Putin says no grain exports before 2011 harvest

Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chairs a government meeting in Moscow, September 2, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Ria Novosti/Pool/Alexei Druzhinin

By Gleb Bryanski and Denis Dyomkin

MOSCOW/SARATOV, Russia | Thu Sep 2, 2010 1:41pm EDT

 

MOSCOW/SARATOV, Russia (Reuters) - Russia abruptly signaled Thursday it would extend a grain export ban until late 2011 and ordered authorities to prevent speculators driving up food prices after the worst harvest in years.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's surprise statement on the export ban -- which had been due for review after December 31 -- puzzled analysts and helped send benchmark Chicago wheat prices higher.

Full article

BACK to margotbworldnews.com

Canadian Banks Doing Fine! (In Related News, Canadian People Getting F**** By Canadian Banks)

(I am aware that a lot of this post applies to other countries as well, and banks in general.)

I’m completely disgusted with hearing about how terrific Canadian banks are doing. You want to know who’s not doing so well? Canadian people! You know why? Because they are having every penny squeezed out of them by Canadian banks. Canadian citizens, faced with insurmountable monthly costs, are being forced to go into record levels of debt to… you guessed it, Canadian Banks!  The banks and financial experts tell the newspapers and media that this is because we are all freewheeling and dealing, blowing cash on anything we can, just for the hell of it!  The truth is this: The cost of living in cities like Vancouver and Toronto is so ridicuously out of proportion with what the people in those cities actually earn it is staggering. People can’t make rent, they have to borrow money, they go into debt.  They want to go to school to obtain an education and get a better paying job, they have to borrow money, they go into debt.  This isn’t some nation wide frat party.  This is people just trying to exist.

But all you see in the news is report after report about how strong our economy is, and how well our banks are doing.  How we’ve “weathered the storm” and what a shining example we are for the rest of the world.  If we actually think we’ve avoided the kind of total economic collapse that has rocked the rest of the world, it’s time for a serious wake up call… we may be a little behind, but the crisis is coming to Canada.  First of all, the housing market will crash, that much is inevitable.  Don’t believe me?  See if you can tell the difference between a Vancouver crack shack and a million dollar mansion. So that will cripple construction, hammer the banks and real estate… and generally devastate many a profession based around this hyper inflated market.  Then there’s the little fact that these levels of “personal” debt (you know, that of real, actual people, not just institutions and governments) are 100% unsustainable.
 
Here’s the reality of our economy: A dual income couple with no dependants living in a one bedroom apartment, can just barely make rent with a little left over for food and transportation to and from work. In order to pay bills and BREAK EVEN (that’s no extra cash for anything, no savings, no paying off of debt, no visits to the dentist… we’re talking basic existance here) they HAVE TO go into debt, with the hopes they will one day make more money in the future. They won’t. Why? Because employers are routinely and systematically stripping away whatever is left of the dignity and decency of their employees. Increasingly, you see job postings offering less and less money, with more and more qualifications and experience required. How exactly is someone paying off a 4+ year degree supposed to survive on $12/hr? More credit and debt of course! Gotta keep those banks well paid.

We’re told we should feel lucky to have any work at all. Meanwhile, employers are hacking away at any semblance of workers rights, acting as if a lunch break or paying for holidays is optional in this country. They think they can not pay overtime and fabricate lies to take money off of paycheques. They are demanding outlandish hours with no notification of how many days, or how many hours, you will be working. Or perhaps they’ll offer you 20 hours a week at minimum wage and then have the audacity to demand you are available every day, for weeks in advance, when they only post the schedule one week in advance. They try to control your home life and ‘extra-curricular activities.’ They have no respect for you as an individual, and the work force remains silent, passively accepting the worsening conditions because they should just feel lucky to have a job, right? Shut up, put up, and take it Canada.

You know why they believe all of this? Because they are right. They can and will get away with anything they want. You know why they behave this way? Because they can. They know they are winning, and we are losing, and we won’t fight back. We have no means to do so. The laws are shifting more and more in favor of the businesses and the banks, because we, the actual people, have no voice. No one speaks for us. No one cares about us. Which is funny considering… WE ARE THE COUNTRY! This is OUR country. “We” is not some fringe group of outcasts. “Workers” are not a small portion of the population. This is not the middle ages. We are not serfs. We are not slaves. But only if we don’t allow ourselves to be. Right now, we are slowly being enslaved with the same ancient methods used by many oppressive civilizations of the past, and no one is saying a word.

Sure, our ‘leaders’ will carve out a nice little bit of rhetoric for us in one of their speeches, but it never translates to anything meaningful. We are just bags of flesh whose only purpose is to pay every cent of our wages to the bank. Don’t fool yourself, your rent doesn’t go to the landlord, it goes through your landlord, straight to the banks. The banks get it all in the end. That’s why they’re doing so well. We get nothing. We get to exist, barely, as if we should be grateful that these rich, evil institutions allow us to do so. Grateful that they have a constricting choke-hold on our lives.

Make no mistake, we will never be truly free again as long as they continue to do so.  People would much rather lash out at anyone who dare criticize and make obvious observations, regurgitating what they hear on the news.  They say the problem is that we’re all out buying new houses and yachts and cars because of low interest rates.  We’re all reckless, freewheeling spenders.

The reality is that they are, and we are taking the blame.  We have been successfully divided and conquered. The average citizen blames other citizens. They lash out at each other, dismissing any criticism of how the banks are operating as ludicrous. No newspaper or magazine dares report the truth of what real Canadian people are going through… they are all owned by big businesses who are owned by the banks. They say what they are told to say. They blame the greedy consumer.

There is no reporting of the real struggles of real people. There is no article on people having their rent increased by $50 to $100 a year while their wages stay the same. There is no talk of desperate people having to take out loans to pay for dental work because their benefits were severed and their wages slashed in half.  There are no articles on abusive employers and students being manhandled and burdened with massive debt loads straight out of high school.  There is only distractions, more blame piled onto the overworked and underpaid Canadian just trying to survive.  There is talk of a farcical ‘jobless recovery’ and ever more news, that the banks are doing just fine with all our money.

At least someone is doing fine with it, because the Canadian people, are not.


BACK to margotbworldnews.com

Death By Globalism: Economists haven’t a Clue

Have economists made themselves irrelevant?  If you have any doubts, have a look at the current issue of the magazine, International Economy, a slick endorsed by former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, by Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, by former Secretary of State George Shultz, and by the New York Times and Washington Post, both of which declare the magazine to be “ahead of the curve.”

The main feature of the current issue is “The Great Stimulus Debate.” Is the Obama fiscal stimulus helping the economy or hindering it? 

Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi represent the Keynesian view that government deficit spending is needed to lift the economy out of recession. Zandi declares that thanks to the fiscal stimulus, “The economy has made enormous progress since early 2009,” an opinion shared by the President’s Council of Economic Advisors and the Congressional Budget Office. 

The opposite view, associated with Harvard economics professor Robert Barro and with European  economists, such as Francesco Giavazzi and Marco Pagano and the European Central Bank, is that government budget surpluses achieved by cutting government spending spur the economy by reducing the ratio of debt to Gross Domestic Product. This is the “let them eat cake school of economics.”

Barro says that fiscal stimulus has no effect, because people anticipate the future tax increases implied by government deficits and increase their personal savings to offset the added government debt. Giavazzi and Pagano reason that since fiscal stimulus does not expand the economy, fiscal austerity consisting of higher taxes and reduced government spending could be the cure for unemployment.

If one overlooks the real world and the need of life for sustenance, one can become engrossed in this debate. However, the minute one looks out the window upon the world, one realizes that cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and housing subsidies when 15 million Americans have lost jobs, medical coverage, and homes is a certain path to death by starvation, curable diseases, and exposure, and the loss of the productive labor inputs from 15 million people. Although some proponents of this anti-Keynesian policy deny that it results in social upheaval, Gerald Celente’s observation is closer to the mark: “When people have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”

The Krugman Keynesian school is just as deluded.  Neither side in “The Great Stimulus Debate” has a clue that the problem for the U.S. is that a large chunk of U.S. GDP and the jobs, incomes, and careers associated with it, have been moved offshore and given to Chinese, Indians, and others with low wage rates. Profits have soared on Wall Street, while job prospects for the middle class have been eliminated.

The offshoring of American jobs resulted from (1) Wall Street pressures for “higher shareholder returns,” that is, for more profits, and from (2) no-think economists, such as the ones engaged in the debate over fiscal stimulus, who mistakenly associated globalism with free trade instead of with its antithesis--the pursuit of lowest factor cost abroad or absolute advantage, the opposite of comparative advantage, which is the basis for free trade theory. Even Krugman, who has some credentials as a trade theorist  has fallen for the equation of globalism with free trade.

As economists assume, incorrectly according to the latest trade theory by Ralph Gomory and William Baumol, that free trade is always mutually beneficial, economists have failed to examine the devastatingly harmful effects of offshoring. The more intelligent among them who point it out are dismissed as “protectionists.”  

The reason fiscal stimulus cannot rescue the U.S. economy has nothing to do with the difference between Barro and Krugman. It has to do with the fact that a large percentage of high-productivity, high-value-added jobs and the middle class incomes and careers associated with them have been given to foreigners. What used to be U.S. GDP is now Chinese, Indian, and other country GDP.

When the jobs have been shipped overseas, fiscal stimulus does not call workers back to work in order to meet the rising consumer demand. If fiscal stimulus has any effect, it

stimulates employment in China and India.

The “let them eat cake school” is equally off the mark. As investment, research, development, etc., have been moved offshore, cutting entitlements simply drives the domestic population deeper in the ground. Americans cannot pay their mortgages, car payments, tuition, utility bills, or for that matter, any bill, based on Chinese and Indian pay scales. Therefore, Americans are priced out of the labor market and become dependencies of the federal budget. “Fiscal  consolidation” means writing off large numbers of humans.

During the Great Depression, many wage and salary earners were new members of the labor force arriving from family farms, where many parents and grandparents still supported themselves. When their city jobs disappeared, many could return to the farm. 

Today farming is in the hands of agri-business. There are no farms to which the unemployed can return. 

The “let them eat cake school” never mentions the one point in its favor.  The U.S., with all its huffed up power and importance, depends on the U.S. dollar as reserve currency. It is this role of the dollar that allows America to pay for its imports in its own currency. 

For a country whose trade is as unbalanced as  America’s, this privilege is what keeps the country afloat. 

The threats to the dollar’s role are the budget and trade deficits. Both are so large and have accumulated for so long that the prospect of making good on them has evaporated. As I have written for a number of years, the U.S. is so dependent on the dollar as reserve currency that it must have as its main policy goal to preserve that role. 

Otherwise, the U.S., an import-dependent country, will be unable to pay for its excess of imports over its exports.

“Fiscal consolidation,” the new term for austerity, could save the dollar. However, unless starvation, homelessness and social upheaval are the goals, the austerity must fall on the military budget. America cannot afford its multi-trillion dollar wars that serve only to enrich those invested in the armaments industries. The U.S. cannot afford the neoconservative dream of world hegemony and a conquered Middle East open to Israeli colonization. 

Is anyone surprised that not a single proponent of the “let them eat cake school” mentions cutting military spending?  Entitlements, despite the fact that they are paid for by earmarked taxes and have been in surplus since the Reagan administration, are always what economists put on the chopping bloc. 

Where do the two schools stand on inflation vs. deflation? We don’t have to worry. Martin Feldstein, one of America’s pre-eminent economist says: “The good news is that investors should worry about neither.” His explanation epitomizes the insouciance of American economists. 

Feldstein says that there cannot be inflation because of the high rate of unemployment and the low rate of capacity utilization. Thus, “there is little upward pressure on wages and prices in the United States.” Moreover, “the recent rise in the value of the dollar relative to the euro and British pound helps by reducing import costs.”

As for deflation, no risk there either. The huge deficits prevent deflation, “so the good news is that the possibility of significant inflation or deflation during the next few years is low on the list of economic risks faced by the U.S. economy and by financial investors.”

What we have in front of us is an unaware economics profession. There may be some initial period of deflation as stock and housing prices decline with the economy, which is headed down and not up.  The deflation will be short lived, because as the government’s deficit rises with the declining economy, the prospect of financing a $2 trillion annual deficit evaporates once individual investors have completed their flight from the stock market into “safe” government bonds, once the hyped Greek, Spanish, and Irish crises have driven investors out of euros into dollars, and once the banks’ excess reserves created by the bailout have been used up in the purchase of Treasuries.

Then what finances the deficit? Don’t look for an answer from either side of The Great Stimulus Debate. They haven’t a clue despite the fact that the answer is obvious. 

The Federal Reserve will monetize the federal government deficit. The result will be high inflation, possibly hyper-inflation and high unemployment simultaneously. 

The no-think economics establishment has no policy response for economic armageddon, assuming they are even capable of recognizing it. 

Economists who have spent their professional lives rationalizing “globalism” as good for America have no idea of the disaster that they have wrought.

 

Dr. Roberts was educated at Georgia Tech, the University of Virginia, the University of California, Berkeley, and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College. He is the author or coauthor of 9 books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship. He served in the Congressional staff and was Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He was awarded the Treasury’s Silver Medal for “outstanding contributions to the formulation of U.S. economic policy.” In 1987 the President of France recognized him as “the artisan of a renewal of economic science and policy” and awarded him the Legion of Honor.  

Roberts was associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He was Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. He has been a columnist for French, German, and Italian newspapers. Today he is followed worldwide over the Internet.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

Article Source 

BACK to margotbworldnews.com 

Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle

By Howard Falcon-Lang Science reporter, BBC News

Cloud forest now forms a damp oasis on Ascension's highest peak

A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.

Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.
Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".
What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonisation of Mars.
The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km (1,000 miles) from the coast of Africa and 2,250km (1,400 miles) from South America.
Its existence depends entirely on what geologists call the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart.

Ascension is one of a number of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic

However, because Ascension occupies a "hot spot" on the ridge, its volcano is especially active. A million years ago, molten magma explosively burst above the waves.
A new island was born.
Back in 1836, the young Charles Darwin was coming to the end of his five-year mission to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no naturalist had gone before.
Aboard HMS Beagle, he called in at Ascension. En route from another remote volcanic island, St Helena, Darwin wasn't expecting much.
"We know we live on a rock, but the poor people of Ascension live on a cinder," the residents of St Helena had joked before his departure.
But arriving on Ascension put an unexpected spring in Darwin's step.
Professor David Catling of the University of Washington, Seattle, is retracing Darwin's travels for a new book. He told the BBC: "Awaiting Darwin on Ascension was a letter from his Cambridge mentor, John Henslow.
"Darwin's voyage of discovery had already caused a huge sensation in London," he explained.
"Henslow assured him that on his return, he would take his place among the great men of science."
At this fantastic news, Darwin bounded forth in ecstasy, the sound of his geological hammer ringing from hill to hill.
Everywhere, bright red volcanic cones and rugged black lava signalled the violent forces that had wrought the island.
Yet, thinks Professor Catling, amid this wild desolation, Darwin began to hatch a plot.
Out of the ashes of the volcano, he would create a green oasis - a "Little England".
Island Eden Darwin's great buddy was Joseph Hooker, the intrepid botanist and explorer.
Only a few years after Darwin's return, Hooker was off on his own adventures, an ambitious slingshot around Antarctica aboard HMS Erebus and Terror. Mirroring Darwin's voyage, Hooker called in on Ascension on the way home in 1843.
Ascension was a strategic base for the Royal Navy. Originally set up to keep a watchful eye on the exiled emperor Napoleon on nearby St Helena, it was a thriving waystation at the time of Hooker's visit.
However, the big problem that impeded further expansion of this imperial outpost was the supply of fresh water.

In his twenties, Charles Darwin explored the world aboard HMS Beagle

Ascension was an arid island, buffeted by dry trade winds from southern Africa. Devoid of trees at the time of Darwin and Hooker's visits, the little rain that did fall quickly evaporated away.
Egged on by Darwin, in 1847 Hooker advised the Royal Navy to set in motion an elaborate plan. With the help of Kew Gardens - where Hooker's father was director - shipments of trees were to be sent to Ascension.
The idea was breathtakingly simple. Trees would capture more rain, reduce evaporation and create rich, loamy soils. The "cinder" would become a garden.
So, beginning in 1850 and continuing year after year, ships started to come. Each deposited a motley assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Europe, South Africa and Argentina.
Soon, on the highest peak at 859m (2,817ft), great changes were afoot. By the late 1870s, eucalyptus, Norfolk Island pine, bamboo, and banana had all run riot.
Back in England, Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution were busily uprooting the Garden of Eden.
But on a green hill far away, a new "island Eden" was being created.
Life on Mars Yet could Darwin's secret garden have more far-reaching consequences?
Dr Dave Wilkinson is an ecologist at Liverpool John Moores University, who has written extensively about Ascension Island's strange ecosystem.
He first visited Ascension in 2003.
"I remember thinking, this is really weird," he told the BBC.
"There were all kinds of plants that don't belong together in nature, growing side by side. I only later found out about Darwin, Hooker and everything that had happened," he said.

Darwin's artificial forest captures moisture from clouds that drift over Ascension's peaks

Dr Wilkinson describes the vegetation of "Green Mountain" - as the highest peak is now known - as a "cloud forest". The trees capture sea mist, creating a damp oasis amid the aridity.
However, this is a forest with a difference. It is totally artificial.
Such ecosystems normally develop over million of years through a slow process of co-evolution. By contrast, the Green Mountain cloud forest was cobbled together by the Royal Navy in a matter of decades.
Dr Wilkinson exclaimed: "This is really exciting!"
"What it tells us is that we can build a fully functioning ecosystem through a series of chance accidents or trial and error."
In effect, what Darwin, Hooker and the Royal Navy achieved was the world's first experiment in "terra-forming". They created a self-sustaining and self-reproducing ecosystem in order to make Ascension Island more habitable.
Wilkinson thinks that the principles that emerge from that experiment could be used to transform future colonies on Mars. In other words, rather than trying to improve an environment by force, the best approach might be to work with life to help it "find its own way".
However, to date, scientists have been deaf to the parable of Ascension Island.
"It's a terrible waste that no-one is studying it," remarked Wilkinson at the end of the interview.
Ascension Island's secret is safe for years to come, it seems.

Article Source

BACK to margotbworldnews.com

No Longer the Republican Party of Mount Rushmore -- Now the Party of Easter Island

I'm a pilot. So last week, as our Thirtieth Anniversary present to each other, my wife Jan Schakowsky and I packed up our two golden retrievers in a rented Cessna 182 and headed off to spend a week in the mountains of Montana.
Our destination was the Hawley Mountain Guest Ranch -- a small facility located in the Gallatin National Forest just adjacent to a million acres of federally protected Wilderness Area. Our plan was to base ourselves there and explore trails in the Wilderness Area on horseback.
On the way we stopped for the night in Rapid City, South Dakota, where we took a side trip to Mount Rushmore. If you've only seen pictures, you really can't fully appreciate the extraordinary achievement the monument represents -- carved over 14 years into the side of a mountain. Nor can you really experience the power of its testament to American values.
Of course there is George Washington -- the Revolutionary War General and first President who made America possible. There is Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, and author of the Declaration of Independence. There are two Republicans. Abraham Lincoln symbolizes America's commitment to equal opportunity and liberty for all. And there is Theodore Roosevelt -- the Republican President who more than any other embodied our commitment to conserve and protect our natural environment and prevent its destruction for short-term commercial profit.
Roosevelt not only championed setting aside National Parks and other protected areas similar to the one we were about to visit. He also took on - and broke up - the "Trusts" -- the giant corporate semi-monopolies that dominated America's economy as it entered the 20th Century.
It is really pretty remarkable to ponder how far the modern Republican Party has strayed from the vision of Lincoln, the Great Emancipator -- and Teddy Roosevelt, the Conservationist and Trust Buster.
For decades now, the Party of Lincoln has transformed itself into the Party of Strom Thurmond and Jim DeMint. The party that once authored the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that guaranteed that any child born in America was guaranteed full rights of citizenship, has become the party that campaigns to eliminate that right for no purpose other than rounding up some mid-term votes by pandering to fear. It has become the party that has attempted to transform a planned Muslim Community Center two city blocks away from New York's Ground Zero into a "desecration of sacred ground" -- all in the service of short-term political gain.
But the Republican abandonment of the values of Theodore Roosevelt is just as remarkable. The gulf between the vision of Teddy Roosevelt and the Party of "drill baby drill" is as vast as the Grand Canyon.
Our trip to a Wilderness Area in Montana last week has reminded me just how important Roosevelt's vision was to the future of America -- and for that matter to the well-being of the planet.
We spent the week riding trails through pristine forests. No gum wrappers or soda cans scattered along the way. Just Lodge Poll pine trees, wild flowers, streams with cool crystal clear water, and vast mountaintop meadows. The thing that is most striking to urban dwellers is the silence. When the wind is still, and the horses stop, the silence is palpable.
Throughout my life I have found that reconnecting with the natural world does more to nourish your spirit than just about anything you can do.
Federally protected wilderness areas are one of a number of different categories of land that has been set aside and is not available for commercial development. These include the eighty-four million acres of National Parks and Monuments that were visited over 285 million times last year. For millions of kids, the National Parks provide the most immediate and memorial lessons in understanding science, wildlife and the natural world.
The National Forests set aside millions of acres of trees and forest environment from unregulated commercial exploitation. They are intended to preserve and protect the forest resources that -- after all -- belong to all of us.
But wilderness areas go further. Almost all mechanical presence is excluded from wilderness areas. Most have few roads. You don't hear the sounds of chain saws. You can go there on foot or horseback, but the idea is to allow some areas of our country to exist in their unspoiled state -- allowing the natural ecosystem to function without substantial human intervention.
But rather than pursue the vision of Theodore Roosevelt, the modern Republican Party has made an alliance with the energy companies and others who demand that public lands be sold off or leased for commercial development. Those forces want to exploit every morsel of land and natural resource for their own short-term individual gain. They favor drilling in the Alaskan Natural Wildlife Refuge. They oppose creating protected areas like national parks, forests and wilderness areas. And those positions are more than simply an affront to the beauty of nature.
Roosevelt's vision - his commitment to setting aside land to protect and nurture our fellow species and especially to protect our forests is critical to the success -- and even the survival -- of human beings on our small interdependent planet.

Pulitzer Prize-winning physiologist and ethno-geographer Jared Diamond's book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed documents the causes of the collapse of human societies.
The story he tells of Easter Island is particularly compelling.
We are all familiar with Easter Island because of the hundreds of large, stylized statues that had been erected there by people who had no large domesticated animal power. They had nothing but their own muscle to transport and mount stone statues weighing many tons.

Easter Island was occupied about a thousand years ago as part of the great eastward expansion of Polynesian peoples into the Pacific. It is, however, the most remote piece of real estate out there and for that reason, there is no archeological evidence that its people had contact with the inhabitants of any other island -- or any other human period -- after it was first settled, until Europeans made contact there in the early 1700s.
At its peak, there were apparently about 15,000 people living on an island about nine miles in diameter. When they arrived, the archeological evidence indicates that the colonists found an island loaded with tall trees that were suitable to make large ocean-going canoes, for construction, and to make rope and cloth. The trees also provided various edible fruits, prevented soil erosion from brisk winds, and provided habitat for various land birds. They also found at least 25 nesting seabird species, making it formerly the richest breeding site in all of Polynesia. It was a great place for the seabirds because its isolation kept them free of predators -- at least until the humans arrived.
For centuries, as their population grew, Easter Islanders received much of their protein from porpoises that they speared in deep water from the ocean-going canoes. Most fish came from deep-sea fishing, since Easter Island is too far from the equator to support coral reefs that would allow shallow-water fishing.
The Easter Islanders developed agriculture based on many of the crops common to other Polynesian societies. They also brought chickens and developed intensive chicken production. Their agricultural production allowed Eastern Island society to produce adequate food surpluses to feed the large numbers of laborers who were required to transport and erect the statues for which the island is famous. The island itself was divided into 12 pie-shaped zones, each run by a tribe with a chief. These groups apparently engaged in peaceful competition over who could build the largest, most elaborate carvings. Those were placed on even larger platforms and apparently used for religious (ancestor worship) and other communal events.
The Easter Islanders began gradually clearing the forests -- both for agriculture and to harvest wood -- shortly after they arrived. According to the archeological record, deforestation reached its peak around 1400 and was virtually complete between the 1400s and 1600.
According to Diamond, "The overall picture of Easter Island is the most extreme example of forest destruction in the Pacific and among the most extreme in the world: the whole forest is gone and all of its tree species extinct. Immediate consequences for the islanders were losses of raw materials, losses of wild-caught foods, and decreased crop yields."
Probably most important, without the large tree trunks, they could no longer make large ocean-going canoes. As a result, large ocean-going porpoise and other deep-sea fish disappeared from their diet. The islanders had to depend more on birds for protein and on smaller, shallow-water fish. The birds quickly disappeared. Land birds disappeared completely, and sea birds were reduced to relic populations. Wild fruits from trees were dropped from their diet. Deforestation led to soil erosion and decreased crop yields. Wood, the major source of fuel, disappeared. Easter inhabitants were reduced to burning herbs, grasses and sugarcane scraps. Funeral practices changed. Easter Islanders were among the only Polynesian societies to cremate their dead, but this had consumed huge quantities of wood. When the wood was gone, they turned to mummification and bone burial.

The consequences of deforestation and these other human impacts were starvation, population crash, and a descent to cannibalism -- the last major remaining source of animal protein besides chickens. The crisis caused the masses to lose faith in the chiefs and priests, and around 1680 they were overthrown by military leaders. Easter Island's formerly complex, integrated society collapsed into an epidemic of civil war.

In the years before the collapse of the old order, the environmental crisis had been exacerbated by attempts to build bigger and bigger statues in an ever more urgent attempt to appeal to ancestors for help. But, of course, the production of bigger statues also consumed huge quantities of wood and bark to construct the wooden "ladders" used to transport the statues across the ground and rope to pull them.
Like many other societies, Easter's collapse swiftly followed the society reaching its peak population, monument construction and environmental impact.
By the time of the first recorded European visit to the Island, in 1722 by Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen, most of the great statues had been "thrown down" and broken by competing clans. The Europeans were greeted by tiny canoes that were not ocean-going and a population that had shrunk to between 6,000 and 8,000. The landscape that Roggeveen saw was a wasteland, without a single tree or bush over 10 feet tall.
The contacts between the Europeans and the Easter Islanders resulted in further disaster. Europeans brought smallpox that killed thousands of Islanders who, of course, had no immunity. In 1862-63, two Peruvian ships abducted 1,500 of the remaining Easter Islanders to work as slaves in Peru's guano mines.
By the time Catholic missionaries took up residence on Easter Island in 1872, there were 111 islanders remaining. The society had collapsed. It collapsed as a result of deforestation, the destruction of the bird population and the political and social factors that led to the decisions that made these things happen. This was complicated by the fact that there was no possibility of emigration from the Island -- an escape valve that did not present itself because of its isolation.
Collapse was not inevitable, since other island societies faced with potential deforestation developed communal forest management programs that protected their most valuable asset for future generations.
Diamond raises the question: "What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it? 'We don't have proof that there aren't more palms somewhere else on Easter? We need more research? Or your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering?'"
I'll conclude this story with Diamond's summary of why the story of Easter Island is so compelling.

The Easter Islanders' isolation probably also explains why I have found that their collapse, more than the collapse of any other pre-industrial society, haunts my readers and students. The parallels between Easter Island and the whole modern world are chillingly obvious. Thanks to globalization, international trade, jet planes, and the Internet, all countries on Earth today share resources and affect each other, just as did Easter's dozen clans. Polynesian Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the Earth is today in space. When Easter Islanders got into difficulties, there was nowhere to which they could flee, nor to which they could turn for help; nor shall we modern Earthlings have recourse elsewhere if our troubles increase.

The Easter Islanders destroyed their environment and society with stone tools and their own muscle power. One of the great challenges of the 21st century is to assure that billions of people with metal tools, machines, nuclear energy and exploding technology do not destroy ours.

The key to the Easter Island story is not just what can happen to a society, but the human decisions that created the disaster.
The Republican President Theodore Roosevelt instinctively understood this. The modern Republican Party -- despite the benefit of an additional century of scientific research -- does not.
One question before us in this fall's election is whether the monument that embodies American values will be the bold carvings on the side of a verdant Mount Rushmore or the statues on a barren, windswept Easter Island.
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

BACK to margotbworldnews.com 

Why US Media Is Soft on Wall Street

---

August 31, 2010


By Danny Schechter
From Consortium News

When you connect the dots in your writing or look for deeper explanations behind the decisions of policymakers, market makers and media-makers, it's easy to be dismissed as a conspiracy nut.

But forgive me for believing that those who serve interests have more clout than those that just speak out on issues. There are hidden relationships that sometimes predetermine what stories get media attention and which do not.

I have a current film out, "Plunder the Crime of our Time," taking on big media companies to task for what passes as coverage of the financial crisis. I have been asking why they weren't paying attention, didn't warn us about it, or investigate too deeply into how it happened.

When I discovered that dodgy lenders and credit-card companies pumped more than $3 billion into media advertising, which inflated the housing bubble between 2002 and 2007, I thought I had my answer.

Based on my own experience inside news networks, I could see that networks investigating their own advertisers in a tough economic climate was not exactly high on their agenda. It happens, but rarely.

Yet, even I, as savvy as I thought I was, missed an important link which was hidden in plain sight: Who owns the very media institutions I was railing against?

Guess what: many owners are the very financial institutions that should have been exposed. Media is a business tied into other businesses and driven by interlocking directorates by a not-so-invisible umbilical chord.

It took a colleague, Barry James Dyke, author of The Pirates of Manhattan, [click here for his video collection of the plundering] to give me a little guided online tour into this reality via Yahoo's finance page. It's easy to access but usually only used by investors, not investigative journalists like me.

I am not a stranger to corporate media ownership issues. Our Media channel even did a chart, some years back, showing how a handful of media giants owned most of the channels on broadcast and cable outlets.

What we didn't do, then, is what Barry Dyke was showing me how to discover: who owns those same companies.

It's all there, clearly available in easy to read charts to help you see how their stock is performing. On the left side of the chart, there is a section to click on, entitled "ownership."

In the flash of a click, a display of ownership appears of the company I used to work for: ABC News. This information is mandated by laws designed to insure accountability and protect investors.

The first category is "Major Direct Holders." At the top of the list is a former ABC News executive, Robert A. Iger who owns 850,790 shares.

Under him are other biggies who were given or helped to buy stock, allegedly to incentivize them. These holdings complement and add to their already generous salaries.

In truth, it's all a form of looting of the shareholder value. Often these execs have more clout than the boards of directors they theoretically report to.

Sometimes, it only takes a small percentage of shares to wield control. Together these insiders, and what are called 5 percent owners, own 7 percent of Disney, but exert disproportionate influence.

The next category on the chart is Institutional and Mutual Fund owners. They control 68 percent. And who are they? Fidelity, State Street Corporation, JP Morgan Chase and Company, Price T Rowe Associates, etc.

The next category is "Top Mutual Fund holders" with the Fidelity Contra Fund owning $1.2 billion in holdings; more than 36 million shares. In all, 1,095 institutions own shares. But a few are more equal than others.

The role that these largely unaccountable mutual funds play is rarely examined. Just listing their holdings doesn't explore their influence.

Some mutual funds get an added benefit -- access to employee retirement withholdings. So, they are not just funding Disney, but being funded by Disney with a guaranteed income stream even though the Funds often do not perform well.

Explains Barry Dyke: "It's about control. Mutual fund companies get other people's money through payroll deductions on their 401[k]s, and those fund companies, and the funds they control, own large stakes in companies like Disney.

"Through lobbying, essentially with the Pension Protection Act of 2006, employers are exempt from liability-fiduciary responsibility as long as they use a mutual fund; a target date mutual fund more specifically.

"Employers are exempt from liability, mutual fund companies are exempt from liability from the get-go, and do a lousy job of looking out for shareholders."

What he means here is their returns have been relatively low -- and many funds have blown up. Forcing employees to invest with them is hardly fair if they are losing money.

Back on our list, there follows, "insider transactions." Some of the information is considered N/A -- not available.

Why is that?

I was at ABC News when Disney swooped in to buy the company in 1995 for $19 billion. It had been for sale for $11 billion just two years earlier. The deal was the largest media merger in history, to that point, and the second largest sum of money ever paid for a U.S. company.

Back in 1940, Walt Disney had first sold stock to lower the debt. The newer Disney took on billions in debt to finance its deals. Where did the money come from?

Why, no surprise, the very Wall Street banks and financial institutions they work with. Call it synergy, or call it collusion, but not the kind that leads to better programming or media responsibility.

The final phase-out of ABC as a separate company occurred at a final shareholders meeting I attended in a New York TV studio on Jan. 4, 1996. I wrote about it in my book, The More You Watch, The Less You Know, noting that the vote to sell the company to the "Mouse House" (and, in the process, enrich its shareholders) passed by a vote of 121,000,000 to 437,000.

It was only after the deal was done that questions from the floor were permitted.

So much for corporate democracy! I managed to get a question in called on as "the man in the back of the room." It annoyed my bosses.

I asked the former Chairman of Capital Cities, the first company to acquire ABC and then ABC's departing leader, if he was "concerned" about what the merger would mean for our democracy.

[Of course, all things are relative. One of Cap Cities' founders and principals was the nefarious Iran-Contra conspirator William Casey who became Ronald Reagan's secretive and sneaky CIA Director.]

There was no concern about my concern. My question was ridiculed and dismissed by Chairman Tom Murphy who said, "Am I concerned. No, I am not concerned."

Murphy had earlier told Charlie Rose that he enjoyed winning. He was asked what that meant to him.

"Making money" was his response. "Whoever makes the most wins. That's how we keep score."

In sharp contrast, media historian Robert McChesney was concerned, very concerned, writing later: "A specter now haunts the world; a global commercial media system dominated by a small number of super powerful, mostly U.S. based transnational media corporations.

"It is a system that works to advance the cause of the global market and promote commercial values, while denigrating journalism and culture not conducive to the immediate bottom line or long-run corporate interests.

"It is a disaster for anything but the most superficial notion of democracy a democracy where, to paraphrase John Jay's maxim, "those who own the world ought to govern it.'"

Disney went on to acquire more stations. Their network now includes 200 affiliated stations. And they publish books, magazines, and financial and medical services information. The journalism they offer has noticeably declined as they slashed the number of employees in the News Division.

Just one recent and small example: towards the end of August, ABC News reported on new credit card rules, dryly reciting the new disclosures mandated in the new "reform" law.

The story did not mention that nothing was done to cap interest rates or, as the Wall Street Journal reported the next day, "the banks and credit card companies had jacked up the rates despite the flagging economy and the fact they can borrow money at record low rates."

Why was that? Could it have anything to do with the interests of those who own Disney, ABC's parent company?

You tell me. [Disney, by-the-by, offered its own credit card.] It also censored stories on pedophiles at Disneyland.

Media companies always insist no one tells them what to do, with Fox News perhaps the most glaring and candid exception, considering Rupert Murdoch's ideological leash.

Yet, even as they cover the money in politics that buys laws and rents politicians, they insist no one ever influences their coverage decisions not investors, not advertisers, and certainly, not viewers.

President Obama, it is said, did Wall Street's bidding because of all the money they smeared on his campaign. But do the companies that own and control media companies, with billions at stake, have any say in "what does" and "does not" get on the air?

Never!




Author's Bio: News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief at Mediachannel.Org He is the author of PLUNDER: Investigating Our Economic Calamity (Cosimo Books) available at Amazon.com. See Newsdisssector.org/store.htm.

Article Source 

BACK to margotbworldnews.com 

"Cuomo Headed Towards a Landslide"

This is what happens to Democrats who act like Democrats.

Political Wire:

A new Quinnipiac poll in New York finds Andrew Cuomo (D) leads either of his Republican rivals by more than 2-1. He tops Rick Lazio (R), 57% to 25%, and leads Carl Paladino (R), 60% to 23%.

Key finding: New York State voters approve of the job Cuomo is doing as Attorney General by a 69% to 20% margin.

Lots more really good stuff at MakeThemAccountable.com.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

BACK to margotbworldnews.com