G-20 Police excoriated in report

About two years ago, the city of Toronto was host of a G-20 summit meeting of international leaders.  Police were tasked with protecting the glitterati of the global elite from protesters, malcontents, and violent anarchists bent on confrontation.  As far as most Canadians were concerned the entire event was a fiasco.  More than a billion dollars was spent on law enforcement, the entire city was shutdown at the beginning of the tourist season, hundreds of ordinary citizens, protesters, and journalists were harassed, brutally attacked by law enforcement, and subsequently jailed.

Numerous stories of police malfeasance and unconstitutional actions by the state against lawful citizens were reported in the media.

Over the past month a series of reports on police conduct during the G-20 meeting have been released.  The first report issued by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP (CPC) found that it saw no indication that the RCMP acted "inappropriately" or as "agents provocateurs."  This report however, was only concerned with actions associated directly with the RCMP, Canada's national police force, and not with the nebulous complaints and behavior of the entire security apparatus on display that week.  The report did fault the RCMP in participating in the inappropriate "kettling" of protesters and ordinary citizens.  The process of "kettling" is a means in which police eliminate all egress routes for persons, as is portrayed in the picture above, and then extract detainees on a singular basis.  The sophistication of the mass arrests was also subject to ridicule in a specific instance where the RCMP arrested five persons, "two of whom turned out to be undercover Toronto police officers".

The second report that came out shortly after, by the Office of the Independent Police Review Director (OIPRD), was scathing in its denunciation of police misconduct. The report found that the planning for the event was poorly conceptualized and concluded that:

many of the arrests of peaceful demonstrators were illegal — without proper warrants or reasonable grounds — and that the conditions and treatment of prisoners inside a makeshift detention centre were "improper and unnecessary"

The report expounds the fact the some officers deliberately ignored the Charter rights of citizens, used excessive force, and took “unreasonable, unnecessary and unlawful” actions against the same people they took an oath to protect and serve.

During the period of June 25 and June 27, police stop-and-search exercises in downtown Toronto increased exponentially.  The report determined that the police had overstepped their authority.  In an example of the latter, a metro Toronto transit worker was assaulted as he was on his way to work, arrested, and detained for 29 hours.  Mr. Elroy Yau is currently seeking "over $3 million, claiming his charter rights were violated during the G20 summit."

In another incident, which I discussed in my original blog on this topic, two Toronto police sergeants face disciplinary hearings after they were found to have illegally arrested journalists during the G-20 summit and engaged in a homophobic tirade.

In the case of [Ryan] Mitchell, the review found that the officers used excessive force in his arrest. But it couldn't substantiate Mitchell's allegation that during his arrest, an officer said: "I'm going to love shoving this baton up your ass."

The Toronto Star newspaper elaborates on the incident.

It also found [Sgt. Douglas] Rose and another officer, Sgt. Michael Ferry, unlawfully arrested [Lisa] Walter and her colleague, Ryan Mitchell, on the afternoon of the final day of the G20 summit. And that both officers used “unnecessary force” when arresting Mitchell, who said he was tackled to the ground and put into a headlock, his right arm twisted behind his back.

Video footage shot by bystanders contradicts the police officer's statements, where they claim that they arrested Mitchell for breach of the peace and that Mitchell was "struggling quite violently".

In the case of the second journalist, Lisa Walter, the review said there was insufficient evidence to substantiate that excessive force was used against her.  However, it did conclude that arresting officer Sgt. Rose was involved in "discreditable conduct" for using "profane, abusive or insulting language" regarding her sexuality.

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Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was initially chastised in the editorial pages of Canadian newspapers for failing to accept the results of the OIPRD report.  The Globe and Mail stated that:

Police Chief Bill Blair has not apologized for his own failings and those of the officers under his command... Mr. Blair’s response, a grudging concession that things could have been handled better, is a surprising miscalculation. He needed to show he is in command. His attempt to soft-pedal the findings will not succeed in dampening criticism of police actions, or the calls for heads to roll. On the contrary, it will raise pressure on Mr. Blair and the Toronto Police Service, because it suggests they have learned little over the past two years.

In response to public outrage to the report's findings, Chief Blair took the "unusual step of appointing retired judges and former Crown attorneys to run the hearings, which are usually adjudicated by a fellow officer, to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest."

In the end, none of this had to happen if Prime Minster Harper hadn't prematurely decided to force upon Toronto this unnecessary, ill planned, and useless publicity stunt.  We the public are equally left bewildered towards Minster Tony Clement, who was found in an auditor general's report to be in clear breach of federal policies on accountability in the G-8/G-20 boondoggle.  Why is it that millions -and in this case over a billion dollars- can be found to be used for Ministerial photo-ops, but actual infrastructure spending on subways, new transit lines, highway repairs, and sewer upgrades, all of which the city needs, is disregarded and mocked by the Conservative "law and order" politicians we have today?

Third world America: Highland Park, Michigan

Is America the richest country in the world?

Ostensibly the claim is made that America is the greatest country in the world.  A continental nation with global commercial centers, successful manufacturing sectors, a productive workforce, and over 8.4 million households with assets greater than 1-Million dollars (excluding their primary residence). According to Bloomberg News, more than 600,000 persons became millionaires in America in 2010.

However, the rest of the country has not been so lucky and many areas remain mired in debt and socio-economic decline.  The state most exemplifying changes in America's fortunes has been Michigan.  Due to the state's dependence on the automotive industry, Michigan never recovered from the initial dot-com recession of 2001.  For the totality of the decade of the zeroes, the state shed jobs, businesses, and people.  Middle class union jobs that were the backbone of the economy were slashed.  The net result was depression level cut-backs in government spending at the municipal and state level.  With decreased taxes, municipalities cut services; including essential services like police, fire-fighters, and ambulances.

An example of this freefall into urban dystopia is the current city of Highland Park.  The small city of eleven thousand lies encapsulated by Detroit and has witnessed a population decline of 33% since 2000.  Until 1995 it was the former home of Chrysler Automotives, which contributed to nearly 50% of the city's tax base at the time. The decade of the zeroes was particularly harsh to metropolitan Detroit and cities like Highland Park.

In a recent Detroit News article, DTE energy was removing street lights, of which 1,400 have already been extracted, as part of "of a settlement that allowed the city to avoid paying $4 million in unpaid bills going back several years."

Residents of the city are unhappy that basic utilities and services, such as luminating city streets and the front of business locations will not be available.  The Detroit News elaborates:

"After they took the street light from in front of my business, someone climbed onto my roof and stole an air conditioning unit," said Bobby Hargrove, owner of Hargrove Machinery Sales on Oakland Avenue, who also claims a police officer asked him for money to beef up his protection. "I feel like I'm being punished — I've always paid my bills on time, but they took the street light anyway."

So this is where America stands.  Broken urban landscapes bereft of basic amenities and services that people had a century ago.  Welcome to third world America.

NYT's Book Review of Matt Taibbi's "Griftopia"

The New York Times Sunday Book Review looks at Matt Taibbi's newest publication "Griftopia"

The reviewer summarizes the book with the following:

In “Griftopia,” a relentlessly disturbing, penetrating exploration of the root causes of the trauma that upended economic security in millions of American homes, Taibbi argues that what unfolded was far from accidental. Rather, the nation suffered the equivalent of a hostile takeover of key areas of its commercial life by investment banking houses, while regulators and members of Congress abdicated their responsibilities either because they were influenced by campaign cash or because they believed the fairy tale that unsupervised markets always work best. The result, Taibbi asserts, was a thieves’ paradise — Griftopia.

Taibbi takes on the zombie lie, pushed by right-wing hacks, that the banks were forced to sell subprime mortgages to poor people and that Fannie Mae and Fredie Mac were the root causes of the crisis.

Taibbi persuasively dismisses the argument that the financial crisis was caused by poor people with a taste for real estate, delineating how Wall Street eagerly handed out mortgages to anyone with a pulse, and then used the home loans as the material for a far more lucrative enterprise — the exotic investments known as derivatives. The derivatives market depended upon a steady supply of mortgages. But when too many of the bets went bad, Wall Street persuaded the Treasury to construct bailouts that Taibbi describes as a “labyrinthine financial sewage system designed to stick us all with the raw waste and pump clean water back to Wall Street.”

The book attacks the mindless Tea-Party movement, calls Alan Greenspan the biggest asshole in the universe, delves into America's bubble machine typified by the original vampire-squid, Goldman Sachs, and considers how Obama's health care initiative is nothing less than a boondoggle for the toxic-sludge dealers in big-Pharma and the nickle-and-dime kleptomaniacs in the so-called insurance business.  As emotionally cathartic as it is to find someone who will call the biggest thieves and crooks on the planet, what they truly are. It is Taibbi's constant attack on the enterprises of American capitalism, those revered and sacrosanct temples, in which he viciously and relentlessly dismantles and exposes as being little more than high-end criminal rings, that is most satisfying.

An excellent read.  I hope someone was generous enough to put it under your Christmas tree.

Americans Negotiating with Taliban Impostor!

Over and over, the impression given by our marginally elected politicians is that they and their well educated bureaucracy, if given enough time and effort are capable of implementing effective leadership and results across the globe.  The Afghan war is a typical example, in which we the citizens of the West have been promised that the country would be modernized and made safe from the Taliban.

Despite nearly a decade there, neither NATO nor America seems capable of winning a war against a fifth rate nation.  Why is that?  The reason might have something to do with the type of people who we have running the show over there.  Consider this and file it under "My God, they can't be this Fucking Stupid!"

According to international newspapers, both NATO and America have been negotiating with an impostor who claimed to be a high ranking Taliban commander.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

That's right.  The US government, including  Gen. David Petreaus the US Senior military commander in the region, was commenting on the progress they were having in negotiating with... a fucking impostor!  The impostor who for months was taking their money and pretending to be interested in halting the Talban's offensives in Afghanistan against NATO troops.  According to others:

The man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”

Brilliant!  At this point any statements made by anyone in any Western government can be considered useless.  We are fighting semi-literate tribesmen, who have no formal military training, no firm logistical support lines, no long term financing for their guerrilla campaigns, and no discernible resources; other than that provided by the duplicitous and corrupt Pakistani.  Yet we are being told that the war will last for another five years!  Send Biden, Obama, and every member of congress and their adult relatives to do a tour of duty in Afghanistan and this war will end tomorrow.

Matt Taibbi explains the Financial sector's hold on Democrats

I personally think the reason Rick Sanchez got cut from CNN was that he rubbed some of the MSM top honchos the wrong way during his time at the anchor desk.  Populism is fine for the plutocrats when it works to their advantage, as in the case of the ignorant and deranged Tea Party advocates.  However, when discussions of the collusion between those at the top of the economic pyramid (i.e. the banks) and government officials begin, which leads to the magnification of the nexus of institutional corruption, the grand-poobahs get antsy. 

Consider the above video with Sanchez and Rolling Stone magazine contributor and author Matt Taibbi, where the discussion veers into understanding the basis of the 2009 financial sector bailout pursued by the Obama administration. In it, Sanchez makes the connection that Washington DC is effectively corporate controlled territory. He notes that Goldman Sachs and other bankers wield inordinate levels of power over the legislative and executive branches and control the system through campaign contributions to both parties and the installation of their people into key government portfolios. There was no requirement for Obama to bring people like Larry Summers, who had been an architect of the deregulatory fiasco of the 1990's that lead to this current economic malaise, into the fold.  There was no requirement to appoint Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury or to re-appoint Ben Bernanke, other than it appeased the poobahs on Wall Street.

For all the talk of change, the Obama administration made sure that corporate America knew that the new sheriff in town was going to be the same as the old one.  They let it be known that "Greed was still good," and regardless of how the economy reacted, all the merry sociopaths, looking down at us little people from the glass towers in the Financial District, would still get all their bonuses that would allow them to feed their insatiable want for coke, hookers, and good times.

All this nonsensical talk that Obama is somehow a socialist is the musings of truly stupid people.  The facts are plain to see that this administration is not terribly different than any of its Republican or Democratic predecessors.  The facts are also clear that it is the greedheads at the top of the financial food chain who have been the winners for the past 30 years.  When the next economic calamity arises in the near future, we'll see who gets saved again and who the ignorant masses will blame for it.

Gretchen Morgenson: Untangling The Complex Foreclosure Mess

Gretchen Morgenson, who writes a must-read weekly column in the NY Times business section goes on NPR to discuss the complete mess the banks and mortgage lending agencies have gotten the entire American economy into, through their initial mortgage securitization programs and now with their shady and illegal foreclosure practices.  To underline the severity of this situation, all 50 states have launched criminal investigations into the unsavory foreclosure activities committed by the banks.  Ms. Morgenson, unlike the hacks at the Wall St. Journal's op-ed pages, is an intelligent and informative journalist, who has been at the forefront in explaining the Great recession and the corpulence underlying America's corporate misdeeds.
 
NPR begins with the following introduction:

Since the housing bust two years ago, when millions of homeowners fell behind on their loans, the foreclosure industry has grown into a multibillion-dollar business. To deal with the thousands of defaulted loans needing to be processed, banks relied on thousands of temporary employees who often had little experience and training to handle the foreclosure paperwork.

This resulted in many mistakes being made throughout the foreclosure process. Reports of sloppy documentation — including the questionable notarization of documents, the loss of key paperwork needed to begin foreclosure proceedings and missing paperwork on original mortgages — temporarily halted foreclosure proceedings across much of the country in early October. It also triggered at least five separate federal investigations into the ways mortgage lenders have handled foreclosures.

The entire broadcast can be heard or downloaded here.

The degree of duplicity, fraud, and ineptitude exhibited by the major players in this decade long fiasco, should make everyone who has a stake in the viability of the American economy, to demand that everyone -politicians, corporations, bankers, loan agents, bond rating agencies, economists, and homeowners- all pay a severe penalty for engaging in what is likely the world's largest instance of criminal fraud.  Nothing else is acceptable, because these same devious pick-pockets will only re-emerge emboldened and unleash another wave of catastrophe upon the financial world if left unpunished.

Glaxo Guilty of Selling Tainted and Defective Drugs

GlaxoSmithKline, a British pharmaceutical company, has been forced to pay $750 million (USD) "to settle criminal and civil complaints that the company for years knowingly sold contaminated baby ointment and an ineffective antidepressant."

The case was initiated by a former employee and whistle-blower who sought penalties against the company.  The NY Times elaborates on the nature of the crimes at their Puerto Rico facility:

This was GlaxoSmithKline’s premier manufacturing facility, producing $5.5 billion of product each year. But Ms. Eckard [the whistle-blower] soon discovered that quality control was a mess: the water system was contaminated; the air system allowed for cross-contamination between products; the warehouse was so overcrowded that rented vans were used for storage; the plant could not ensure the sterility of intravenous drugs for cancer; and pills of differing strengths were sometimes mixed in the same bottles.

Instead of heeding FDA warnings about QA/QC inadequacies of the facility and their own internal people's advice, GlaxoSmithKline either ignored and/or dismissed concerns.  Ms. Eckard, who was initially sent to lead "a team of 100 quality experts to fix problems," was stonewalled by management and then dismissed once she began to demand that products be recalled.  She will now earn for her part in the whistle-blower case, "$96 million from the federal government, and she will collect additional millions from states."

The circumstances surrounding this particular case are unlike previous situations. 

Nearly all previous cases against the industry involved illegal marketing. This is the first successful case ever to assert that a drug maker knowingly sold contaminated products.

Whereas in the past, big-pharma was tagged for deceptive marketing and off-label sales tactics, GSK engaged in the willful and knowing dissemination of tainted, ineffectual, and potentially dangerous drugs to the public. This failure of both GSK and the American government to regulate the company is another indictment of the laissez-faire deregulatory approach that highlighted the conservative dogma prevalent in the Bush years.  Furthermore, it decimates any specious arguments that importation of Canadian drugs are a threat to consumers.

Given that the profit sources for big-pharma are waning and that numerous lawsuits have been asserted against big-pharma for misleading patients and "defrauding federal and state governments" the entire health care bills pushed through by both the Bush and Obama administrations reeks of corruption.  These companies are clearly unable to actually provide quality drugs that benefit people. So instead of ramping up their R&D base to find new drugs, they fire scientists and engage in legislative trickery to extend the patent life of their already questionable drug performers and push onto the market products that are ineffective and potentially lethal.  These people are just evil.  Sick and dying people shouldn't have to worry about whether their doctor is in collusion with the drug company to push a useless product upon them.  Patients shouldn't have to worry if FDA "approved" medication is actually effective or instead going to make them more sick or even kill them.

Is this all America is about? Lying, cheating, and using the government to swindle dying people out of their life savings. While congress subsidizes big-pharma, agriculture corporations, the military-industrial state, and bails out the banking industry for the umpteenth time, what are you getting? Maybe you can find it in your bonus that comes in the form of less take home pay, less benefits, less social mobility, more hours working, or more of your taxes going to maintain the lifestyles of corporate lobbyists and the "masters of the universe"-crowd.

Wake up people!

Take the red pill people, and fucking wake up!

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This blog has previously dissected and listed other areas of fraud and corruption by big-pharma:

• Novartis fined $422 Million
• Big-Pharma, perennial fraud-mongers
• Pfizer on eminant domain and corporate welfare (NY Times)
• The corruption of university bio-medical research (NY Times)

Quote of the Day: US Military Spending

[T]oday, with the Soviet Union gone, we account for most of the world's defense spending -- 54 percent in 2009, according to a recent report. That's right: There are 195 countries on planet Earth, and if you added up the military spending of the 194 of them that aren't the United States, you'd still have less than what we are spending.

- Paul Wildeman at the American Prospect on "Our "Hollowed Out" Military"

As is usual, the typical ass-clowns of the military-industrial complex, in this case neo-conservatives and perennial war-mongers Bill Kristol and company are defending the bloated, corrupt, and unsustainable Pentagon and surveillance state budgets.  None of these so-called "conservatives" care anything about fiscal soundness or the long term viability of the nation. 

Republicans continuously bloviate that about the necessity of spending cuts, including medicare and social security, but never discuss how to trim the real beast: war making.  This issue more than any other underlies the hollowness of the entire American conservative movement.  All their major gripes: big-government, intrusive state powers, accountability, preventing government waste and corruption, and the distorting force of foreign interventions and wars, that would be anathema to the explicitly stated wishes of the constitutional framers; are all thrown out the window.  America can be a declining military superpower or it can be a vibrant democracy, but it cannot be both.

(h/t Andrew Sulivan's Daily Dish, "More than half the world's defense spending")

Quote of the Day: Tom Ricks on 9-11

Tom Ricks is an author and a Pulitzer award winning journalist who has covered the Pentagon and military affairs for the WSJ and the Washington Post.  In his Foreign Policy blog he succinctly summarizes the whole post-9/11 and Iraq debacle in one paragraph:

I've long thought that this country was knocked off balance by 9/11, and that instead of steadying us, as leaders should, President Bush and Vice President Cheney led the panic, and so intensified and lengthened the period of disequilibrium. The Iraq war was one result -- and also a cause -- of the length of this period, because the hundreds of billions of unnecessary spending led to a huge borrowing splurge by the federal government. Essentially China paid for the war, and our children and grandchildren are on the hook to pay it back.

Maybe the sheeple will remember that it was was their own intellectual laziness and dismal understanding of world affairs and economics that led to the election of a president who previously had never left the country, and permitted that same president to pursue two Middle eastern wars while cutting taxes; the latter a first in the history of the republic.  This morasses is as much the fault of the belligerents and corporate toadies in the White House and US congress, as it is the idiotic and feeble minded dolts who consistently failed to ask the right questions and hold those in power in check.  These red-baiting dunces, who decades ago were shrieking of the terror of global communism, have handed the butchers of Tiananmen Square and the communist hierarchy in Beijing the financial and political leverage that forty years of cold-war posturing could not accomplish.

A Wall Street Government?

There is another name for a government by and for the corporations....

Yeah... it's that other F-word: Fascism.

Garbage Posed to Clog China's Three Gorges Dam

Another article underlying that all is not alright with China or its environment. 

The Wall Street Journal outlines that as a result of recent rainfall across mainland China, massive levels of garbage and detritus have accumulated in river systems upstream of the the Three Gorges Dam and are posed to congest the dam's miter gate.  It is estmated that more than 150 million people live near the dam and its upper stream. Residents, due to inadequate waste removal facilities, routinely dump their household garbage directly into the river. As more people transition from low-productivity agrarian subsistence, to higher level urbanization and industrial production the overall problems are likely to increase, rather than diminish.

China’s state-controlled media continues to punch holes in the image of the mighty Three Gorges Dam.

The latest poke came via China Daily, the English-language government-run newspaper. In an article Monday, the paper warns a thick layer of garbage washed into the reservoir by torrential rains could jam a key floodgate on the world’s biggest dam.

“The large amount of waste in the dam area could jam the miter gate of the Three Gorges Dam,” Chen Lei, Three Gorges engineer, told the China Daily.

China has been coping with the deadliest floods in decades, with some 1,000 killed, stressing China’s poorly built infrastructure. Bridges have collapsed and authorities are rushing to reinforce dams and reservoirs cracking under the pressure.

Authorities have spoken publicly about problems at other dams, but this year’s unprecedented frankness about the Three Gorges in state media raises other questions. One of the Three Gorges biggest selling points was its ability to tame flooding on the Yangtze River. Critics say the dam could never live up to overhyped expectations on flood control.

In the past, domestic criticism was squashed as long as the dam’s chief proponent, former Premier Li Peng, had influence.

In the arcane shadow puppetry of China politics, perhaps all this trash talking against a project so closely linked to the former premier reflects some hidden political message?

Combined with increasing agricultural demands, encroaching deserts, water toxification, airborne pollution levels (which is estimated to cause 1.3 million premature deaths a year from respiratory disease) and industrial waste problems, China's ecological future appears grim.

25% of China's Surface Water too Toxic to use for Anything

More revelations of the great Chinese miracle! According to ENN:

Almost a quarter of China's surface water remains so polluted that it is unfit even for industrial use, while less than half of total supplies are drinkable, data from the environment watchdog showed on Monday.

Inspectors from China's Ministry of Environmental Protection tested water samples from the country's major rivers and lakes in the first half of the year and declared just 49.3 percent to be safe for drinking, up from 48 percent last year, the ministry said in a notice posted on its website (www.mep.gov.cn).

China classifies its water supplies using six grades, with the first three grades considered safe for drinking and bathing.

China's industrial policies have always favored large scale growth at the expense of the environment and to the health of its populace.  Is there another country in the world, where more than 50% of surface water is so polluted that it unusable for human consumption?  These statistics, if even partially correct, indicate that the long term viability of the Chinese state is an illusion.   With fresh water supplies dwindling across the globe, it is undeniable that shortages of potable water will pose severe constraints on both the health of the average Chinese person and long term growth possibilities.

The Ascendancy of the American Thought Police

Dana Priest and William Arkin, at the Washington Post, have compiled and documented in a three-part series the elaborate web of quasi government-corporate agencies, that are ostensibly engaged in intelligence gathering for various factions within the US government.  Multiple agencies have been created to enhance and supplement the vast information gathering capabilities of the state since the 11-September attacks.  The size and scope of the operations is unlike anything available to any other government across the globe.  As a result, a vast and unaccountable network of corporate entities masquerading as government intelligence resources, information technology experts, and foreign security forces have been added to the government's payroll, with in most cases little or no oversight.  The military, intelligence agencies, profit driven corporations, and government/ civilian personnel are all integrated into a nebulous monstrosity that monitors and collects unprecedented levels of information on Americans and foreigners alike and acts with maximum brutality in executing the objectives of its masters.

A bullet point summary of the two-year investigation is listed below:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
• Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
• Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Implications

The overwhelming conclusion that can be drawn from these news reports is how unbalanced the entire post-9/11 world in Washington has become.  A virtual shadow government that has integrated for-profit corporations and hundreds of thousands of civilians to manage state-secrets with little congressional or internal controls has been created. 

The amount of data being accumulated by the state and its corporate accessories is unprecedented.  For example,

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.

The central faults prior to 9/11 were that various levels of government were not cooperating and vital information to prevent an attack were not being aggregated efficiently.  Today, that system is even more unwieldy and inefficient.  More agencies, personnel, and data are flowing through the system.  Few people are capable of understanding or controlling the multiple factions, some working with oppositional goals, within the shadow government.  Overlapping missions and unclear lines of authority and accountability remain the norm.  As proof, each of the major incidents that have emerged in the past year including the lone vigilante attack at Fort Hood, the Times Square bomber, and the underwear-bomber were all missed.

Many critics of the sprawling shadow government describe how as in the case of the Iraq war, corporate agendas for maximizing government largess to benefit individual profits coupled with the revolving corporate-government employment situation, is undermining government control and decision making.  The level of secrecy and unaccountable power that has been transferred into the hands of corporations is equally troublesome to an open and democratic nation.  Historically the military and the intelligence gathering agencies that emerged after the second World War, have been profoundly inefficient, ill-managed, and corrupt.  Thus, It is both naive and irresponsible to imagine that this new outgrowth of the military-industrial complex is a sound use of limited resources and is being used optimally.

Similar to the manner in which defence corporations selectively place themselves in every congressional district, so that budgetary 'pork' is fed to them, the third article in the series outlines the ubiquitous nature of the shadow government.  In the guise of national security, the shadow government's presence has increased across America.  In traditional military towns, entire business districts have been converted to serve special-operations contractors.  Massive sprawling mausoleums concentrating specific agencies have been erected to serve the growing demands of the US government.  Whole cities are now dependant on the secret actions of the shadow government.

The American republic has collapsed in a silent coup and has been usurped by a shadow government.  Corporations, whether they reside on Wall Street or hidden within the national security maze outside of Washington DC, control entire sections of the US state; including legislative, financial, and war-making authority.  The nation is now a de facto plutocracy, precariously sliding everyday into the authoritarian arms of the thought-police.

Why African leaders cannot be taken seriously (Part II)

The nation of South Africa has an enormous number of societal and economic problems.  Many of these problems emanate from the country's racial divide: poor education, inferior infrastructure and development, rising poverty, inadequate public health management, and extraordinary levels of criminality.   An estimated 5.4 million people have HIV-AIDS; the largest of any nation.  The disease coupled with inadequate educational resources reduces the supply of skilled workers and prevents an indigenous professional class from arising from the blighted masses.  Rape, homicide, and criminality are at epidemic levels.  The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime ranked South Africa (circa. 2000), "Second for assault and murder (by all means) per capita and first for rapes per capita" on a global level.

In terms of business practices, "corruption is rife in the granting of government contracts. Bribery thrives at the central government level, as exemplified by the high-profile procurement scandals that have been exposed within the last decade. Many companies also cite the procurement of goods for private companies as an activity likely to involve bribery."

Given that there are no shortage of problems to address, it is of great wonder how the current President Jacob Zuma, a Zulu traditionalist who practices polygamy, found time to marry his fifth wife on the 4 January 2010.  As the photograph illustrates, Mr. Zuma has no shame in dressing in traditional native attire and prancing about to the merriment of his betrothed and ethnic community.  His personal history prior to becoming South Africa's President is also very colorful.  According to Wikipedia,

Zuma has faced significant legal challenges. He was charged with rape in 2005, but was acquitted. In addition, he fought a long legal battle over allegations of racketeering and corruption, resulting from his financial advisor Schabir Shaik's conviction for corruption and fraud. On 6 April 2009, the National Prosecuting Authority decided to drop the charges citing political interference.

As usual, these African leaders always have time to indulge in what their immediate tastes desire.  Their ridiculous personal lives and corrupt governmental practices, that benefit both themselves and politically aligned cronies, confirms the reality that few, if any, African leaders can be taken seriously on matters of governance.

Corruption in China

One of the enduring attributes of a functioning state, is its ability to operate in an efficient and productive manner for all its citizens.  This isn't a trivial task.  Regardless of the country, great lengths are made by those in authority, both in government and commerce, to conceal their actions, distort public policy, and disseminate propaganda, so that they utilize the resources of the state to their own advantage.  Tolerance for corruption is varied, but is solidly rooted in those nations that are governed by dictatorships, unstable military regimes, and crony-capitalism.  Democracies for all their faults, through transparent legal frameworks, the nature of adversarial and partisan politics, and an open and free press, permit some of the most egregious behavior associated with institutional corruption to be minimized.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China's failure to contain, "Endemic corruption among Chinese officials poses one of the most serious threats to the nation’s future economic and political stability."  This particular study finds that due to the low prosecution rate of corruption, the context is created for even low-level officials to amass an illicit fortune.  As China has moved to a market-driven economy, corruption has exponentially increased.  The report estimates that the direct costs could be as much as $86 billion each year.

The indirect costs of corruption (efficiency losses; waste; and damage to the environment, public health, education, credibility and morale) are incalculable. Corruption both undermines social stability (sparking tens of thousands of protests each year), and contributes to China’s environmental degradation, deterioration of social services, and the rising cost of health care, housing, and education.

The Chinese government has publicly stated its displeasure with this societal manifestation and has made efforts (how successful they are is another question) to rectify the situation.  For example, a mass public trial in Chongqing earlier this year was conducted upon, "9,000 suspects, 50 public officials, a petulant billionaire and criminal organizations that dabbled in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and random acts of savagery, most notably the killing of a man for his unbearably loud karaoke voice."  The trial has exposed to the Chinese public and the world the vast intermingling between organized crime and government.

The New York Times has another interesting article in which the Chinese government itself reports that corruption amongst it's officials is having a serious and negative impact on the country.  How long the country can absorb this activity and what it entails towards China's global aspirations, will dictate the nature of global economics for the next decade. 

NY Times article follows: 

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China Finds Huge Fraud by Officials
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — Chinese officials misused or embezzled about $35 billion in government money in the first 11 months of the year, according to a national audit released this week.

The announcement is the latest indication of how widespread corruption has become among government agencies and how difficult it will be for Beijing to root it out.

The National Audit Office, which carried out the examination, did not disclose the size of the budgets reviewed this year. But the agency, which is based in Beijing, said that it surveyed nearly 100,000 government departments and state-owned companies, and that more than 1,000 officials were facing prosecution or disciplinary action because of the audits.

Auditors said government officials engaged in everything from money laundering and issuing fraudulent loans to cheating the government through the sale or purchase of state land or mining rights.

“Criminals are now more intelligent, and covert,” Liu Jiayi, the director of the National Audit Office, was quoted as saying in the state-run news media.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hailed the work of the auditors on Tuesday and called on them to monitor government projects and prevent waste.

But analysts say the Communist Party faces significant hurdles in trying to curtail corruption. Every year Beijing announces new anticorruption drives, new laws and new policies aimed at dealing with the problem.

But every year the scale of fraud seems enormous, particularly in a country where the average person earns less than $50 a week.

In 2005, for instance, the National Audit Office reported finding about $35 billion worth of government funds misused or embezzled. That was the last year the office gave a national figure covering its audits, according to its Web site.

Experts say the audits revealed one thing: many in government are finding ways to steal public money.

“The huge crackdown reflects the seriousness of corruption in China’s government,” said Zhu Lijia, a professor of public policy at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing. “Even the National Audit Office should be supervised. In the past few years it was the N.A.O. that decided whether to publish or hide some statistics.”

Bend Over: This Will Hurt

"To practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them."
- Hippocratic Oath.

Would you go to a car repair shop which was evasive and opaque with its pricing; persistently overcharged you for simple services and applied usurious costs for necessary repairs; had a history of neglect or incompetence; acted in collusion with regional shops to eliminate competition; and in some instances, were forced to call other shops to repair your vehicle when they further damaged it instead of repairing it?

Well this is the current scenario with the American health care system.

Consider the anecdotal story of Steve Spivey, a 44 year old Texan, who developed breathing problems after spine surgery at physician-owned and for-profit speciality hospital. As a result of there being no physicians on hand (at this physician owned and operated facility), the administrators were forced to call 911 and have him taken to a nearby and regular full-service hospital. He was unfortunately pronounced dead a short time afterwards. What makes this case so galling, is that according to state Medicare records, the same West Texas Hospital, which failed to adequately prepare for the post-surgery complications that Mr. Spivey encountered, called 911 for an ambulance 15 times to transfer patients during medical emergencies since it opened in May 2005. This wasn't an accident; this was a cost-benefit analysis, where a patient's life was jeopardized because the doctors didn't want to invest their time and money in making sure Mr. Spivey would survive their butcher knives.

As an American citizen, Mr. Spivey was not alone in his abandonment by those he ensured with his life and well being. According to studies completed over the past decade, as many as 200,000 people a year could be dying in U.S. hospitals and patient care facilities because of easily prevented errors. For example, 20-30% of patients in American hospitals or long-term care receive incorrect medical care; including incorrect medicine, wrong dosages, lethal infections arising from hospitalization, incorrect surgical operations, and general patient neglect. If listed along with other CDC morbidity indexes, medical errors would rank as the sixth leading cause of death, ahead of diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer's disease, and renal disease. In comparison with all other industrialized nations the United States stands out for inefficient care and errors and is an outlier on access/cost barriers.

Public Health

Fifty years ago, Americans used to be amongst the healthiest people anywhere. Today, the nation ranks dead last amongst Western industrialized nations and has been overtaken by some less than prosperous ones. With respect to the general population, life expectancy in America continues to slip, descending to 77.3 at birth, compared to Canada at 79.8 years and the Japanese reigning at 81.9. America is unique among Western nations in that 63% of its population are overweight, with an unprecedented 34% of the general population being obese and as many as six million being morbidly (or super) obese. Additional factors unique to America include that it has the highest homicide rate of all industrialized countries and given its size, is the largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world.

American children like their adult counterparts are also experiencing higher levels of obesity, hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease than previous generations and are likely to impose a severe cost upon any future social security and health care systems. Other less than stellar achievements in the areas of childhood care include the fact that the country has the highest infant-mortality rate, the highest child-poverty rate, the highest teen-pregnancy rate, and the highest child-abuse death rate in relation to its peers.

Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, a senior lecturer in the School of Public Health at the University of Washington in Seattle states, "There isn't a single measure in which the U.S. excels in the health arena…We spend half of the world's health care bill and we are less healthy than all the other rich countries."

Economics

The American health care system as a whole is a behemoth that only as recently as 2004 was spending $1.9 trillion dollars per annum, or 16% of GDP; nearly twice the OECD average. Despite years of bipartisan posturing about reform (including the infamous Bush Medicare donut) this year alone health-care expenditures are expected to account for about 18% of US GDP. President Obama’s Commerce Secretary, Gary Locke, recently opined in the Wall Street Journal that without reform, health care costs will increase to 28% in 2030 and to 34% in 2040 of GDP.

The number of persons sequestered to administer and manage the system has increased between the years 1969 and 1999, from 18.2 percent to 27.3 percent. Compared to Canada, which has a universal health care system, its percentage of the labour force dedicated to health care only grew from 16.0 percent in 1971 to 19.1 percent in 1996. With medical inflation outpacing inflation, American companies continue to reduce the health coverage they offer to employees. The percentage of workers who receive health insurance from their own employer has fallen from almost 70% in the late 1970s to around 50% today. So what we have today is a system that continues to grow without constraint, while providing fewer services and most certainly value to a smaller proportion of the working force.

With decades of growth across a patch-work of state health systems, the Byzantine network of American health care has created opportunities ripe for fraud and corruption. FBI data indicates that between 3-10% of health care funding is lost to fraud. There maybe as much as $75-250 billion dollars being squeezed out of the current Medicare system every year by crooked pharmacies, doctors, HMO’s, and equipment providers. Pfizer Inc, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, recently agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products. UnitedHealth Group at the beginning of 2009 was forced to pay a record $350 million to defrauded customers to resolve allegations of price fixing. Similarly, Aetna, the United States’ third-largest health insurance company, agreed to pay $20 million to a non-profit body that would fairly determine rates for patients who use doctors outside the network.

The American Medical Council, a professional group which certifies internists, makes the statement that, "Primary care is on the verge of collapse." They explain that, "Very few young physicians are going into primary care and those already in practice are under such stress that they are looking for an exit strategy."

So unless wholesale and systemic changes are made to the way health care is paid for, delivered, and managed, the entire system is posed to collapse.

Alternatives

What is not in dispute is that America has some of the greatest public health centers in the world. The Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Hospital System, Massachusetts General…etc are world renown institutions that service countless Americans and people from across the world. If you have the finances, the ability, and/or status to pay top dollar for your health concerns, then you will be more than adequately serviced by these hospitals. Although there may be some physicians and hospitals that offer similar treatments elsewhere, the collection of these centers of health excellence are what Americans think about when they say their country offers the best in health care.

The Bush administration deduced that the reason health costs were too high was because people had too much insurance and purchased too much medical care. Their solution was what the population needed were “tax-advantaged health savings accounts tied to plans with high deductibles that induce people to pay more of their medical expenses out of pocket.” Of course as with all things Dubya, this would (again) favour his true base; the rich and the very-rich. The standard Republican line is deference to big-pharma, increase the monopoly power of the insurance companies, and shriek about states rights when it comes to regulation. Yes the public continues to suffer and get taken to the bank (which curiously enough they now perversely own), but I'm sure that's what the founding fathers would have wanted.

Many Democrats, especially economists like Paul Krugman and public health practitioners advocate either a Canadian or European style system. Given that 40% of Americans already receive health care through Medicare, state plans (Medicaid), children health insurance plans (CHIP), Native American health care systems, and/or military/veterans’ affairs, a large minority already have that system in place. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. So regardless of the nation or model being used, health care cost everywhere continue to rise at an unstable level and consume larger-and-larger portions of government spending. Furthermore, the United States has a number of cultural and societal attributes, as discussed above, that impose significant limitations towards the successful adoption of any foreign system in the long-term.

The Brookings Institute summarizes the attributes that meaningful reform will need to entail in America:

Reforming our health care delivery system to improve the quality and value of care is essential to address escalating costs, poor quality, and increasing numbers of Americans without health insurance coverage. Reforms should improve access to the right care at the right time in the right setting. They should keep people healthy and prevent common, avoidable complications of illnesses to the greatest extent possible. Thoughtfully constructed reforms would support greater access to health-improving care — in contrast to the current system, which encourages more tests, procedures, and treatments that are at best unnecessary and at worst harmful.

The Pacific isn’t the only ocean collecting plastic trash | csmonitor.com

The Pacific isn’t the only ocean collecting plastic trash csmonitor.com

The idea of a garbage “patch” or “island” twice the size of Texas, a favorite term in the media for the now-infamous spot in the Pacific, feeds misconceptions, he says. “It’s much worse. If it were an island, we could go get it. But we can’t,” because it’s a “thin soup of plastic fragments.”

Cost externalizing is a socio-economical term describing how a business maximizes its profits by off loading indirect costs and forcing negative effects to a third party. In this case we the consumer, who purchase everything from plastic bags, drink bottles, coffee with plastic lids, and a barrage of small single-usage items are the primary culprits here. I've seen rivers congested with plastic bags in Indochina and streams saturated with crunched up plastic bottles in South America. We consider this type of pollution someone else's concern. Few accept or understand that contamination of the "commons" and toxification and demise of ocean life are all costs that shall be borne by us collectively as a species in the near future.