the lowest confidence level among U.S. traders since the survey was first conducted in 2009.

Forty-nine percent of U.S. businesses surveyed also felt the world economy would decline over the next six months, considerably more than the 30 percent who thought so during a survey conducted in February and March.

The surveys were released at a “Doing Business in Latin America’’ conference that HSBC organized at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables on Tuesday as well as at an HSBC Trade Summit in Hamburg, Germany.

One of the few bright spots for American traders was Latin America, according to the trade confidence survey. Twenty-seven percent said it represented the best opportunity for business growth in the next six months. That placed it just ahead of China (26 percent) as the best prospect.

The surveys come at a time when the U.S. Congress is considering a bill that would punish countries with artificially low currencies, allowing the imposition of additional duties on products from nations that subsidize exports by undervaluing their currencies.

China began allowing its yuan to trade within a narrow daily band in 2005 and since then it has appreciated by more than 20 percent against the dollar, but critics say it is still undervalued, making Chinese exports cheaper.

"Robert Reich" - THE SEVEN BIGGEST ECONOMIC LIES

http://www.opednews.com/articles/THE-SEVEN-BIGGEST-ECONOMIC-by-Robert-Reich-111011-432.html

October 11, 2011 By Robert Reich The President's Jobs Bill doesn't have a chance in Congress -- and the Occupiers on Wall Street and elsewhere can't become a national movement for a more equitable society -- unless more Americans know the truth about the economy.    Here's a short (2 minute 30 second) effort to rebut the seven biggest whoppers now being told by those who want to take America backwards. The major points: 1.  Tax cuts for the rich trickle down to everyone else. Baloney. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both sliced taxes on the rich and what happened? Most Americans' wages (measured by the real median wage) began flattening under Reagan and have dropped since George W. Bush. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

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"Michael Lind" - 6 Reasons Why Occupy Wall Street Protests Won't Help Democrats

By Michael Lind, Salon
Posted on October 11, 2011, Printed on October 12, 2011

http://www.alternet.org/story/152693/6_reasons_why_occupy_wall_street_protests_won%27t_help_democrats

Can the Occupy Wall Street movement do for the Democrats what the Tea Party has done for the Republicans? Will a spontaneous grass-roots uprising against the rich neutralize the manipulated “Astroturf” Tea Party movement’s assault on big government, assure a second term for Barack Obama and lead to the new New Deal that progressives have been waiting for?

Alas, probably not. Ever since Richard Nixon won his reelection victory in 1972 by appealing to many of the discontented populists attracted to George Wallace, the Republican Party, formerly a party of big city boardroom types and small-town Rotarians, has been based at least in its rhetoric on right-wing populism. The Tea Party movement is merely an extreme exaggeration of the mainstream GOP.

But the Democrats since George McGovern captured the party’s presidential nomination in the same fateful year of 1972 have been the opposite of a left-wing populist party. Thus while right-wing populism reinforces the existing Republican story about America, any genuine left-wing populism would challenge the basic constituencies and values of the McGovern-to-Obama Democrats. There are six reasons in particular why Democrats are unlikely to benefit as much from populism as Republicans.

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"Progressive Radio Network Mitchell J. Rabin, Mondays @ 6pm(EDT") - Spirit-in-Action & Sacred Stewardship of our Country & Planet

By Mitchell J. Rabin

The world is beginning to percolate with people speaking out and standing up for what they believe. One can do these in any number of ways---through art, theater, media, writing, business and of course, marching and demonstrating. An increasing number of people, largely due to overwhelming frustration and in no few cases despair, are taking their concerns and upset to the streets. This is happening big-time down in Wall Street in the Big Apple in the Occupy Wall St. Movement, which is catching fire across America and now other parts of the world. I've heard that hundreds of "Occupy Cities" are occurring as the wounding upset of outright theft and criminality, thinly disguised as corporate banking "business-as-usual" is being called out for what it is.

The exercise of First Amendment rights protected by the Constitution, which is said to be protected by the sanctity of God, is often a healthy and beautiful exercise. Some police in NYC, however, apparently beg to differ. There have been a few incidents of mass pepper spraying, largely of peaceful women, wholly unprovoked and one of the largest arrests in U.S. history last weekend occurred on the Brooklyn Bridge of around 700 people. In general, the good news is that the demonstration, now completing its third week, has been significantly peaceful, friendly, open to newcomers and affecting world change and attention. The goals of the gathering are coalescing and its purpose gathering coherence. As the focus comes together, so will its power to effect desired outcomes.

This is Democracy-in-Action, which has otherwise become quite marginalized in our society due to numerous causes and for numerous reasons. Suffice it to say here that, as in the classic film Network, people are angry and are saying "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

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