Image above: In 1929 a family seeks the sunny side of life. From (http://midclassillustration.blogspot.com/2009/11/realismrockwellian.html).
By Nicole Foss on 22 November 2010 for The Automatic Earth -
(http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-22-2010-waking-from-suspended.html)
The counter-trend rally from March 2009 has lasted a long time, significantly longer than we initially thought it would. This is not particularly surprising, since rallies can take many complex forms and market timing is probabilistic. We were predicting a rally when most were calling for an accelerated decline. We did that because we see the world in terms of human herding behaviour, which is a vital driver of where we are collectively going. In March 2009, people were almost universally bearish, so we were looking for an upturn.
A new trend takes time to disseminate and become received wisdom, starting slowly, reaching critical mass, and then shifting sharply in the new direction. By the time the new received wisdom has become so entrenched that there is almost universal agreement, there is virtually no one left to act on that opinion and carry that trend any further in the same direction. That was the case in March 2009, and it is the same now, albeit in the opposite direction. Now strongly positive sentiment indicators suggest that the rally is ending, and its end should also bring to an end the long period of extend-and-pretend in which our societies have been sleep-walking for 18 months.
We have been living through a long period of suspended animation, with resurgent confidence and renewed suspension of disbelief taking the pressure off both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. The interventions of central bankers and treasuries appear to work where the prevailing psychology is supportive - where the collective is not in the mood to call their bluffs.
This leads to praise for those same authorities for saving the system, on the assumption that they are in fact in control. In the case of asset markets, values have remained unclear because so few assets have been changing hands. Since there has been no sceptical probing for price discovery, it is still possible to maintain the fantasy that these so-called assets are worth what they once were. They can still be marked on the books of banks at 100 cents on the dollar, giving the banking system the illusion of health.
This is partly because the big players see it as being in their best interests to stick together in order to prevent the cold light of day shining too strongly on the festering contents of their vaults. Such periods always come to an end eventually, typically when interests between the big players diverge. The Fed and the Treasury have been hoping that they can maintain the illusion long enough for confidence to return on its own, but this is not realistic with the unprecedented overhang of leverage in our global financial system.
When the rally ends, that divergence of interests is likely to intensify, and it may not take long to reach breaking point. With the end of the rally, the psychology supportive of cooperative or top-down actions will end. This environment will be very unkind to both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. Plans will fall flat on their faces, bluffs will be called and price discovery (at drastically lower levels) will reprice whole asset classes at a stroke. At this point the insolvency of the banking system will be laid bare.
The repricing of 'assets' such as derivative contracts on the books of banks is comparable to the repricing of a neighbourhood in a property price collapse. Initially, in either case there is a wide gap between what sellers are prepared to accept and what buyers are prepared to pay. So long as no one bridges that gap, there is no price discovery. Eventually, however, a CDS derivative contract holder with an interest in seeing something fail for profit will force it to happen, or a property seller will get get desperate enough to drastically cut his price.
In each case, price discovery results. In the case of property, inventory builds up while the price gap persists. Sellers eventually try to bridge the gap to the downside, but even as they do so, what buyers are prepared to offer is also falling. Those who cut their prices too little, too late, are likely to follow the market all the way down. Whole neighbourhoods can be repriced again and again by the actions of a few sellers at the margins. Most people need do nothing for the price of their asset to fall, placing them potentially underwater on their mortgages. Underwater mortgages in turn become an albatross round the neck of the property market. Liquidity will be limited in real estate for a very long time.
As we discussed in the last post, the leverage of a credit expansion creates excess claims to underlying real wealth, and that means we are all playing a giant game of musical chairs, with perhaps one chair for every hundred people. Extend and pretend is the period of time when the music is still playing and everyone is frantically dancing, even those who understand the game, as many of them are arrogant enough to think they will be able to get out at a top. This will prove not to be true for many, hence even many very wealthy people are going to be ruined, as they were in the Great Depression. To use another analogy, cashing out at a top bears some resemblance to a fire in a theatre, where everyone is trying to get out at once through a small exit.
This is not going to play out slowly, although the build up can be tortuously slow. People should be thinking of the extra time they have had as a result of an extended rally as a precious gift, not as a reason for complaint.
Deleveraging will come soon enough, and when it does it will be devastating. We should appreciate every day we get before it begins in earnest, as an opportunity to put our houses in order rather than to wring another ounce of profit out of a dying system by continuing to play the game. We need to walk calmly away from the game before the music stops in order to minimize the consequences of being wrong. Early is fine, but late is not.
.
Walking in suspended animation
SUBHEAD: We need to walk calmly away from the game before the music stops in order to minimize the consequences of being wrong.
Image above: In 1929 a family seeks the sunny side of life. From (http://midclassillustration.blogspot.com/2009/11/realismrockwellian.html).
By Nicole Foss on 22 November 2010 for The Automatic Earth -
(http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-22-2010-waking-from-suspended.html)
The counter-trend rally from March 2009 has lasted a long time, significantly longer than we initially thought it would. This is not particularly surprising, since rallies can take many complex forms and market timing is probabilistic. We were predicting a rally when most were calling for an accelerated decline. We did that because we see the world in terms of human herding behaviour, which is a vital driver of where we are collectively going. In March 2009, people were almost universally bearish, so we were looking for an upturn.
A new trend takes time to disseminate and become received wisdom, starting slowly, reaching critical mass, and then shifting sharply in the new direction. By the time the new received wisdom has become so entrenched that there is almost universal agreement, there is virtually no one left to act on that opinion and carry that trend any further in the same direction. That was the case in March 2009, and it is the same now, albeit in the opposite direction. Now strongly positive sentiment indicators suggest that the rally is ending, and its end should also bring to an end the long period of extend-and-pretend in which our societies have been sleep-walking for 18 months.
We have been living through a long period of suspended animation, with resurgent confidence and renewed suspension of disbelief taking the pressure off both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. The interventions of central bankers and treasuries appear to work where the prevailing psychology is supportive - where the collective is not in the mood to call their bluffs.
This leads to praise for those same authorities for saving the system, on the assumption that they are in fact in control. In the case of asset markets, values have remained unclear because so few assets have been changing hands. Since there has been no sceptical probing for price discovery, it is still possible to maintain the fantasy that these so-called assets are worth what they once were. They can still be marked on the books of banks at 100 cents on the dollar, giving the banking system the illusion of health.
This is partly because the big players see it as being in their best interests to stick together in order to prevent the cold light of day shining too strongly on the festering contents of their vaults. Such periods always come to an end eventually, typically when interests between the big players diverge. The Fed and the Treasury have been hoping that they can maintain the illusion long enough for confidence to return on its own, but this is not realistic with the unprecedented overhang of leverage in our global financial system.
When the rally ends, that divergence of interests is likely to intensify, and it may not take long to reach breaking point. With the end of the rally, the psychology supportive of cooperative or top-down actions will end. This environment will be very unkind to both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. Plans will fall flat on their faces, bluffs will be called and price discovery (at drastically lower levels) will reprice whole asset classes at a stroke. At this point the insolvency of the banking system will be laid bare.
The repricing of 'assets' such as derivative contracts on the books of banks is comparable to the repricing of a neighbourhood in a property price collapse. Initially, in either case there is a wide gap between what sellers are prepared to accept and what buyers are prepared to pay. So long as no one bridges that gap, there is no price discovery. Eventually, however, a CDS derivative contract holder with an interest in seeing something fail for profit will force it to happen, or a property seller will get get desperate enough to drastically cut his price.
In each case, price discovery results. In the case of property, inventory builds up while the price gap persists. Sellers eventually try to bridge the gap to the downside, but even as they do so, what buyers are prepared to offer is also falling. Those who cut their prices too little, too late, are likely to follow the market all the way down. Whole neighbourhoods can be repriced again and again by the actions of a few sellers at the margins. Most people need do nothing for the price of their asset to fall, placing them potentially underwater on their mortgages. Underwater mortgages in turn become an albatross round the neck of the property market. Liquidity will be limited in real estate for a very long time.
As we discussed in the last post, the leverage of a credit expansion creates excess claims to underlying real wealth, and that means we are all playing a giant game of musical chairs, with perhaps one chair for every hundred people. Extend and pretend is the period of time when the music is still playing and everyone is frantically dancing, even those who understand the game, as many of them are arrogant enough to think they will be able to get out at a top. This will prove not to be true for many, hence even many very wealthy people are going to be ruined, as they were in the Great Depression. To use another analogy, cashing out at a top bears some resemblance to a fire in a theatre, where everyone is trying to get out at once through a small exit.
This is not going to play out slowly, although the build up can be tortuously slow. People should be thinking of the extra time they have had as a result of an extended rally as a precious gift, not as a reason for complaint.
Deleveraging will come soon enough, and when it does it will be devastating. We should appreciate every day we get before it begins in earnest, as an opportunity to put our houses in order rather than to wring another ounce of profit out of a dying system by continuing to play the game. We need to walk calmly away from the game before the music stops in order to minimize the consequences of being wrong. Early is fine, but late is not.
.
Image above: In 1929 a family seeks the sunny side of life. From (http://midclassillustration.blogspot.com/2009/11/realismrockwellian.html).
By Nicole Foss on 22 November 2010 for The Automatic Earth -
(http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/11/november-22-2010-waking-from-suspended.html)
The counter-trend rally from March 2009 has lasted a long time, significantly longer than we initially thought it would. This is not particularly surprising, since rallies can take many complex forms and market timing is probabilistic. We were predicting a rally when most were calling for an accelerated decline. We did that because we see the world in terms of human herding behaviour, which is a vital driver of where we are collectively going. In March 2009, people were almost universally bearish, so we were looking for an upturn.
A new trend takes time to disseminate and become received wisdom, starting slowly, reaching critical mass, and then shifting sharply in the new direction. By the time the new received wisdom has become so entrenched that there is almost universal agreement, there is virtually no one left to act on that opinion and carry that trend any further in the same direction. That was the case in March 2009, and it is the same now, albeit in the opposite direction. Now strongly positive sentiment indicators suggest that the rally is ending, and its end should also bring to an end the long period of extend-and-pretend in which our societies have been sleep-walking for 18 months.
We have been living through a long period of suspended animation, with resurgent confidence and renewed suspension of disbelief taking the pressure off both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. The interventions of central bankers and treasuries appear to work where the prevailing psychology is supportive - where the collective is not in the mood to call their bluffs.
This leads to praise for those same authorities for saving the system, on the assumption that they are in fact in control. In the case of asset markets, values have remained unclear because so few assets have been changing hands. Since there has been no sceptical probing for price discovery, it is still possible to maintain the fantasy that these so-called assets are worth what they once were. They can still be marked on the books of banks at 100 cents on the dollar, giving the banking system the illusion of health.
This is partly because the big players see it as being in their best interests to stick together in order to prevent the cold light of day shining too strongly on the festering contents of their vaults. Such periods always come to an end eventually, typically when interests between the big players diverge. The Fed and the Treasury have been hoping that they can maintain the illusion long enough for confidence to return on its own, but this is not realistic with the unprecedented overhang of leverage in our global financial system.
When the rally ends, that divergence of interests is likely to intensify, and it may not take long to reach breaking point. With the end of the rally, the psychology supportive of cooperative or top-down actions will end. This environment will be very unkind to both central authorities and illiquid asset markets. Plans will fall flat on their faces, bluffs will be called and price discovery (at drastically lower levels) will reprice whole asset classes at a stroke. At this point the insolvency of the banking system will be laid bare.
The repricing of 'assets' such as derivative contracts on the books of banks is comparable to the repricing of a neighbourhood in a property price collapse. Initially, in either case there is a wide gap between what sellers are prepared to accept and what buyers are prepared to pay. So long as no one bridges that gap, there is no price discovery. Eventually, however, a CDS derivative contract holder with an interest in seeing something fail for profit will force it to happen, or a property seller will get get desperate enough to drastically cut his price.
In each case, price discovery results. In the case of property, inventory builds up while the price gap persists. Sellers eventually try to bridge the gap to the downside, but even as they do so, what buyers are prepared to offer is also falling. Those who cut their prices too little, too late, are likely to follow the market all the way down. Whole neighbourhoods can be repriced again and again by the actions of a few sellers at the margins. Most people need do nothing for the price of their asset to fall, placing them potentially underwater on their mortgages. Underwater mortgages in turn become an albatross round the neck of the property market. Liquidity will be limited in real estate for a very long time.
As we discussed in the last post, the leverage of a credit expansion creates excess claims to underlying real wealth, and that means we are all playing a giant game of musical chairs, with perhaps one chair for every hundred people. Extend and pretend is the period of time when the music is still playing and everyone is frantically dancing, even those who understand the game, as many of them are arrogant enough to think they will be able to get out at a top. This will prove not to be true for many, hence even many very wealthy people are going to be ruined, as they were in the Great Depression. To use another analogy, cashing out at a top bears some resemblance to a fire in a theatre, where everyone is trying to get out at once through a small exit.
This is not going to play out slowly, although the build up can be tortuously slow. People should be thinking of the extra time they have had as a result of an extended rally as a precious gift, not as a reason for complaint.
Deleveraging will come soon enough, and when it does it will be devastating. We should appreciate every day we get before it begins in earnest, as an opportunity to put our houses in order rather than to wring another ounce of profit out of a dying system by continuing to play the game. We need to walk calmly away from the game before the music stops in order to minimize the consequences of being wrong. Early is fine, but late is not.
.
Kauai Beekeepers Meetings
SOURCE: James Trujillo (jtrujill@hawaii.edu)
SUHHEAD: Two meetings for those interested in bee keeping scheduled for November 29th and 30th.
Image above: Honey bee on draws nectar from flower. From (http://townipproject09.wikispaces.com/Disappearance+of+Honey+Bees).
The Kauai Beekeepers' Association and the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture invite Kaua'i beekeepers and persons interested in learning more about beekeeping to a free presentation by Rob Snyder, a member of Bee Laboratory team at Pennsylvania State University where he organizes and assist in the National Honey Bee Survey. The Penn State Bee Laboratory is recognized nationally as one of the premier labs conducting research on varroa, diseases associated with varroa and colony collapse disorder.
Mr. Snyder will be giving two separate presentations on Monday evening and Tuesday morning. The first - Beekeeping Basics, is geared toward beginning beekeepers and hobbyist and will address a variety of issues including how to keep your hives healthy and basic good practices for beekeeping.
WHAT:
Basic Beekeeping
WHERE:
Kauai Community College at Tech 114
WHEN:
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 6:00 PM
The second presentation is entitled “Preparing for Varroa and Small Hive Beetle”. This presentation is oriented to more advanced beekeepers and will focus on what beekeepers can do now to prepare for varroa and small hive beetle.
WHAT:
Preparing for Varroa and Small Hive Beetle
WHEN:
Tuesday. November 30, 2010 at 9:00 AM
WHERE:
HDOA Conference Room
4398A Pua Loke Street
INFO:
Darcy Oishi
CALL: (808) 973‐9524
EMAIL: darcy.e.oishi@hawaii.gov
Jimmy Trujillo
CALL:(808) 346 7725
EMAIL: jtrujill@hawaii.edu
WEBSITE:
http://kauaibuzz.blogspot.co
.
.
Image above: Honey bee on draws nectar from flower. From (http://townipproject09.wikispaces.com/Disappearance+of+Honey+Bees).
The Kauai Beekeepers' Association and the Hawaii State Department of Agriculture invite Kaua'i beekeepers and persons interested in learning more about beekeeping to a free presentation by Rob Snyder, a member of Bee Laboratory team at Pennsylvania State University where he organizes and assist in the National Honey Bee Survey. The Penn State Bee Laboratory is recognized nationally as one of the premier labs conducting research on varroa, diseases associated with varroa and colony collapse disorder.
Mr. Snyder will be giving two separate presentations on Monday evening and Tuesday morning. The first - Beekeeping Basics, is geared toward beginning beekeepers and hobbyist and will address a variety of issues including how to keep your hives healthy and basic good practices for beekeeping.
WHAT:
Basic Beekeeping
WHERE:
Kauai Community College at Tech 114
WHEN:
Monday, November 29, 2010 at 6:00 PM
The second presentation is entitled “Preparing for Varroa and Small Hive Beetle”. This presentation is oriented to more advanced beekeepers and will focus on what beekeepers can do now to prepare for varroa and small hive beetle.
WHAT:
Preparing for Varroa and Small Hive Beetle
WHEN:
Tuesday. November 30, 2010 at 9:00 AM
WHERE:
HDOA Conference Room
4398A Pua Loke Street
INFO:
Darcy Oishi
CALL: (808) 973‐9524
EMAIL: darcy.e.oishi@hawaii.gov
Jimmy Trujillo
CALL:(808) 346 7725
EMAIL: jtrujill@hawaii.edu
WEBSITE:
http://kauaibuzz.blogspot.co
.
.
Is Bank of America Doomed?
SUBHEAD: BOA & Countrywide mortgage policies of retaining loan documents may yet bankrupt the bank.
Image above: Homeowners threatened by BOA foreclosures in Worceestor, MA. From (http://worcester.indymedia.org/node/39604).
By Abagail Field on 22 November 2010 in AOL Daily Finance -
(http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/credit/bank-of-america-mortgage-document-errors-trouble-countrywide/19728402/)
Testimony in a New Jersey foreclosure case decided last week may spell big trouble for Bank of America (BAC). If what one bank employee said on the stand proves to be accurate, paperwork problems it acquired when it purchased the failing mortgage provider Countrywide in 2008 could leave BofA on the hook for billions of dollars.
Linda DiMartini, a supervisor and operational team leader for the Litigation Management Department of BAC Home Loans Servicing, testified in the foreclosure case of John T. Kemp that it was "customary for Countrywide to maintain possession of the original note and related documents."
If that's true, then Bank of America may discover that it has millions of loans on its books that it thought it had transferred to trusts that issued mortgage backed securities, because 96% of Countrywide loans were ostensibly securitized. As the Congressional Oversight Panel explained, that outcome alone could cause massive damage to a bank's balance sheet. And as bad as that would be, it isn't the only problem that could result from Countrywide hanging on to the notes.
If the mortgage-backed securities aren't in fact "mortgage-backed," investors who bought them could be able to force BofA to buy the securities back. A significant number of buybacks could on its own destroy BofA's balance sheet. Nor could BofA stave off either outcome retroactively by delivering those notes today. First, the contracts that created the trusts would typically forbid transferring the loans into the trusts now. Second, even if somehow that could happen, such a transfer would destroy the special tax status the mortgage backed securities enjoy and give the investors a different reason to put back the securities or sue over them.
Retaining Documents While Servicing the Loans
At oral argument, BofA's attorney conceded that DiMartini's testimony was accurate and that as a result, BofA had failed to deliver the note at issue in that case to the trust under the contract or otherwise applicable law:
Image above: Homeowners threatened by BOA foreclosures in Worceestor, MA. From (http://worcester.indymedia.org/node/39604).
By Abagail Field on 22 November 2010 in AOL Daily Finance -
(http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/credit/bank-of-america-mortgage-document-errors-trouble-countrywide/19728402/)
Testimony in a New Jersey foreclosure case decided last week may spell big trouble for Bank of America (BAC). If what one bank employee said on the stand proves to be accurate, paperwork problems it acquired when it purchased the failing mortgage provider Countrywide in 2008 could leave BofA on the hook for billions of dollars.
Linda DiMartini, a supervisor and operational team leader for the Litigation Management Department of BAC Home Loans Servicing, testified in the foreclosure case of John T. Kemp that it was "customary for Countrywide to maintain possession of the original note and related documents."
If that's true, then Bank of America may discover that it has millions of loans on its books that it thought it had transferred to trusts that issued mortgage backed securities, because 96% of Countrywide loans were ostensibly securitized. As the Congressional Oversight Panel explained, that outcome alone could cause massive damage to a bank's balance sheet. And as bad as that would be, it isn't the only problem that could result from Countrywide hanging on to the notes.
If the mortgage-backed securities aren't in fact "mortgage-backed," investors who bought them could be able to force BofA to buy the securities back. A significant number of buybacks could on its own destroy BofA's balance sheet. Nor could BofA stave off either outcome retroactively by delivering those notes today. First, the contracts that created the trusts would typically forbid transferring the loans into the trusts now. Second, even if somehow that could happen, such a transfer would destroy the special tax status the mortgage backed securities enjoy and give the investors a different reason to put back the securities or sue over them.
Retaining Documents While Servicing the Loans
At oral argument, BofA's attorney conceded that DiMartini's testimony was accurate and that as a result, BofA had failed to deliver the note at issue in that case to the trust under the contract or otherwise applicable law:
The judge ominously replied: "They take their chances." Bank of America, via its spokesman Larry Platt, who is a partner at K&L Gates in Washington, told DailyFinance:"Although Your Honor is right and the UCC and the Master Servicing Agreement apparently requires [physical delivery of the note to the trustee], procedure seems to indicate that they don't physically move documents from place to place because of the fear of loss and the trouble involved and the people handling them. They basically execute the necessary documents and retain them as long as servicing's retained. The documents only leave when servicing is released."
Bruce Levitt, the attorney representing Kemp commented:"Countrywide's policy and practice has been and remains to fully comply with the pooling and servicing agreements, including forwarding any necessary documents to the trustee. The associate whose testimony was cited in the ruling was asked about a process outside her normal scope of responsibilities and in an entirely different department from where she worked. A review of her testimony shows she later clarified that she was not comfortable testifying about the circumstances under which original loan documents would move, or whether and to what extent they ever are moved. This would include the initial delivery of original loan documents to the trustee."
Moreover, if Platt is right and Countrywide always delivered the notes, why did BofA's attorney in the Kemp case make the admission to the contrary quoted above? If Countrywide didn't deliver the notes, how many loans are at issue? Well the loan in question in the specific court case -- Kemp v. Countrywide Home Loans -- was supposedly securitized in June 2006. So securitizations involving Countrywide loans for at least some time before that date and certainly thereafter are affected. And this case begs the wider question: Is it really possible that it was only Countrywide that followed the practice of not physically delivering the documents of securitized mortgages? "There's been talk on the street for years that banks didn't send the notes up the line when they did securitizations," explained Max Gardner, a consumer bankruptcy attorney not affiliated with this case but who has litigated foreclosures based on bad bank documents for years. "But this is the first time I've seen someone under oath admit there was a policy not to deliver the notes. I had to read it twice to make sure that's really what she said, but she did: It was customary." The Kemp Case Bank of America made at least three attempts to fix its note problem in the context of the Kemp bankruptcy case. To prove it had the right to foreclose on Kemp's house, BofA needed to show that Bank of New York, the trustee for the 2006 securitization, had the right to foreclose. If BoNY had the right to foreclose, BofA could foreclose on its behalf. But for BoNY to have that right, the trust had to have the note and mortgage, which is why Countrywide's hanging on to the notes was a problem. One effort BofA made was to file an assignment of mortgage and note to BoNY from March 2007. But under the contracts for securitizations in general -- those under New York law, which is most of them -- that assignment would have been too late, and thus void. The judge didn't address that issue, simply noting that the note wasn't delivered, so the assignment didn't cure BofA's problem. DiMartini also admitted that another document -- an "allonge" -- that BofA submitted to try to solve its note problem hadn't been created in 2006, as BofA was implicitly suggesting by giving it to the court, but had been created only a few weeks before, specifically for the Kemp trial. And created sloppily at that: It referred to the trust as "6006-8" instead of "2006-8." Again, the judge didn't address all the problems that flowed from the timing of the document's creation because the note was not delivered, which meant that BofA's problem remained. BofA made at least one additional attempt to solve its note problem: At one point, it filed a "lost note affidavit" claiming the original note had been lost. Given DiMartini's testimony and the bank's later "discovery" of the note, BofA's attorney asked the judge to disregard that filing. Clouded Title Means No Foreclosure For Kemp, the upshot of all these document problems is that the claim of Bank of New York via BofA to get paid under Kemp's mortgage was disallowed by the bankruptcy judge. Assuming the case follows the normal course going forward, that will mean that neither bank will be able to foreclose on Kemp's house, and his mortgage debt will become unsecured debt -- the banks will have to stand in line with the credit card issuers and get paid only a portion of the principal. If it's true the securitization trusts routinely didn't get notes delivered from Countrywide, then all those properties -- millions of properties -- could have clouded titles. That hurts many people outside of the bank, because clouded title makes selling those properties much harder, and leaves the current owners in a kind of legal limbo. As the Congressional Oversight Panel warned:"DeMartini was flown to New Jersey from California to testify as the document custodian, the person BofA chose to get the note and other documents admitted as evidence. She was refreshingly unrehearsed; she testified with confidence and candor. She wanted the judge to understand that BofA was very careful with the notes."
So much for the banks' claims that these paperwork problems are technicalities that will be quickly resolved.Clear and uncontested property rights are the foundation of the housing market. If these rights fall into question, that foundation could collapse. ... If such problems were to arise on a large scale, the housing market could experience even greater disruptions than have already occurred, resulting in significant harm to major financial institutions.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/ar7Mlc
NATO Dominated by USA
SOURCE: Fred Dente (koikoi1@hawaii.rr.com)
SUBHEAD: NATO'S true role is the US grand strategy of encircling Russia and targeting China.
Image above: NATO flag. From (http://www.armnews.com/view/article/15200/Turkey-to-seek-NATO-consensus-on-missile/1).
By Diana Johnstone on 18 November 2010 for Global Research -
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21999)
On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”. Among topics of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden. There will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”.
Most of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag.
The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious discussion of strategy.
This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own strategy. NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy. Its only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United States. But even that is an elusive phantom. American leaders seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining strategies.
One who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to destroy the Soviet Union. Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”. As for NATO, he described it as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.”
The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”. And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.
Wait a minute, does that make sense? No, but it is the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the natives of distant lands.
A strategy is not a consensus written by committees.
The American method of “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus” wears down whatever resistance may occasionally appear. Thus Germany and France initially resisted Georgian membership in NATO, as well as the notorious “missile shield”, both seen as blatant provocations apt to set off a new arms race with Russia and damage fruitful German and French relations with Moscow, for no useful purpose. But the United States does not take no for an answer, and keeps repeating its imperatives until resistance fades. The one recent exception was the French refusal to join the invasion of Iraq, but the angry U.S. reaction scared the conservative French political class into supporting the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy.
In search of “threats” and “challenges”
The very heart of what passes for a “strategic concept” was first declared and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO defied international law, the United Nations and its own original charter by waging an aggressive war outside its defensive perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed NATO from a defensive to an offensive alliance. Ten years later, the godmother of that war, Madeleine Albright, was picked to chair the “group of experts” that spent several months holding seminars, consultations and meetings preparing the Lisbon agenda. Prominent in these gatherings were Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance giant, and the former chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer. These ruling class figures are not exactly military strategists, but their participation should reassure the international business community that their worldwide interests are being taken into consideration.
Indeed, a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last year seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance industry. NATO, he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea levels, large-scale population movement into inhabited areas, sometimes across borders, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign sources, etc.
Most of the enumerated threats cannot even remotely be construed as calling for military solutions. Surely no "rogue states" or "outposts of tyranny" or "international terrorists" are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen presents them as challenges to NATO.
On the other hand, some of the results of these scenarios, such as population movements caused by rising sea levels or drought, can indeed be seen as potentially causing crises. The ominous aspect of the enumeration is precisely that all such problems are eagerly snatched up by NATO as requiring military solutions.
The main threat to NATO is its own obsolescence. And the search for a “strategic concept” is the search for pretexts to keep it going.
NATO’s Threat to the World
While it searches for threats, NATO itself is a growing threat to the world. The basic threat is its contribution to strengthening the U.S.-led tendency to abandon diplomacy and negotiations in favor of military force. This is seen clearly in Rasmussen’s inclusion of weather phenomena in his list of threats to NATO, when they should, instead, be problems for international diplomacy and negotiations. The growing danger is that Western diplomacy is dying. The United States has set the tone: we are virtuous, we have the power, the rest of the world must obey or else.
Diplomacy is despised as weakness. The State Department has long since ceased to be at the core of U.S. foreign policy. With its vast network of military bases the world over, as well as military attachés in embassies and countless missions to client countries, the Pentagon is incomparably more powerful and influential in the world than the State Department.
Recent Secretaries of State, far from seeking diplomatic alternatives to war, have actually played a leading role in advocating war instead of diplomacy, whether Madeleine Albright in the Balkans or Colin Powell waving fake test tubes in the United Nations Security Council. Policy is defined by the National Security Advisor, various privately-funded think tanks and the Pentagon, with interference from a Congress which itself is composed of politicians eager to obtain military contracts for their constituencies.
NATO is dragging Washington’s European allies down the same path. Just as the Pentagon has replaced the State Department, NATO itself is being used by the United States as a potential substitute for the United Nations. The 1999 “Kosovo war” was a first major step in that direction. Sarkozy’s France, after rejoining the NATO joint command, is gutting the traditionally skilled French foreign service, cutting back on civilian representation throughout the world. The European Union foreign service now being created by Lady Ashton will have no policy and no authority of its own.
Bureaucratic Inertia
Behind its appeals to “common values”, NATO is driven above all by bureaucratic inertia. The alliance itself is an excrescence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even university funding. The interplay of these varied interests converge to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world conquest.
An ever-expanding global network of somewhere between 800 and a thousand military bases on foreign soil.
Bilateral military accords with client states which offer training while obliging them to purchase U.S.-made weapons and redesign their armed forces away from national defense toward internal security (i.e. repression) and possible integration into U.S.-led wars of aggression.
Use of these close relationships with local armed forces to influence the domestic politics of weaker states.
Perpetual military exercises with client states, which provide the Pentagon with perfect knowledge of the military potential of client states, integrate them into the U.S. military machine, and sustain a “ready for war” mentality.
Deployment of its network of bases, “allies” and military exercises so as to surround, isolate, intimidate and eventually provoke major nations perceived as potential rivals, notably Russia and China.
The implicit strategy of the United States, as perceived by its actions, is a gradual military conquest to ensure world domination. One original feature of this world conquest project is that, although extremely active, day after day, it is virtually ignored by the vast majority of the population of the conquering nation, as well as by its most closely dominated allies, i.e., the NATO states.
The endless propaganda about “terrorist threats” (the fleas on the elephant) and other diversions keep most Americans totally unaware of what is going on, all the more easily in that Americans are almost uniquely ignorant of the rest of the world and thus totally uninterested. The U.S. may bomb a country off the map before more than a small fraction of Americans know where to find it.
The main task of U.S. strategists, whose careers take them between think tanks, boards of directors, consultancy firms and the government, is to justify this giant mechanism much more than to steer it. To a large extent, it steers itself.
Since the collapse of the “Soviet threat”, policy-makers have settled for invisible or potential threats. U.S. military doctrine has as its aim to move preventively against any potential rival to U.S. world hegemony. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia retains the largest arsenal outside the United States, and China is a rapidly rising economic power. Neither one threatens the United States or Western Europe. On the contrary, both are ready and willing to concentrate on peaceful business.
However, they are increasingly alarmed by the military encirclement and provocative military exercises carried on by the United States on their very doorsteps. The implicit aggressive strategy may be obscure to most Americans, but leaders in the targeted countries are quite certain they understand what it is going on.
The Russia-Iran-Israel Triangle
Currently, the main explicit “enemy” is Iran.
Washington claims that the “missile shield” which it is forcing on its European allies is designed to defend the West from Iran. But the Russians see quite clearly that the missile shield is aimed at themselves. First of all, they understand quite clearly that Iran has no such missiles nor any possible motive for using them against the West. It is perfectly obvious to all informed analysts that even if Iran developed nuclear weapons and missiles, they would be conceived as a deterrent against Israel, the regional nuclear superpower which enjoys a free hand attacking neighboring countries. Israel does not want to lose that freedom to attack, and thus naturally opposes the Iranian deterrent.
Israeli propagandists scream loudly about the threat from Iran, and have worked incessantly to infect NATO with their paranoia.
Israel has even been described as “Global NATO’s 29th member”. Israeli officials have assiduously worked on a receptive Madeleine Albright to make sure that Israeli interests are included in the “Strategic Concept”. During the past five years, Israel and NATO have been taking part in joint naval exercises in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean, as well as joint ground exercises from Brussels to Ukraine. On October 16, 2006, Israel became the first non-European country to reach a so-called “Individual Cooperation Program” agreement with NATO for cooperation in 27 different areas.
It is worth noting that Israel is the only country outside Europe which the U.S. includes in the area of responsibility of its European Command (rather than the Central Command that covers the rest of the Middle East).
At a NATO-Israel Relations seminar in Herzliya on October 24, 2006, the Israeli foreign minister at the time, Tzipi Livni, declared that "The alliance between NATO and Israel is only natural....Israel and NATO share a common strategic vision. In many ways, Israel is the front line defending our common way of life."
Not everybody in European countries would consider that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine reflect “our common way of life”.
This is no doubt one reason why the deepening union between NATO and Israel has not taken the open form of NATO membership. Especially after the savage attack on Gaza, such a move would arouse objections in European countries. Nevertheless, Israel continues to invite itself into NATO, ardently supported, of course, by its faithful followers in the U.S. Congress.
The principal cause of this growing Israel-NATO symbiosis has been identified by Mearsheimer and Walt: the vigorous and powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
Israeli lobbies are also strong in France, Britain and the UK. They have zealously developed the theme of Israel as the “front line” in the defense of “Western values” against militant Islam. The fact that militant Islam is largely a product of that “front line” creates a perfect vicious circle.
Israel’s aggressive stance toward its regional neighbors would be a serious liability for NATO, apt to be dragged into wars of Israel’s choosing which are by no means in the interest of Europe.
However, there is one subtle strategic advantage in the Israeli connection which the United States seems to be using… against Russia.
By subscribing to the hysterical “Iranian threat” theory, the United States can continue to claim with a straight face that the planned missile shield is directed against Iran, not Russia. This cannot be expected to convince the Russians. But it can be used to make their protests sound “paranoid” – at least to the ears of the Western faithful. Dear me, what can they be complaining about when we “reset” our relations with Moscow and invite the Russian president to our “Strategic Concept” happy gathering?
However, the Russians know quite well that:
The missile shield is to be constructed surrounding Russia, which does have missiles, which it keeps for deterrence.
By neutralizing Russian missiles, the United States would free its own hand to attack Russia, knowing that the Russia could not retaliate.
Therefore, whatever is said, the missile shield, if it worked, would serve to facilitate eventual aggression against Russia.
Encircling Russia
The encirclement of Russia continues in the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Arctic circle.
United States officials continue to claim that Ukraine must join NATO.
Just this week, in a New York Times column, Zbigniew’s son Ian J. Brzezinski advised Obama against abandoning the “vision” of a “whole, free and secure” Europe including “eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union.” The fact that the vast majority of the people of Ukraine are against NATO membership is of no account.
For the current scion of the noble Brzezinski dynasty it is the minority that counts. Abandoning the vision “undercuts those in Georgia and Ukraine who see their future in Europe. It reinforces Kremlin aspirations for a sphere of influence…”
The notion that “the Kremlin” aspires to a “sphere of influence” in Ukraine is absurd considering the extremely close historic links between Russia and Ukraine, whose capital Kiev was the cradle of the Russian state. But the Brzezinski family hailed from Galicia, the part of Western Ukraine which once belonged to Poland, and which is the center of the anti-Russian minority. U.S. foreign policy is all too frequently influenced by such foreign rivalries of which the vast majority of Americans are totally ignorant.
Relentless U.S. insistence on absorbing Ukraine continues despite the fact that it would imply expelling the Russian Black Sea fleet from its base in the Crimean peninsula, where the local population is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and pro-Russian. This is a recipe for war with Russia if ever there was one.
And meanwhile, U.S. officials continue to declare their support for Georgia, whose American-trained president openly hopes to bring NATO support into his next war against Russia.
Aside from provocative naval maneuvers in the Black Sea, the United States, NATO and (as yet) non-NATO members Sweden and Finland regularly carry out major military exercises in the Baltic Sea, virtually in sight of the Russia cities of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad. These exercises involve thousands of ground troops, hundreds of aircraft including F-15 jet fighters, AWACS, as well as naval forces including the U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12, landing craft and warships from a dozen countries.
Perhaps most ominous of all, in the Arctic region, the United States has been persistently engaging Canada and the Scandinavian states (including Denmark via Greenland) in a military deployment openly directed against Russia. The point of these Arctic deployment was stated by Fogh Rasmussen when he mentioned, among “threats” to be met by NATO, the fact that “Arctic ice is retreating, for resources that had, until now, been covered under ice.”
Now, one might consider that this uncovering of resources would be an opportunity for cooperation in exploiting them. But that is not the official U.S. mindset.
Last October, US Admiral James G Stavridis, supreme Nato commander for Europe, said global warming and a race for resources could lead to a conflict in the Arctic. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, in charge of Alaska’s coastline, said Russian shipping activity in the Arctic Ocean was “of particular concern” for the US and called for more military facilities in the region.
The US Geological Service believes that the Arctic contains up to a quarter of the world’s unexplored deposits of oil and gas. Under the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal state is entitled to a 200-nautical mile EEZ and can claim a further 150 miles if it proves that the seabed is a continuation of its continental shelf.
Russia is applying to make this claim.
After pushing for the rest of the world to adopt the Convention, the United States Senate has still not ratified the Treaty.
In January 2009, NATO declared the “High North” to be “of strategic interest to the Alliance,” and since then, NATO has held several major war games clearly preparing for eventual conflict with Russia over Arctic resources.
Russia largely dismantled its defenses in the Arctic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has called for negotiating compromises over resource control.
Last September, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for joint efforts to protect the fragile ecosystem, attract foreign investment, promote environmentally friendly technologies and work to resolve disputes through international law.
But the United States, as usual, prefers to settle the issue by throwing its weight around. This could lead to a new arms race in the Arctic, and even to armed clashes.
Despite all these provocative moves, it is most unlikely that the United States actually seeks war with Russia, although skirmishes and incidents here and there cannot be ruled out. The U.S. policy appears to be to encircle and intimidate Russia to such an extent that it accepts a semi-satellite status that neutralizes it in the anticipated future conflict with China.
Target China
The only reason to target China is like the proverbial reason to climb the mountain: it is there. It is big. And the US must be on top of everything.
The strategy for dominating China is the same as for Russia. It is classic warfare: encirclement, siege, more or less clandestine support for internal disorder. As examples of this strategy:
The United States is provocatively strengthening its military presence along the Pacific shores of China, offering “protection against China” to East Asian countries.
During the Cold War, when India got its armaments from the Soviet Union and struck a non-aligned posture, the United States armed Pakistan as its main regional ally. Now the U.S. is shifting its favors to India, in order to keep India out of the orbit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to build it as a counterweight to China.
The United States and its allies support any internal dissidence that might weaken China, whether it is the Dalai Lama, the Uighurs, or Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident.
The Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Liu Xiaobo by a committee of Norwegian legislators headed by Thorbjorn Jagland, Norway’s echo of Tony Blair, who has served as Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister, and has been one of his country’s main cheerleaders for NATO.
At a NATO-sponsored conference of European parliamentarians last year, Jagland declared: “When we are not able to stop tyranny, war starts. This is why NATO is indispensable. NATO is the only multilateral military organization rooted in international law. It is an organization that the U.N. can use when necessary — to stop tyranny, like we did in the Balkans.” This is an astoundingly bold misstatement of fact, considering that NATO openly defied international law and the United Nations to make war in the Balkans – where in reality there was ethnic conflict, but no “tyranny”.
In announcing the choice of Liu, the Norwegian Nobel committee, headed by Jagland, declared that it “has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace." The “close connection”, to follow the logic of Jagland’s own statements, is that if a foreign state fails to respect human rights according to Western interpretations, it may be bombed, as NATO bombed Yugoslavia. Indeed, the very powers that make the most noise about “human rights”, notably the United States and Britain, are the ones making the most wars all over the world. The Norwegian’s statements make it clear that granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu (who in his youth spent time in Norway) amounted in reality to an endorsement of NATO.
“Democracies” to replace the United Nations
The European members of NATO add relatively little to the military power of the United States. Their contribution is above all political. Their presence maintains the illusion of an “International Community”. The world conquest being pursued by the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon can be presented as the crusade by the world’s “democracies” to spread their enlightened political order to the rest of a recalcitrant world.
The Euro-Atlantic governments proclaim their “democracy” as proof of their absolute right to intervene in the affairs of the rest of the world. On the basis of the fallacy that “human rights are necessary for peace”, they proclaim their right to make war.
A crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.
Note: Grateful thanks to Rick Rozoff for his constant flow of important information.
• Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions:
(http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delusions/dp/158367084X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287635627&sr=8-1 )
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
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Image above: NATO flag. From (http://www.armnews.com/view/article/15200/Turkey-to-seek-NATO-consensus-on-missile/1).
By Diana Johnstone on 18 November 2010 for Global Research -
(http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21999)
On November 19 and 20, NATO leaders meet in Lisbon for what is billed as a summit on “NATO’s Strategic Concept”. Among topics of discussion will be an array of scary “threats”, from cyberwar to climate change, as well as nice protective things like nuclear weapons and a high tech Maginot Line boondoggle supposed to stop enemy missiles in mid-air. The NATO leaders will be unable to avoid talking about the war in Afghanistan, that endless crusade that unites the civilized world against the elusive Old Man of the Mountain, Hassan i Sabah, eleventh century chief of the Assassins in his latest reincarnation as Osama bin Laden. There will no doubt be much talk of “our shared values”.
Most of what they will discuss is fiction with a price tag.
The one thing missing from the Strategic Concept summit agenda is a serious discussion of strategy.
This is partly because NATO as such has no strategy, and cannot have its own strategy. NATO is in reality an instrument of United States strategy. Its only operative Strategic Concept is the one put into practice by the United States. But even that is an elusive phantom. American leaders seem to prefer striking postures, “showing resolve”, to defining strategies.
One who does presume to define strategy is Zbigniew Brzezinski, godfather of the Afghan Mujahidin back when they could be used to destroy the Soviet Union. Brzezinski was not shy about bluntly stating the strategic objective of U.S. policy in his 1993 book The Grand Chessboard: “American primacy”. As for NATO, he described it as one of the institutions serving to perpetuate American hegemony, “making the United States a key participant even in intra-European affairs.” In its “global web of specialized institutions”, which of course includes NATO, the United States exercises power through “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus, even though that power originates ultimately from a single source, namely, Washington, D.C.”
The description perfectly fits the Lisbon “Strategic Concept” conference. Last week, NATO’s Danish secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, announced that “we are pretty close to a consensus”. And this consensus, according to the New York Times, “will probably follow President Barack Obama’s own formulation: to work toward a non-nuclear world while maintaining a nuclear deterrent”.
Wait a minute, does that make sense? No, but it is the stuff of NATO consensus. Peace through war, nuclear disarmament through nuclear armament, and above all, defense of member states by sending expeditionary forces to infuriate the natives of distant lands.
A strategy is not a consensus written by committees.
The American method of “continuous bargaining, dialogue, diffusion, and quest for formal consensus” wears down whatever resistance may occasionally appear. Thus Germany and France initially resisted Georgian membership in NATO, as well as the notorious “missile shield”, both seen as blatant provocations apt to set off a new arms race with Russia and damage fruitful German and French relations with Moscow, for no useful purpose. But the United States does not take no for an answer, and keeps repeating its imperatives until resistance fades. The one recent exception was the French refusal to join the invasion of Iraq, but the angry U.S. reaction scared the conservative French political class into supporting the pro-American Nicolas Sarkozy.
In search of “threats” and “challenges”
The very heart of what passes for a “strategic concept” was first declared and put into operation in the spring of 1999, when NATO defied international law, the United Nations and its own original charter by waging an aggressive war outside its defensive perimeter against Yugoslavia. That transformed NATO from a defensive to an offensive alliance. Ten years later, the godmother of that war, Madeleine Albright, was picked to chair the “group of experts” that spent several months holding seminars, consultations and meetings preparing the Lisbon agenda. Prominent in these gatherings were Lord Peter Levene, chairman of Lloyd’s of London, the insurance giant, and the former chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, Jeroen van der Veer. These ruling class figures are not exactly military strategists, but their participation should reassure the international business community that their worldwide interests are being taken into consideration.
Indeed, a catalogue of threats enumerated by Rasmussen in a speech last year seemed to suggest that NATO was working for the insurance industry. NATO, he said, was needed to deal with piracy, cyber security, climate change, extreme weather events such as catastrophic storms and flooding, rising sea levels, large-scale population movement into inhabited areas, sometimes across borders, water shortages, droughts, decreasing food production, global warming, CO2 emissions, the retreat of Arctic ice uncovering hitherto inaccessible resources, fuel efficiency and dependence on foreign sources, etc.
Most of the enumerated threats cannot even remotely be construed as calling for military solutions. Surely no "rogue states" or "outposts of tyranny" or "international terrorists" are responsible for climate change, yet Rasmussen presents them as challenges to NATO.
On the other hand, some of the results of these scenarios, such as population movements caused by rising sea levels or drought, can indeed be seen as potentially causing crises. The ominous aspect of the enumeration is precisely that all such problems are eagerly snatched up by NATO as requiring military solutions.
The main threat to NATO is its own obsolescence. And the search for a “strategic concept” is the search for pretexts to keep it going.
NATO’s Threat to the World
While it searches for threats, NATO itself is a growing threat to the world. The basic threat is its contribution to strengthening the U.S.-led tendency to abandon diplomacy and negotiations in favor of military force. This is seen clearly in Rasmussen’s inclusion of weather phenomena in his list of threats to NATO, when they should, instead, be problems for international diplomacy and negotiations. The growing danger is that Western diplomacy is dying. The United States has set the tone: we are virtuous, we have the power, the rest of the world must obey or else.
Diplomacy is despised as weakness. The State Department has long since ceased to be at the core of U.S. foreign policy. With its vast network of military bases the world over, as well as military attachés in embassies and countless missions to client countries, the Pentagon is incomparably more powerful and influential in the world than the State Department.
Recent Secretaries of State, far from seeking diplomatic alternatives to war, have actually played a leading role in advocating war instead of diplomacy, whether Madeleine Albright in the Balkans or Colin Powell waving fake test tubes in the United Nations Security Council. Policy is defined by the National Security Advisor, various privately-funded think tanks and the Pentagon, with interference from a Congress which itself is composed of politicians eager to obtain military contracts for their constituencies.
NATO is dragging Washington’s European allies down the same path. Just as the Pentagon has replaced the State Department, NATO itself is being used by the United States as a potential substitute for the United Nations. The 1999 “Kosovo war” was a first major step in that direction. Sarkozy’s France, after rejoining the NATO joint command, is gutting the traditionally skilled French foreign service, cutting back on civilian representation throughout the world. The European Union foreign service now being created by Lady Ashton will have no policy and no authority of its own.
Bureaucratic Inertia
Behind its appeals to “common values”, NATO is driven above all by bureaucratic inertia. The alliance itself is an excrescence of the U.S. military-industrial complex. For sixty years, military procurements and Pentagon contracts have been an essential source of industrial research, profits, jobs, Congressional careers, even university funding. The interplay of these varied interests converge to determine an implicit U.S. strategy of world conquest.
An ever-expanding global network of somewhere between 800 and a thousand military bases on foreign soil.
Bilateral military accords with client states which offer training while obliging them to purchase U.S.-made weapons and redesign their armed forces away from national defense toward internal security (i.e. repression) and possible integration into U.S.-led wars of aggression.
Use of these close relationships with local armed forces to influence the domestic politics of weaker states.
Perpetual military exercises with client states, which provide the Pentagon with perfect knowledge of the military potential of client states, integrate them into the U.S. military machine, and sustain a “ready for war” mentality.
Deployment of its network of bases, “allies” and military exercises so as to surround, isolate, intimidate and eventually provoke major nations perceived as potential rivals, notably Russia and China.
The implicit strategy of the United States, as perceived by its actions, is a gradual military conquest to ensure world domination. One original feature of this world conquest project is that, although extremely active, day after day, it is virtually ignored by the vast majority of the population of the conquering nation, as well as by its most closely dominated allies, i.e., the NATO states.
The endless propaganda about “terrorist threats” (the fleas on the elephant) and other diversions keep most Americans totally unaware of what is going on, all the more easily in that Americans are almost uniquely ignorant of the rest of the world and thus totally uninterested. The U.S. may bomb a country off the map before more than a small fraction of Americans know where to find it.
The main task of U.S. strategists, whose careers take them between think tanks, boards of directors, consultancy firms and the government, is to justify this giant mechanism much more than to steer it. To a large extent, it steers itself.
Since the collapse of the “Soviet threat”, policy-makers have settled for invisible or potential threats. U.S. military doctrine has as its aim to move preventively against any potential rival to U.S. world hegemony. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia retains the largest arsenal outside the United States, and China is a rapidly rising economic power. Neither one threatens the United States or Western Europe. On the contrary, both are ready and willing to concentrate on peaceful business.
However, they are increasingly alarmed by the military encirclement and provocative military exercises carried on by the United States on their very doorsteps. The implicit aggressive strategy may be obscure to most Americans, but leaders in the targeted countries are quite certain they understand what it is going on.
The Russia-Iran-Israel Triangle
Currently, the main explicit “enemy” is Iran.
Washington claims that the “missile shield” which it is forcing on its European allies is designed to defend the West from Iran. But the Russians see quite clearly that the missile shield is aimed at themselves. First of all, they understand quite clearly that Iran has no such missiles nor any possible motive for using them against the West. It is perfectly obvious to all informed analysts that even if Iran developed nuclear weapons and missiles, they would be conceived as a deterrent against Israel, the regional nuclear superpower which enjoys a free hand attacking neighboring countries. Israel does not want to lose that freedom to attack, and thus naturally opposes the Iranian deterrent.
Israeli propagandists scream loudly about the threat from Iran, and have worked incessantly to infect NATO with their paranoia.
Israel has even been described as “Global NATO’s 29th member”. Israeli officials have assiduously worked on a receptive Madeleine Albright to make sure that Israeli interests are included in the “Strategic Concept”. During the past five years, Israel and NATO have been taking part in joint naval exercises in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean, as well as joint ground exercises from Brussels to Ukraine. On October 16, 2006, Israel became the first non-European country to reach a so-called “Individual Cooperation Program” agreement with NATO for cooperation in 27 different areas.
It is worth noting that Israel is the only country outside Europe which the U.S. includes in the area of responsibility of its European Command (rather than the Central Command that covers the rest of the Middle East).
At a NATO-Israel Relations seminar in Herzliya on October 24, 2006, the Israeli foreign minister at the time, Tzipi Livni, declared that "The alliance between NATO and Israel is only natural....Israel and NATO share a common strategic vision. In many ways, Israel is the front line defending our common way of life."
Not everybody in European countries would consider that Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine reflect “our common way of life”.
This is no doubt one reason why the deepening union between NATO and Israel has not taken the open form of NATO membership. Especially after the savage attack on Gaza, such a move would arouse objections in European countries. Nevertheless, Israel continues to invite itself into NATO, ardently supported, of course, by its faithful followers in the U.S. Congress.
The principal cause of this growing Israel-NATO symbiosis has been identified by Mearsheimer and Walt: the vigorous and powerful pro-Israel lobby in the United States.
Israeli lobbies are also strong in France, Britain and the UK. They have zealously developed the theme of Israel as the “front line” in the defense of “Western values” against militant Islam. The fact that militant Islam is largely a product of that “front line” creates a perfect vicious circle.
Israel’s aggressive stance toward its regional neighbors would be a serious liability for NATO, apt to be dragged into wars of Israel’s choosing which are by no means in the interest of Europe.
However, there is one subtle strategic advantage in the Israeli connection which the United States seems to be using… against Russia.
By subscribing to the hysterical “Iranian threat” theory, the United States can continue to claim with a straight face that the planned missile shield is directed against Iran, not Russia. This cannot be expected to convince the Russians. But it can be used to make their protests sound “paranoid” – at least to the ears of the Western faithful. Dear me, what can they be complaining about when we “reset” our relations with Moscow and invite the Russian president to our “Strategic Concept” happy gathering?
However, the Russians know quite well that:
The missile shield is to be constructed surrounding Russia, which does have missiles, which it keeps for deterrence.
By neutralizing Russian missiles, the United States would free its own hand to attack Russia, knowing that the Russia could not retaliate.
Therefore, whatever is said, the missile shield, if it worked, would serve to facilitate eventual aggression against Russia.
Encircling Russia
The encirclement of Russia continues in the Black Sea, the Baltic and the Arctic circle.
United States officials continue to claim that Ukraine must join NATO.
Just this week, in a New York Times column, Zbigniew’s son Ian J. Brzezinski advised Obama against abandoning the “vision” of a “whole, free and secure” Europe including “eventual Georgian and Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union.” The fact that the vast majority of the people of Ukraine are against NATO membership is of no account.
For the current scion of the noble Brzezinski dynasty it is the minority that counts. Abandoning the vision “undercuts those in Georgia and Ukraine who see their future in Europe. It reinforces Kremlin aspirations for a sphere of influence…”
The notion that “the Kremlin” aspires to a “sphere of influence” in Ukraine is absurd considering the extremely close historic links between Russia and Ukraine, whose capital Kiev was the cradle of the Russian state. But the Brzezinski family hailed from Galicia, the part of Western Ukraine which once belonged to Poland, and which is the center of the anti-Russian minority. U.S. foreign policy is all too frequently influenced by such foreign rivalries of which the vast majority of Americans are totally ignorant.
Relentless U.S. insistence on absorbing Ukraine continues despite the fact that it would imply expelling the Russian Black Sea fleet from its base in the Crimean peninsula, where the local population is overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and pro-Russian. This is a recipe for war with Russia if ever there was one.
And meanwhile, U.S. officials continue to declare their support for Georgia, whose American-trained president openly hopes to bring NATO support into his next war against Russia.
Aside from provocative naval maneuvers in the Black Sea, the United States, NATO and (as yet) non-NATO members Sweden and Finland regularly carry out major military exercises in the Baltic Sea, virtually in sight of the Russia cities of Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad. These exercises involve thousands of ground troops, hundreds of aircraft including F-15 jet fighters, AWACS, as well as naval forces including the U.S. Carrier Strike Group 12, landing craft and warships from a dozen countries.
Perhaps most ominous of all, in the Arctic region, the United States has been persistently engaging Canada and the Scandinavian states (including Denmark via Greenland) in a military deployment openly directed against Russia. The point of these Arctic deployment was stated by Fogh Rasmussen when he mentioned, among “threats” to be met by NATO, the fact that “Arctic ice is retreating, for resources that had, until now, been covered under ice.”
Now, one might consider that this uncovering of resources would be an opportunity for cooperation in exploiting them. But that is not the official U.S. mindset.
Last October, US Admiral James G Stavridis, supreme Nato commander for Europe, said global warming and a race for resources could lead to a conflict in the Arctic. Coast Guard Rear Admiral Christopher C. Colvin, in charge of Alaska’s coastline, said Russian shipping activity in the Arctic Ocean was “of particular concern” for the US and called for more military facilities in the region.
The US Geological Service believes that the Arctic contains up to a quarter of the world’s unexplored deposits of oil and gas. Under the 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea Convention, a coastal state is entitled to a 200-nautical mile EEZ and can claim a further 150 miles if it proves that the seabed is a continuation of its continental shelf.
Russia is applying to make this claim.
After pushing for the rest of the world to adopt the Convention, the United States Senate has still not ratified the Treaty.
In January 2009, NATO declared the “High North” to be “of strategic interest to the Alliance,” and since then, NATO has held several major war games clearly preparing for eventual conflict with Russia over Arctic resources.
Russia largely dismantled its defenses in the Arctic after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and has called for negotiating compromises over resource control.
Last September, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called for joint efforts to protect the fragile ecosystem, attract foreign investment, promote environmentally friendly technologies and work to resolve disputes through international law.
But the United States, as usual, prefers to settle the issue by throwing its weight around. This could lead to a new arms race in the Arctic, and even to armed clashes.
Despite all these provocative moves, it is most unlikely that the United States actually seeks war with Russia, although skirmishes and incidents here and there cannot be ruled out. The U.S. policy appears to be to encircle and intimidate Russia to such an extent that it accepts a semi-satellite status that neutralizes it in the anticipated future conflict with China.
Target China
The only reason to target China is like the proverbial reason to climb the mountain: it is there. It is big. And the US must be on top of everything.
The strategy for dominating China is the same as for Russia. It is classic warfare: encirclement, siege, more or less clandestine support for internal disorder. As examples of this strategy:
The United States is provocatively strengthening its military presence along the Pacific shores of China, offering “protection against China” to East Asian countries.
During the Cold War, when India got its armaments from the Soviet Union and struck a non-aligned posture, the United States armed Pakistan as its main regional ally. Now the U.S. is shifting its favors to India, in order to keep India out of the orbit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to build it as a counterweight to China.
The United States and its allies support any internal dissidence that might weaken China, whether it is the Dalai Lama, the Uighurs, or Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident.
The Nobel Peace Prize was bestowed on Liu Xiaobo by a committee of Norwegian legislators headed by Thorbjorn Jagland, Norway’s echo of Tony Blair, who has served as Norway’s prime minister and foreign minister, and has been one of his country’s main cheerleaders for NATO.
At a NATO-sponsored conference of European parliamentarians last year, Jagland declared: “When we are not able to stop tyranny, war starts. This is why NATO is indispensable. NATO is the only multilateral military organization rooted in international law. It is an organization that the U.N. can use when necessary — to stop tyranny, like we did in the Balkans.” This is an astoundingly bold misstatement of fact, considering that NATO openly defied international law and the United Nations to make war in the Balkans – where in reality there was ethnic conflict, but no “tyranny”.
In announcing the choice of Liu, the Norwegian Nobel committee, headed by Jagland, declared that it “has long believed that there is a close connection between human rights and peace." The “close connection”, to follow the logic of Jagland’s own statements, is that if a foreign state fails to respect human rights according to Western interpretations, it may be bombed, as NATO bombed Yugoslavia. Indeed, the very powers that make the most noise about “human rights”, notably the United States and Britain, are the ones making the most wars all over the world. The Norwegian’s statements make it clear that granting the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu (who in his youth spent time in Norway) amounted in reality to an endorsement of NATO.
“Democracies” to replace the United Nations
The European members of NATO add relatively little to the military power of the United States. Their contribution is above all political. Their presence maintains the illusion of an “International Community”. The world conquest being pursued by the bureaucratic inertia of the Pentagon can be presented as the crusade by the world’s “democracies” to spread their enlightened political order to the rest of a recalcitrant world.
The Euro-Atlantic governments proclaim their “democracy” as proof of their absolute right to intervene in the affairs of the rest of the world. On the basis of the fallacy that “human rights are necessary for peace”, they proclaim their right to make war.
A crucial question is whether “Western democracy” still has the strength to dismantle this war machine before it is too late.
Note: Grateful thanks to Rick Rozoff for his constant flow of important information.
• Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions:
(http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delusions/dp/158367084X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1287635627&sr=8-1 )
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
PO Box 652
Brunswick, ME 04011
(207) 443-9502
globalnet@mindspring.com
www.space4peace.org
http://space4peace.blogspot.com/ (blog)
Aha Moku Gathering
SUBHEAD: This was a gathering of the Hawaiian nation, in the best sense. Let us hope more youngsters will participate in the future.
By Juan Wilson on 22 November 2010 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/11/aha-moku-gathering.html)
Image above: Detail of conference poster celebrating the gathering of the net created by Oliver Kinney.
On Friday and Saturday I attended a conference at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu on Oahu. It's title was Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu. The subtitle was “Throw the Net to Bring Everyone Together in Hawaii”. About two hundred people attended representing Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau.
Those attending were drawn from a process that began with the formation of the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee by act HB212 in 2007. The purpose of HB212 was to develop a method of bringing Hawaiian indigenous practices into the management of the resources in Hawaii - largely because of the recognition of the long and sustained practices that provided plenty for the people of the islands for centuries.
The state of Hawaii promised funding for the advisory committee to create an Aha Moku Council that would govern the procedures of incorporating traditional Hawaiian practices into state resource regulations. That funding never came. None the less, the committee was able to do its work and complete the required tasks culminating in a Final Report in 2009.
The Aha Kiole Advisory Committee was initially organized with efforts of the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council (WesPac). WesPac is an independent non-profit entity that is supported and overseen by the US Congress, similar to the US Postal Service, the Federal Reserve, Fanny Mae and Fanny Mac. It is not a Federal government agency, yet it has responsibility for managing fishing regulations for the US territory islands in the western Pacific, including Samoa, Guam, the North West Islands and Hawaii.
The staff and consultants of WesPac were available, as well as some funding to facilitate the self organization of Aha Moku system that would ultimately manage resources by the ancient Hawaiian land divisions of island moku (bioregions) and their ahupuaa (watersheds). The final report of the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee made a listing of the moku and ahupuaa of each island. In 2010 things were moving ahead.
A bit of a flashback here
In 2008 Jonathan Jay and I were completing a map of moku and ahupuaa of Kauai. We had been working on such a map for almost two years. We had been working with Malama Kauai and attending their Eco Roundtable meetings.
We were proposing that we have island district meetings based on traditional Hawaiian land divisions. As part of that interest we attended a meeting of the Kona Moku of Kauai held in Poipu by the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee. There we presented our first revision of the Kauai map. At the meeting we met Jean Ilei Beniamina of Niihau. We committed then to producing a map of Niihau too.
After reviewing the maps of Kauai and Niihau, Jean Ilei Beniamina suggested to WesPac that they not use an agency like NOAA to map the Hawaiian land divisions (as planned) but contract with me to complete the rest of the islands. I was engaged as an independent contractor in May of 2010 to deliver maps of all the Hawaiian islands, in phases, and be finished the time of the Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu in late November. Those maps are now available on islandbreath.org in GoogleEarth format.
There are also GIS .shape files and PDF plot files that have been produced. Through the summer and into the fall there was an Aha Moku puwalu (conference) on each island. Among other things. The job was to set an agenda for future actions and prepare for the statewide Puwalu, that would bring together representatives from all islands.
Exit the flashback.
Last weekend, I was asked to attend the Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu, held on Oahu, in the role of a consultant and be prepared to demonstrate the work to date on mapping moku and ahupuaa. I was glad to participate. I packed a laptop loaded with 3D GoogleEarth files of the islands. When I arrived at the Honolulu Convention Center I had to sign in. I was given an ID tag on a purple lanyard rather than a staff ID and lanyard. The color coding of the lanyards were assigned to the colors of each island’s symbolic flower. In other words, The ID lanyard indicated I was a Kauai participant rather than staff. This resulted in me acting in both rolls for the two days. In the general session the kiole (the speaker) representing each island made a presentation.
It must be noted that Keith Robinson was there wearing construction boots and a hardhat as if he just got off a bulldozer. When Niihau was asked to present Robinson pretended to be shy, as if he did not want to speak. When the mic was finally put in his hand he couldn’t stop. He began with a 1000 years history of his family, back to the Vikings. As a staff member I had responsibilities in helping WesPac facilitate the event (relative to providing maps offered to the groups present) and had access to staff areas “back-stage”.
As a Kauai participant I sat in at Kauai’s breakout session on discussion of offering a bill to the Hawaii legislature to consider concerning the acceptance of a continuation of the Aha Moku system and implementing its protocols.
Image above: Puwalu participants gathered for group photo of 200 people. Photo by Juan Wilson
After the island representatives returned to the general puwalu from their breakout sessions the last item on the two day agenda was before us. To craft the wording of a bill for the legislature to consider. The kiole for each island gathered with the indigenous coordinator of WesPac to make out the wording of the bill. This was at about 5:00pm. In about 20 minutes they had a first revision of the bill. It went like this.
Image above: Detail of ceramic tile mural outside of Convention Hall ballroom. Photo by Juan Wilson.
The Kiole huddled together a made some adjustments to the final wording of the document. Keith Robinson, as kiole for Niihau, made a grab for being representative konohiki of the islands of Lehua, Kaula, and Nihoa... and got it.
It should be remembered that the 200 people present had been sitting in the ballroom for two days. It was the end of the conference and people were eager to get on their way home. They were in a mood to agree with what had been worked on paper. But... There were some questions about details. A few people began to take exception to specific language. Some points were important. The first edit to the first revision was to remove the words;
“WITH RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORITY FOR MANAGING NATURAL RESOURCES” This was done to remove the assumption of their authority over Hawaiian resource management, and to just have those government entities accept Hawaiian cultural tradition as the governing authority of Hawaiian resources. This went over smoothly with the group. Then point was made that legally the first paragraph and what followed the “NOW
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED”
paragraph at the bottom of the resolution had to match exactly. That was resolved quickly as well.
Then something bad happened. A few people in the audience had the sense that this large body of people would go along with any change to the resolution that was only the change in a word or two and could be done quickly. They pounced.
Someone from an outer island interjected that there was a difference between “conservationists” and “Environmentalists” and that conservationists should be added to the list of participants since all Hawaiian cultural practitioners were conservationists. “Conservationists” were added to the first paragraph. Then came the suggestion that “Ranchers” should be added to “Fishermen” and “Farmers” and that “Conservationists” and “Environmentalists” should be removed from the list of participants. When the crowd passed that suggestion, by sitting on their hands, I left of the conference hall.
In my mind “ranching” is generally a destructive practice (look at Niihau and Kahoolawe) that was not part of traditional Hawaiian cultural practice and that even if it was should be eliminated. Removing “environmentalists” from the participants of the conference removed me. So... I took a cab to the airport. In the Hawaiian Airlines waiting area I met up with two other Kauai reps. We were there early enough get on a flight before our scheduled time.
Coincidentally, we got the last three seats on the plane and even more surprising, they were together. They were both fishermen and had been active contributors in the Kauai breakout session. One was Japanese, the other haole. Both had been on Kauai for over 30 years. They had walked out of the conference hall as well. They had left when suggestion was made (and incorporated) that required kiole to be limited to those with Hawaiian blood. That tore it for them. They had been disenfranchised. I think this conference ended tragically for many committed to living pono in Hawaii. However, overall I was impressed with the what was achieved by the gathering at the convention center.
I met wonderful people from other islands who are working hard to preserve and protect where we live. I have a special fondness from those I got to know from Molokai, Lanai and the Big Island. This was a gathering of the Hawaiian nation, in the best sense. Let us hope more will participate in this process... especially the young.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Traditional Hawaiian Land Divisions 1/30/12 .
By Juan Wilson on 22 November 2010 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2010/11/aha-moku-gathering.html)
Image above: Detail of conference poster celebrating the gathering of the net created by Oliver Kinney.
On Friday and Saturday I attended a conference at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu on Oahu. It's title was Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu. The subtitle was “Throw the Net to Bring Everyone Together in Hawaii”. About two hundred people attended representing Hawaii, Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, Oahu, Kauai and Niihau.
Those attending were drawn from a process that began with the formation of the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee by act HB212 in 2007. The purpose of HB212 was to develop a method of bringing Hawaiian indigenous practices into the management of the resources in Hawaii - largely because of the recognition of the long and sustained practices that provided plenty for the people of the islands for centuries.
The state of Hawaii promised funding for the advisory committee to create an Aha Moku Council that would govern the procedures of incorporating traditional Hawaiian practices into state resource regulations. That funding never came. None the less, the committee was able to do its work and complete the required tasks culminating in a Final Report in 2009.
The Aha Kiole Advisory Committee was initially organized with efforts of the Western Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Council (WesPac). WesPac is an independent non-profit entity that is supported and overseen by the US Congress, similar to the US Postal Service, the Federal Reserve, Fanny Mae and Fanny Mac. It is not a Federal government agency, yet it has responsibility for managing fishing regulations for the US territory islands in the western Pacific, including Samoa, Guam, the North West Islands and Hawaii.
The staff and consultants of WesPac were available, as well as some funding to facilitate the self organization of Aha Moku system that would ultimately manage resources by the ancient Hawaiian land divisions of island moku (bioregions) and their ahupuaa (watersheds). The final report of the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee made a listing of the moku and ahupuaa of each island. In 2010 things were moving ahead.
A bit of a flashback here
In 2008 Jonathan Jay and I were completing a map of moku and ahupuaa of Kauai. We had been working on such a map for almost two years. We had been working with Malama Kauai and attending their Eco Roundtable meetings.
We were proposing that we have island district meetings based on traditional Hawaiian land divisions. As part of that interest we attended a meeting of the Kona Moku of Kauai held in Poipu by the Aha Kiole Advisory Committee. There we presented our first revision of the Kauai map. At the meeting we met Jean Ilei Beniamina of Niihau. We committed then to producing a map of Niihau too.
After reviewing the maps of Kauai and Niihau, Jean Ilei Beniamina suggested to WesPac that they not use an agency like NOAA to map the Hawaiian land divisions (as planned) but contract with me to complete the rest of the islands. I was engaged as an independent contractor in May of 2010 to deliver maps of all the Hawaiian islands, in phases, and be finished the time of the Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu in late November. Those maps are now available on islandbreath.org in GoogleEarth format.
There are also GIS .shape files and PDF plot files that have been produced. Through the summer and into the fall there was an Aha Moku puwalu (conference) on each island. Among other things. The job was to set an agenda for future actions and prepare for the statewide Puwalu, that would bring together representatives from all islands.
Exit the flashback.
Last weekend, I was asked to attend the Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu, held on Oahu, in the role of a consultant and be prepared to demonstrate the work to date on mapping moku and ahupuaa. I was glad to participate. I packed a laptop loaded with 3D GoogleEarth files of the islands. When I arrived at the Honolulu Convention Center I had to sign in. I was given an ID tag on a purple lanyard rather than a staff ID and lanyard. The color coding of the lanyards were assigned to the colors of each island’s symbolic flower. In other words, The ID lanyard indicated I was a Kauai participant rather than staff. This resulted in me acting in both rolls for the two days. In the general session the kiole (the speaker) representing each island made a presentation.
It must be noted that Keith Robinson was there wearing construction boots and a hardhat as if he just got off a bulldozer. When Niihau was asked to present Robinson pretended to be shy, as if he did not want to speak. When the mic was finally put in his hand he couldn’t stop. He began with a 1000 years history of his family, back to the Vikings. As a staff member I had responsibilities in helping WesPac facilitate the event (relative to providing maps offered to the groups present) and had access to staff areas “back-stage”.
As a Kauai participant I sat in at Kauai’s breakout session on discussion of offering a bill to the Hawaii legislature to consider concerning the acceptance of a continuation of the Aha Moku system and implementing its protocols.
Image above: Puwalu participants gathered for group photo of 200 people. Photo by Juan Wilson
After the island representatives returned to the general puwalu from their breakout sessions the last item on the two day agenda was before us. To craft the wording of a bill for the legislature to consider. The kiole for each island gathered with the indigenous coordinator of WesPac to make out the wording of the bill. This was at about 5:00pm. In about 20 minutes they had a first revision of the bill. It went like this.
URGING THE COUNTY, STATE AND FEDERAL ENTITIES WITH RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORITY FOR MANAGING NATURAL RESOURCES TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE AHA MOKU SYSTEM AS PART OF THE MANAGEMENT REGIME OF NATURAL RESOURCES IN HAWAI'I
WHEREAS, the statewide Ho'olei 'la Pae'aina Puwalu was held at the Hawaii Convention Center in Honolulu on November 19 and 20, 2010, involving more than 200 native Hawaiian traditional practitioners, fishermen, farmers, environmentalists, municipal representatives, State representatives and the general public, and WHEREAS, it was agreed that the 'Aha Moku structure is an effective, community-based way to manage natural resources in Hawai'i. and
WHEREAS the island caucuses at the Puwalu agreed that the Hawaii State Legislature should extend, amend and implement Act 212:
• That the 'Aha Moku system be continued;
• That the recommendations from each island in the 2009 'Aha Kiole report to the Legislature be implemented;
• That new 'Aha Kiole representatives be selected/elected by 'Aha Moku councils that have been established on each of the mokupuni;
• That where Aha Moku councils have not yet been established, efforts be made to establish them as soon as possible;
• That Niihau a Kahelelani continue to be managed based on and exclusively under its konohiki system:
• That these Aha councils be formally recognized;
• That the 'Aha Kiole role be amended so as to include it being the conduit between the Aha Moku system and the State of Hawaii Legislature; and
• That the new 'Aha Kiole report back to the Legislature on the status of the 'Aha Moku system throughout the pae'aina at the end 2011, and
WHEREAS the Puwalu participants also supported customary traditional practices that have sustained the Native Hawaiian population and culture, such as the cultural, non-commercial take of honu and fish from waters throughout the Hawaii Archipelago;
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the participants of the Hawai'i Statewide Puwalu, in conference at the Hawai'i Convention Center on November 19 and 20, 2010, urges the county, state and federal entities with responsibility and authority for managing natural resources to support the development of the 'Aha Moku system of natural resource management and the allowance of customary traditional practices; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that copies of this Resolution be transmitted to all County Mayors, Governor of Hawaii, President of the Senate, Speaker of the House, Senate Committee on Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Chair, House Committee on Hawaiian Affairs Chair, Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees Chair, Secretary of Commerce and the Chair of the Western Pacific Regional Fishery Management Council.
Image above: Detail of ceramic tile mural outside of Convention Hall ballroom. Photo by Juan Wilson.
The Kiole huddled together a made some adjustments to the final wording of the document. Keith Robinson, as kiole for Niihau, made a grab for being representative konohiki of the islands of Lehua, Kaula, and Nihoa... and got it.
It should be remembered that the 200 people present had been sitting in the ballroom for two days. It was the end of the conference and people were eager to get on their way home. They were in a mood to agree with what had been worked on paper. But... There were some questions about details. A few people began to take exception to specific language. Some points were important. The first edit to the first revision was to remove the words;
“WITH RESPONSIBILITY AND AUTHORITY FOR MANAGING NATURAL RESOURCES” This was done to remove the assumption of their authority over Hawaiian resource management, and to just have those government entities accept Hawaiian cultural tradition as the governing authority of Hawaiian resources. This went over smoothly with the group. Then point was made that legally the first paragraph and what followed the “NOW
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED”
paragraph at the bottom of the resolution had to match exactly. That was resolved quickly as well.
Then something bad happened. A few people in the audience had the sense that this large body of people would go along with any change to the resolution that was only the change in a word or two and could be done quickly. They pounced.
Someone from an outer island interjected that there was a difference between “conservationists” and “Environmentalists” and that conservationists should be added to the list of participants since all Hawaiian cultural practitioners were conservationists. “Conservationists” were added to the first paragraph. Then came the suggestion that “Ranchers” should be added to “Fishermen” and “Farmers” and that “Conservationists” and “Environmentalists” should be removed from the list of participants. When the crowd passed that suggestion, by sitting on their hands, I left of the conference hall.
In my mind “ranching” is generally a destructive practice (look at Niihau and Kahoolawe) that was not part of traditional Hawaiian cultural practice and that even if it was should be eliminated. Removing “environmentalists” from the participants of the conference removed me. So... I took a cab to the airport. In the Hawaiian Airlines waiting area I met up with two other Kauai reps. We were there early enough get on a flight before our scheduled time.
Coincidentally, we got the last three seats on the plane and even more surprising, they were together. They were both fishermen and had been active contributors in the Kauai breakout session. One was Japanese, the other haole. Both had been on Kauai for over 30 years. They had walked out of the conference hall as well. They had left when suggestion was made (and incorporated) that required kiole to be limited to those with Hawaiian blood. That tore it for them. They had been disenfranchised. I think this conference ended tragically for many committed to living pono in Hawaii. However, overall I was impressed with the what was achieved by the gathering at the convention center.
I met wonderful people from other islands who are working hard to preserve and protect where we live. I have a special fondness from those I got to know from Molokai, Lanai and the Big Island. This was a gathering of the Hawaiian nation, in the best sense. Let us hope more will participate in this process... especially the young.
See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: Traditional Hawaiian Land Divisions 1/30/12 .
Who was the 'Underwear Bomber'?
SUBHEAD: The inconsistent background on Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab and faulty reasoning on the need for naked body scanners.
Image above: Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab as a teenager. From (http://www.businessinsider.com/shoddy-software-let-underwear-bomber-on-plane-2010-1).
SUBHEAD: Legal Eyewitnesses: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport.
Image above: Kurt Haskell's boarding pass for NWA "Underwear Bomber" Flight 253. Photo by Kurt Haskell.
[Editor's note - Further eyewitness accounts on Mr. and Mrs. Haskell's website at: http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com]
Image above: Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab as a teenager. From (http://www.businessinsider.com/shoddy-software-let-underwear-bomber-on-plane-2010-1).
By Tom Burghardt on 4 January 2010 i Dissenting Voice -
The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab
Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves.
Talk about validating that old Wobbly slogan: Direct action gets the goods!
And yet, the closer one looks at the available evidence surrounding the strange case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the more sinister alleged “intelligence failures” become. As this story unfolds it is becoming abundantly clear that U.S. security officials had far more information on the would-be lap bomber than we’ve been told.
The Observer revealed January 3 that the British secret state had Abdulmutallab on their radar for several years and that he had become “politically involved” with “extremist networks” while a student at University College London, where he served as president of the Islamic Society.
Examining “e-mail and text traffic,” security officers claim to have belatedly discovered that “he has been in contact with jihadists from across the world since 2007.”
Indeed, The Sunday Times disclosed that the 23-year-old terrorism suspect was “‘reaching out’ to extremists whom MI5 had under surveillance.” The officials said that Abdulmutallab was “‘starting out on a journey’ in Britain” that culminated with last week’s attempt to destroy Flight 253.
It is claimed by unnamed “British officials” that “none of this information was passed” to their American counterparts; on the face of it, this appears to be a rank mendacity.
The Sunday Times further reported that security officials have “now passed a file” to American counterterrorism officers that show “his repeated contacts with MI5 targets who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance.”
None of this should surprise anyone, however. In light of multiple prior warnings which preceded past terrorist atrocities, the selective leaking of information to the British media in its own way, buttresses the official story that the near-tragedy aboard Flight 253 was simply the result of ubiquitous “intelligence failures.”
But as we have seen with Mohamed Atta, Richard Reid and Mohammad Sidique Khan, Abdulmutallab’s “journey” was one undertaken by many before, often with a wink-and-a-nod by British and American security officials when it served the geostrategic ambitions of their political masters.
As security researcher and analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote in New Internationalist in October: “Islamist terrorism cannot be understood without acknowledging the extent to which its networks are being used by Western military intelligence services, both to control strategic energy resources and to counter their geopolitical rivals. Even now, nearly a decade after 9/11, covert sponsorship of al-Qaeda networks continues.”
Networks which Ahmed and other analysts such as Michel Chossudovsky, Peter Dale Scott and Richard Labévière have painstakingly documented, enjoy the closest ties with Western intelligence agencies stretching back decades.
That intelligence officers, including those at the highest levels of the secret state’s security apparat, did nothing to hamper an alleged al-Qaeda operative from getting on that plane–in a chilling echo of the 9/11 attacks–calls into question the thin tissue of lies outlined in the official narrative.
An Intelligence “Failure,” or a Wild “Success” for Security Corporations?
Charged December 26 with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner, according toThe Washington Post Abdulmutallab “was listed in a U.S. terrorism database.”
The Post reported that the suspect’s name “was added in November to the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.” It is further described as a “catch-all list” which “contains about 550,000 individuals” and is maintained by “the Office of the Director of National Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center.”
However, The New York Times revealed December 31 that the “National Security Agency four months ago intercepted conversations among leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man for a coming terrorist attack.”
Times‘ reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lipton, citing unnamed “government officials,” disclosed that “the electronic intercepts were translated and disseminated across classified computer networks” months before Abdulmutallab boarded Flight 253 in Amsterdam.
But when the NSA intercepts landed at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), analysts there “did not synthesize the eavesdropping intelligence with information gathered in November” when Abdulmutallab’s father provided the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria crucial information on his son’s involvement with the Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also known as al-Qaeda.
Seeking comment from NCTC proved to be a daunting task. As the Timesdelicately put it, “officials at the counterterrorist center … maintained a stoic silence on Wednesday, noting that the review ordered by President Obama was still under way.”
Despite revelations in the British press, the White House maintains that U.S. intelligence agencies “did not miss a ‘smoking gun’” that could have prevented the botched attack, the Associated Press reported January 3.
White House aide John Brennan, citing “lapses” and “errors” in sharing intelligence said, “There was no single piece of intelligence that said, ‘this guy is going to get on a plane.’”
As we will soon see, Mr. Brennan has every reason to hide behind such mendacities.
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the author of the essential book Spies For Hire, reported in CorpWatch, that NCTC is an outsourced counterterrorist agency chock-a-block with security contractors in the heavily-leveraged homeland security market.
Indeed, The Analysis Corporation (TAC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of defense and intelligence contractor Global Strategies Group/North America, “specializes in providing counterterrorism analysis and watchlists to U.S. government agencies.”
“It is best known” according to Shorrock, “for its connection to John O. Brennan, its former CEO, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and currently President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. Brennan, the first director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), retired from government in November 2005 and immediately joined TAC.”
Shorrock reports that “much of TAC’s business is with the NCTC itself. In fact, the NCTC is one of the company’s largest customers, and TAC provides counterterrorism (CT) support to ‘most of the agencies within the intelligence community,’ according to a company press release. One of its biggest customers is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which manages the NCTC.”
“During the 1990s” Shorrock relates, “TAC developed the U.S. government’s first terrorist database, ‘Tipoff,’ on behalf of the State Department.”
Shorrock chronicles how “the database was initially conceived as a tool to help U.S. consular officials and customs inspectors determine if foreigners trying to enter the United States were known or suspected terrorists.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and subsequent reorganization of the U.S. security bureaucracy, the investigative journalist tells us that “in 2003, management of the database–which received information collected by a large number of agencies including the CIA, NSA, and FBI–was transferred to the CIA’s Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) and, later, to the National Counterterrorism Center.”
“In 2005″ Shorrock discloses, “Tipoff was expanded and renamed the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, and fingerprint and facial recognition software was added to help identify suspects as they crossed U.S. borders.”
Despite the utter worthlessness of a bloated database containing more than 1.3 million names according to the American Civil Liberties Union, and not the grossly undercounted figure of 550,000 cited by corporate media, TIDE has been a boon for TAC.
“In the five years after 9/11″ Shorrock reveals, “its income quintupled, from less than $5 million in 2001 to $24 million in 2006. In 2006, TAC increased its visibility in the intelligence community by creating a ‘senior advisory board’ that included three heavy hitters from the CIA: former Director George J. Tenet, former Chief Information Officer Alan Wade, and former senior analyst John P. Young.”
And what have the American people gained from inflating the corporatist bottom line? In light of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, not much.
As investigative journalists Susan and Joseph Trento revealed in their overlooked but highly-disturbing 2006 book, Unsafe At Any Altitude, most of the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Majed Moqed “were flagged by CAPPS (Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System).”
But because of CIA and FBI monkey-business that rendered watch-list information useless to stop suspected terrorists from boarding an airliner, “the only thing that was done as a result was that the baggage of several members of the Al Qaeda team was held on the ground until the cabin crew confirmed they had boarded as passengers.”
Video above: Interview with Webster Tarpley on "Underwear Bomber". From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU4RjI9ZhKA)And when you consider that Abdulmutallab didn’t even have any baggage to check, alleged security “lapses” are even more glaring.
According to the Trentos, “the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Department of Homeland Security refuse to give the airlines an accurate no fly list, thereby allowing the most threatening terrorists to continue to fly.” Is there a pattern here? You bet there is!
An unnamed “counterterrorist official” told The Wall Street Journal December 31: “‘If you look back to these audit reports, there are significant issues raised with the accuracy and omissions to the watchlisting process that haven’t been fixed, clearly,’ as of Dec. 25. ‘Essentially you’re screening blindly, and that’s not effective’.”
However, we can be sure there will be very little in the way of a hard-hitting investigation into this alleged security breach. The New York Times reported that TAC’s former CEO John O. Brennan, has been “granted a special ethics waiver … to conduct a review of the intelligence and screening breakdown that preceded the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on an American passenger plane over Detroit.”
Enter the CIA, Stage (Far) Right
What “other government agency” may have suppressed intelligence on the would-be bomber?
The CBS Evening News revealed December 29 that “as early as August of 2009,” tracking closely with the time-frame of NSA intercepts, “the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed ‘The Nigerian,’ suspected of meeting with ‘terrorist elements’ in Yemen.”
Unnamed “intelligence sources” told CBS, “‘The Nigerian’ has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.” But that connection “was not made when Abdulmutallab’s father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria three months later, on November 19, 2009. It was then he expressed deep concerns to a CIA officer about his son’s ties to extremists in Yemen, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity.” CBS claims “this information was not connected until after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.”
Earlier reports have alleged that Umar’s father, a wealthy Nigerian banker and former high state official, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had only provided Embassy officials with a vague concern that his son’s estrangement “may have” something to do with his growing “religious fervor.” This too, turns out to be a lie.
The Times reported that a “family cousin quoted the father as warning officials from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in Nigeria: ‘Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat’.”
Nothing vague in this disclosure, but rather more concrete evidence in the form of “texts” which we now know were shortstopped by British security and included “phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance” by MI5 that led an anguished father to express well-placed fears about his son to U.S officials.
But as the Times were told by their source, “They promised to look into it. They didn’t take him seriously.”
And here’s where things take a decidedly malevolent turn. According to the Times, “C.I.A. officials in Nigeria also prepared a separate report compiling biographical information about Mr. Abdulmutallab, including his educational background and the fact that he was considering pursuing academic studies in Islamic law in Yemen.”
“That cable was sent to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.,” Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lipton disclosed, “but not disseminated to other intelligence agencies, government officials said on Wednesday.”
Then again, perhaps they knew all-too-well of Abdulmutallab’s glide path and chose instead to turn a blind eye. Coming on the heels of disclosures in the British media, the evidence suggests that CIA intelligence provided by NSA intercepts, their own on-the-ground operatives in Yemen and MI5 surveillance reports were scrupulously ignored by factions within the secret state who sat on critical information that withheld, would disarm and paralyze normal security procedures in the face of an attack they knew was imminent.
We were told by corporate media, infamously serving as an echo chamber for grifting politicians, Bushist officials and the 9/11 Commission’s 2004 whitewash, that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks resulted from “a failure of imagination” by counterterrorism officials to “connect the dots.”
Seems there were plenty of “dots” in Abdulmutallab’s case and yet, inexplicably, if you buy the official story, and sinisterly, if you don’t, not a single one was “connected” prior to the time he took his seat on Flight 253.
Despite the fact that Abdulmutallab was denied re-entry into Britain, paid $2,800 in cash for his “ticket to Paradise,” and had no luggage that normally would accompany a person holding a 2-year entry visa into the U.S., the erstwhile lap bomber scored a goal each time and eluded every intrusive “profile” presumably in place to keep us “safe.” Talk about a hat trick!
Available evidence suggests that Abdulmutallab should have landed on TSA’s hush-hush “Selectee list” for additional screening, or the agency’s “No-fly list.” And given NSA intercepts and a CIA biographical report on the suspect, this alone should have barred him from entering the country if “normal” security procedures were followed. They weren’t.
As The Independent on Sunday reported last week, “the revelation of Abdulmutallab’s background has confounded terror experts.” One such “expert,” Dr Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College, told IoS that “the attempted bombing ‘didn’t square’.”
“On the one hand” Ranstorp said, “it seems he’s been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list.”
“That doesn’t square” Ranstorp elaborated, “because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list.”
Good question, Dr. Ranstorp. Perhaps because someone wanted him on that plane. The question is, who?
One would have thought, given the “special treatment” afforded antiwar activists by TSA at airports, that a warning about Abdulmutallab’s possible involvement with terrorists, by his own father no less, a former top official in a government friendly to Washington, numerous NSA intercepts, a CIA dossier and MI5 reports would have raised at least one red flag!
In the suspect’s case, there were so many red flags flying you’d have thought the Red Army was parading through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport!
Then again, perhaps Abdulmutallab was on that plane because, as journalist Daniel Hopsicker was told by a former aviation executive during his investigation of the 9/11 attacks: “Sometimes when things don’t make business sense … its because they do make sense…just in some other way.”
As the World Socialist Web Site points out:
The general outlines of the Northwest bombing attempt and the 9/11 attacks are startlingly similar. One might even say that what is involved is a modus operandi. In both cases, those alleged to have carried out the actions had been the subject of US intelligence investigations and surveillance and had been allowed to enter the country and board flights under conditions that would normally have set off multiple security alarms.
Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely “innocent” mistakes–and not something far more sinister? (Bill Van Auken, “The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy?,” World Socialist Web Site, December 31, 2009)
And so dear readers with are left to ponder the question, cui bono? Who would benefit politically from a major terrorist incident on American soil, ready, willing and able to step into the breach and exploit the catastrophic loss of human life that would follow in its wake?
Who indeed?
SUBHEAD: Legal Eyewitnesses: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport.
Image above: Kurt Haskell's boarding pass for NWA "Underwear Bomber" Flight 253. Photo by Kurt Haskell.
By Sheena Harrison on 26 December 2010 for MLive.com -
(http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_says_at_l.html)
A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.
Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they sawMutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.
Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.
While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'”
Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.
The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn't see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane.
Haskell said the flight was mostly unremarkable. That was until he heard a flight attendant say she smelled smoke, just after the pilot announced the plane would land in Detroit in 10 minutes. Haskell got out of his seat to view the brewing commotion.
“I stood up and walked a couple feet ahead to get a closer look, and that's when I saw the flames,” said Haskell, who sat about seven rows behind Mutallab. “It started to spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”
Haskell, who described Mutallab as a diminutive man who looks like a teenager, said about 30 seconds passed between the first mention of smoke and when Mutallab was subdued by fellow passengers.
“He didn't fight back at all. This wasn't a big skirmish,” Haskell said. “A couple guys jumped on him and hauled him away.”
The ordeal has Haskell and his wife a little shaken. Flight attendants were screaming during the fire and the pilot sounded notably nervous when bringing the plane in for a landing, he said.
“Immediately, the pilot came on and said two words: emergency landing,” Haskell said. “And that was it. The plane sped up instead of slowing down. You could tell he floored it.”
As Mutallab was being led out of the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man he saw trying to board the plane in Amsterdam.
Passengers had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit the plane. Haskell said he and other passengers waited about six hours to be interviewed by the FBI.
About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody.
Gross All Over
SUBHEAD: There's a lot to feel uncomfortable about. But, what will be there when we break on through to the other side?
Image above: Mashup by Juan Wilson of Thanksgiving-Football hat ad and the plasma TV alter on Turkeyday.
By James Kunstler on 22 November 2010 in Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/11/gross-all-over.html)
I was kind of relieved to be leaving the country again this week with Thursday's Feast of Football looming, followed by the "consumer" buffoonery of Black Friday. Distance affords reflection and this is a good week to ask ourselves what, exactly, lies on the other side of this massive wall of suspense we have constructed around the fate of our money system?
Image above: Mashup by Juan Wilson of Thanksgiving-Football hat ad and the plasma TV alter on Turkeyday.
By James Kunstler on 22 November 2010 in Kunstler.com -
(http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/11/gross-all-over.html)
I was kind of relieved to be leaving the country again this week with Thursday's Feast of Football looming, followed by the "consumer" buffoonery of Black Friday. Distance affords reflection and this is a good week to ask ourselves what, exactly, lies on the other side of this massive wall of suspense we have constructed around the fate of our money system?
What a scary season! This is what it feels like to hit the wall of limits to everything the earth provides us. Our oil problems are for real and urgent, despite the arrant nonsense ("There Will Be Fuel") published last week in The New York Times - a news organization that runs a direct hose-line of smoke up its own ass from the oil industry's chief PR shop, IHS-CERA, The Times's sole source on the energy beat. Meanwhile, Europe is back to imploding financially again (with Ireland as the rotting head of the dead fish in the current rotation). The US housing sector has flat-lined, the banks are so lost in the "mortgage-gate" morass of lost and robo-forged documents that the ghost of Roy Cohen couldn't get them out of it alive - though Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon must pray to tiny gilded statuettes of old Roy in their late night sweats.
Ben Bernanke is set to shovel huge transaction fees to the "primary dealers" (i.e. Lloyd's and Jamie's banks, et al) in his scheme to buy treasuries through them monthly at a whopping premium instead of directly from the source - with the side effect of making it an act of futility for ordinary Americans to save money the old-fashioned way, at interest. The fetid remains of decomposing CDOs line the vaults and stain the books of financial institutions everywhere. Accounting fraud is still the order-of-the-day in everything from Fannie and Freddie to your neighborhood HMO. Government at all levels is dead broke. Did I leave out endless war at endless cost (of money we don't have)?
There's a lot to feel uncomfortable about. But the question remains: what will be there when we break on through to the other side (as The Doors used to say... remember them? Probably not).
You can bet there will be a "workout" of all the imbalances, distortions, perversities, rackets, obligations and other financial dead weight paralyzing this country. America will be dragged kicking and screaming through it - like a 14-year-old video gamer through the Okefenokee Swamp - and it all amounts to one thing eventually: a society with much less money, and perhaps with a lot of things in disarray.
After being crybabies for a while - and if we don't blow up the planet - we'll face the task of reconstructing a society that has some kind of future. It probably won't look like the way we live now. Are you ready to imagine what that might mean? Readers are incessantly twanging on me to lay out some kind of agenda, some "positive vision" - or, resorting to the phrase I so disdain for its sad-sack sanctimony, to "offer some solutions." Since it is Thanksgiving week, a time of gratitude and humility, I'll try to oblige. I have stated a lot of this before, but readers seem to forget.
Basically, we're looking at a re-set to a lower-scale type of economy and smaller, more local, autonomous units of governance. We have to move from unmanageable levels and layers of complexity to more direct, local modes of activity. We would necessarily have to let go of a lot of things that have provided comfort, convenience, and incessant diversion from reality. I'm not altogether confident, for instance, that we can even keep local telephone systems operating - let alone cellular networks that can download porn movies, if that gives you any idea of how things might shake out. And forget about getting "back on track" with the so-called consumer economy. The struggle to hang onto all this crap may steal all our attention from the really necessary tasks.
Will there be money? And what will it be? A lot of idealists promote what they call "local currency." Presumably this is some kind of paper medium-of-exchange representing claims for future work or goods. Their models are Berkshire Bucks and the scrip issued in Ithaca, New York. I do not believe this for a moment, anymore than I believe we'll be driving psychedelic Volkswagon buses to rock festivals twenty years from now. I believe money will be silver and / or gold. If any paper is involved it would be something like a promissory note from a person with a lot of silver and gold, perhaps even one affecting to act like a bank, as the Medici did.
There may be other miscellaneous kinds of tradable paper - bills of lading, letters of credit - but nothing like the abstract nonsense we're swapping around today. I doubt that corporations as we know them will survive the end of the age of fossil fuel driven hyper-complexity, and by then their paper will be in utter disrepute anyway. There's no reason that barter would not be a common feature of daily life, even if gold and / or silver are circulating. This is certainly how I imagined the future in the Witch of Hebron and World Made By Hand.
The human race (North American division) had better reinvent small-scale farming or there will be no Homo sapiens around these parts. Plenty of knowledge and skill is still out there, though not widely distributed. There are people who still know how to breed working animals, train mules, oxen, and dogs. We can grow edible plants without dumping oil-and-gas byproducts all over the ground. Our soils are pretty played out, but we know how to improve them. A much greater percentage of people will have to take up this line of work. I see agriculture coming back to the center of economic life. It doesn't have to be like the 13th century, but I rather think the social relations around farming could be starkly different than the model we know today, if only to keep the wandering riff-raff at bay. I don't know if the countryside will be orderly enough, otherwise.
We have no idea how we're going to make useful products when the conveyer belt from China to WalMart grinds to a halt, as it surely will. I would not bet on nanotechnology or carbon ladders-to-the-stars or related techno-grandiose horseshit so popular these days at the corporate-sponsored conferences, where venture capitalists dressed in black like the old Viet-Cong spin their fantasies between plates of basil-infused duck with quinoa farfalle, sets by Vampire Weekend, and other blandishments of the dead-end techno-wankery life.
My guess is we'll be making a lot less stuff, and there will be little plastic involved (except what can be scrounged up), and it will be more like cottage industry than Henry Ford's River Rouge assembly plant. Surely water power will have something to do with it, perhaps hydro-electric, if we're lucky.
It may be too late to improve the railroad system. There's quite a bit left, though too many places have been cut off from it, especially small towns - which will regain importance as farm trading towns with or without the railroads. But our continued investments in new freeways and airport expansions have been about the dumbest choices we've made in recent years.
And now that we're heading into a vortex of capital scarcity - that is, lack of money for any kind of project - we may be out of luck on fixing the railroads. Especially as political mischief mounts and Sarah Palin huddles with Glenn Beck to put the final polish on her inaugural address. Need I mention that our fantasies about running the Happy Motoring matrix on alt.fuels is one of the most corrosive delusions plaguing our culture now, especially among people who ought to know better.
There's no guarantee that the USA will hold together as a continent-sized federal republic, and if history is any guide the fact is that political boundaries constantly shift over time. Manifest destiny is looking less manifest these days. If anything, the federal government can only become more broke, more ineffective, and finally irrelevant. If there is any Big Brother, he will show up in your county courthouse in a cheap suit. Or perhaps we're in for more interesting costumes. Personally I could go for something other than Land's End casuals. But please, check the "no" box on ruffed collars and Star Trek outfits. I stray from my theme....
Anyway, I'm convinced that a sore beset public, broke, hungry, idle, and hopeless, will beg somebody to push them around, or at least tell them what to do. Our new "leaders" will range in style and disposition just like the honchos of yore, from Otto the Illustrious, to Charlemagne to Ethelred the Unready. Who knows what residue of Anglo-American law will persist. My guess is that some of these characters will act more in dispatch than in the interests of what used to be known as justice.
I do think the next ten days or so might be pivotal ones in the global banking system. Europe is not doing a very good job of sweeping its sovereign bankruptcy problems under a rug the size of Belgium. Faith is withering away in currencies and tradable paper of all kinds. Any sort of gross instability from any player in the global money game can blow up the equity, bond, commodity, and currency markets. And things are getting gross all over....
Posted from the departure lounge, Sydney airport, en route to Perth....
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